Marketing

How Small Advertising Agencies Can Win Big Clients

September 28, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

A recent interview in Ad Age’s Ad Lib podcast reveals the insight that even large clients are now very attracted to small agencies. I’d imagine that this might not be a big surprise to you. Expert smaller agencies that deliver specialized services have been on the radar for a few years.

However, you might not know about serious client angst that comes along with working with specialists.

Take a read – in a new window: Ad Age Small Agency Conference Podcast.

A Bit Of Set Up To “How Small Advertising Agencies Can Win Big Clients”

The book, “What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire” by Daniel Bergner is a best-seller.

The title and reviews like this from The Atlantic, “…Shatters many of our most cherished myths about desire” got me thinking about what the new clients you want desire from an agency. Understanding this can help small agencies win big clients.

So… What do the big clients want to see from smaller agencies and is your agency set up to deliver it?

Huge Client Mondelez And Small Agencies

Maureen Morrison’s AdvertisingAge article, “How a Small Agency Can land A Big Client Like Mondelez” sheds some light on this universal question. The article is an interview with Mondelez International’s agency scout Deb Giampoli. Deb shares her tips on the do’s and dont’s of how to get her attention.

The Truth: Small Advertising Agencies Can Win Big

Here are Deb’s tips and my take on her perspective. [Read more…] about How Small Advertising Agencies Can Win Big Clients

A New Advertising Book?

September 12, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

Should I Write Another Advertising Book?

Should you write your advertising (agency) book?

I’ve written and produced four books since I sold my Portland advertising agency in 2012. I am now thinking of “writing” a new advertising book based on a tight edit of the best thinking I’ve delivered on this blog. I currently have well over 300,000 words here. The blog posts have been viewed over 340,000 times.

I’ll discuss why to bother turning the blog into an advertising book a bit later in this post.

Some History. Books I’ve Written.

These include:

Boomercide: From Woodstock to Suicide. This was my training wheels book on the, dare I say it, interesting subject of using suicide as a financial planning tool. When I sold my agency, my accountant said there are two things we can control: how much money you have and how much you spend. However, there is another major factor we cannot control: how long your money has to last. I went, um, why can’t I control the length of my life. Buy Boomercide here.

The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. I have read every book on pitching and presenting. This is without question the best book on this subject. Join thousands of other agency leaders and buy this book here. Or, pitch against the agencies that read my tome, and, dare I say it, possibly lose.

Potlandia and Jointlandia are two photo books I researched and shot about the early days of the burgeoning legal cannabis market. I shot these because I am an in investor in Portland’s cannabis industry and was fascinated by the early attempts (almost hippie-like attempts) at product and retail branding in what is now a billion-dollar marketplace. You can see these books right here. While you are at it, take a look at my other photographs. I am currently traveling around the world to photograph people on every continent.

Why Write A Business Book?

I think that there are four reasons to write a business book – an advertising book by me, a consultant, or your agency. [Read more…] about A New Advertising Book?

More Advertising Agency Resources

August 30, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

Even More Advertising Agency Resources – August 2019

Its Friday 30 August, the ‘end‘ of summer, so I thought I’d shoot y’all some new advertising agency resources that could help you grow your agency. Or, at least, provide some much-needed efficiency. I’ll list these here and then add them to my The Big Advertising Agency Resource List.

Side note, thanks to all of the people that send me their favorite resources that I can have my huge staff of resource-munchkins review and pass on.

Go Ahead Play With These

Awesome Screenshot. Awesome Screenshot captures images, the whole image or a selected area, and records my screen so I can put the images on this very blog or use in my white papers and recommendations. For convenience, it sits on my Chrome bar.

Bulk.ly. I use Buffer to schedule and send out (as in LinkedIn and Twitter) my current and best-of past blog posts. But, I have to admit that it can be a pain in the ass to remember to do it on a regular basis. Bulky helps to automate the system and keeps a Buffer queue full-up.

Checkbot. Checkbot check’s your site (or others) to see and fix SEO, speed and security issues. Are you doing better than your competition? How are your clients doing?

ContactOut. I’ll use ContactOut’s words: “Find anyone’s personal email and phone number.” And, “ContacOut is used by recruiters at 30% of the Fortune 500.”

FormSwift. FormSwift has forty or so forms on their website that you can use to create and edit important documents. Documents include employee handbooks; employment contracts, non-competes, lease agreements, balance sheets, and my favorite: a resignation letter.

No Mas Verano

That’s it for summer, well soon. And for today.

Seasonality is interesting. I know from my years of working with advertising agencies on their growth and profitability strategies, that my incoming lead email will light up a bit once the summer passes. While I know that we’ve moved beyond the days when ad agencies got real quiet in the summer, there is still a deep-seated sense that September means that we all should get our business development acts in order. So, go ahead… give me a shout.

Let’s talk about growing your business. You are in a hurry, right?

Contact me now and take me up on my impossible to refuse 15-minute Vito Corleone offer.

How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program

July 17, 2019 By Peter 18 Comments

This is a 2019 UPDATE of 2016’s initial “How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program” blog post. Advertising agency business development is now a 24/7 operation. Here is some advice on how to deliver.

By the way, this post currently has over 34,000 views. The post’s popularity is due to three key reasons:

1. It directly addresses a major advertising agency pain point: how to build a winning and efficient new business plan.

2. The post is well optimized for search engines and, therefore…

3. Google loves it. [FYI, my number two trafficked post is, “How To Name Your Advertising Agency – Part One” at 30,000 + views. While always rethinking their website, advertising agencies also obsess about their name. by the way, this post is also a very good cheat sheet on naming that you can steal if a client ever needs a new brand name.

“How To Build…” is all about the most important thing an advertising agency can do (while it is nurturing its current clients)… run a new business program that ensures that the agency will keep growing. Agencies are like sharks. They must keep moving forward to eat or else.

Your potential clients have over 4,000 marketing communications ‘agency’ options (other agencies, new consultancies, freelancers, even your ex-creative director…).

Therefore, any form of business development passivity on your part – sucks. If you think you are doing everything right, you probably are not. How can I say this? I never thought that all was well whilst running business development at Saatchi & Saatchi and when I owned my own agency.

Here’s my “ad”: I suggest that you give me a shout and take me up on my Corleone offer – It’s hard to refuse.

OK, Let’s Go…

When I owned Citrus, my Portland and Bend Oregon advertising agency, I woke up every morning (and even some nights) thinking hard about my agency’s business development program. I lived as if Nike, our largest client, was about to walk out the back door along with its revenues. I bet as an ad agency owner or manager you have rough nights too. One of the things I knew I could and should do was to manage this back-door issue was to have an active, I stress active, new business plan in place.

Here are some (I stress some) of the elements of my new business plan. They helped me grow my agency Citrus (with new clients like Harrah’s, LegalZoom, Nike and the Montana Lottery). I hope my insights help you grow your agency.

Execution Rules.

When I set out to write this advertising agency new business post I didn’t think that it would be this long – a warning to the ADHD types. But, advertising agency new business planning is complex and is getting more complex every day due to the rapid changes in our industry and technology. That said, the devil in business development, you know what’s coming, is in the detail. Success is all about execution.

For example, running a successful inbound biz dev program that attracts market attention must be based on a sound strategy and smart agency process if you want to run a 24/7 sales program. Staying the course is critical.

The Advertising Agency Business Plan. First Things First.

Anatomy Of An Advertising Agency Pitch: Part One

June 14, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

Anatomy Of An Advertising Agency Pitch

This interview with Tony Mikes, Founder of the Second Wind Network, is a first-person perspective by an advertising agency management and business development leader who sat on the client side of an important ad agency pitch. It is an enlightening review of how advertising agencies performed, or didn’t, in a new business pitch for the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

Frankly, A Must Read

The interview and perspective on agency new business pitching will be highly instructive for small, medium and large agencies… to say the least.

The interview first appeared in my book, “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.”

It is very rare to have an advertising agency veteran sit on the client side of a pitch and give his impressions of the process and how the agencies performed. You will hear about what the winning agency did and what the losers failed to do.

The interview is over three thousand words so I broke it into two parts. I urge you to read both.

At the end of part two, I will give you my impressions on the lessons that every agency can learn from Tony’s experience and insights.

Tony Mikes

Tony Mikes was the Founder and Managing Director of the Second Wind Network, which today has over 800 small to mid-sized agency members.

Tony consulted with and advised advertising agencies and their leadership on best practices for almost 20 years. He provided members and clients with ‘old school’ agency wisdom and combined it with cutting-edge strategies. Before starting Second Wind, he was President of Pennsylvania’s Mikes & Reese Advertising from 1972 to 1988.

My Portland agency Citrus had been a member of Second Wind, and Tony was one of our advisors. Tony was an experienced mentor that could always help me resolve an agency-related issue or grab an opportunity and turn it into success. Sadly, Tony passed away in 2015.

The Anatomy Of An Advertising Pitch Interview

PL: You were on the client side of the agency selection table recently. How did that go? [Read more…] about Anatomy Of An Advertising Agency Pitch: Part One