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Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

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Is It Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

advertising agency blogI’ve updated my 2017 blog post about the power of the advertising agency blog and the question of should y’all continue to go for it or kill it. To blog or not?

I think that this is a big question that should be reviewed every year. Another question. Would anyone miss your blog?

To help answer these, I am going to discuss the pros and cons of advertising agency blogging. The kind of content creation that has been considered an integral element in an agency’s business development program. Blogging has been a key element of an agency’s Attraction Strategy.

Me

I have been consistently blogging since the early 2000’s. I started blogging as the CEO of my Oregon agency Citrus (I covered both advertising issues and the late 2000 recession’s effect on marketing).

The advertising agency business development blog you are currently reading has over 650 blog posts and acts as the core of my inbound marketing program. Good news for me, it fills my new client pipeline. Blogging has been very good to me.

But, but… my opinion about blogging, well at least for low volume advertising agency blogs, is that they are losing their power to attract a targeted audience, as in client leads. I see a few reasons for this.

  • There are zillions of blogs and blog posts every day. There has been a dramatic increase in the last five years.
  • There are hundreds (thousands?) of advertising agency blog posts and insights posted every week.
  • Most agencies write about the same subjects over and over.
  • Many agencies do not use online SEO tools to determine what blog post subjects will attract the most readership. I great way to do this is to look at what works for your most successful competitors.
  • Most agency blogs are boring.
  • Many client prospects are moving to podcasts and videos for their marketing information.

OK, Back To You. Should You Maintain Your Advertising Agency Blog? Or, Get Real And Just Kill It.

I look at a lot of advertising agency websites and their blogs. Many of the blogs are informative and brand building. However, way too many are just me-too blogs that actually deliver very little benefit to the agency.

The benefits should, stress should include the generation of incoming new client interest, showing that the agency Thinks Different (in a world of thousands of agency and advertising services options), help sell the agency as being on top of the advertising market, reinforces current client perceptions, demonstrates that the agency get content marketing, and demonstrates some personality and chutzpah. I call the chutzpah part… being Unignorable.

Start Here: Some Huge Blog Stats

The world really does not need another blog. As Steven Pressfield says in the title of his must-read book: “Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It”. [Read more…] about Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

How To Name Your Advertising Agency: Part One

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advertising nameA Strategic Guide To How To Find Your New Advertising Agency Name

This is Part One of a two-part series on how to name your advertising agency (or, most businesses for that matter).

Other than the gyrations that agencies constantly go through with how to position their agency (go here to see my advice on agency positioning); design and redesign their website… how they name themselves is one of their most important branding decisions.

I worked for three advertising agencies. Two were “founder” agencies: Dancer Fitzgerald Sample (remember “Where’s the beef?”) and Saatchi & Saatchi (which bought Dancer) and the other was my very own Portland agency and its “current usage” name: Citrus. Or, as one of our creative directors thought was critical to our success, citrus, with a lower case “c.’

A Question…

Do advertising names matter? Wow, this is a tough one to answer. As you will see from the different naming conventions listed below, how one chooses a name is a broad journey. However, just for the hell of it, here are some of the names for AdAge’s 2018 Small Agency Awards. Do any of these agency names instill immediate confidence? A must call reaction? Are memorable?

  • Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners
  • Mistress
  • Johnxhannes
  • The Chopping Block
  • Funworks
  • Oberland
  • Walrus (cool website)
  • Phenomenon
  • Brownstein Group
  • Steak
  • Yard
  • G&M Plumbing
  • Spawn ideas
  • Next/Now

My favorite (at least for this one second) is Next/Now. This name kind of meets a client pain point.

Part One: The Wonderful World of the Advertising Agency Name

I recently asked one of my advertising agency clients how they selected their name (note, it’s a word you use every day in your kitchen.) They said that they went through a fairly random process with the goal of finding a name that was easy to remember and not taken. Well, that’s one way to do it. Another is to apply process. [Read more…] about How To Name Your Advertising Agency: Part One

Video And An Advertising Agency Sales Pitch

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I’m in L.A. doing some work with agencies and a local micro-photo-series for my global The People project. While waiting to get started shooting on Venice Beach, I hit up the Social Media Marketing podcast – one of my long-term get-smarter podcasts. I landed on a really good one. I highly recommend that you listen to “How to Create Video Ad Funnels That Work.” 

I guarantee that the learning here could be applied to both your clients and your agency’s own sales program. Video rules – if done correctly. Here’s the podcast pitch from the host Michael Stelzner:

Thinking about creating more video ads? Wondering how to produce more effective social media video ads?

To explore how to create video ad funnels that work, I interview video ads expert Travis Chambers. His company, Chamber Media, specializes in creating scalable social video ads for clients such as Turkish Airlines, NordicTrack, and Yahoo.

I urge you to check it out. Especially if you want to learn from an ‘advertising agency’ that has separated itself from the mega-pack of zillions other advertising agencies.

But wait, there’s more…

The Chamber Media Website

The more is that I want to quickly highlight Chamber Media’s website.

They do a few things very right.

  • They have an unambiguous agency positioning that meets a clear market need.
  • I dig their concise opening sales pitch and so would potential clients: DRIVE MILLIONS IN PROFITABLE SALES WITH SCALABLE SOCIAL VIDEO ADS. They deliver the right words: millions, profitable sales, scalable and video ads.
  • They immediately go for the ask. The home page Work With Us button and the We’re Excited To Chat (as in friendly) contact page is aimed at driving leads. Chamber might ask a bit too many questions, but these are not required and helps the agency weed out low-spend low-value clients.
  • The Home Page goes right to strong cases and (!!!) results + ROI. ROI is in… pretty pictures, kinda, out.
  • They say what they do, list their clients, testimonials and show some very good press. How could you not say, “Yup, these guys are for real?”

It’s About Sales Baby

Way too many advertising agency websites do not sell. If you need some sales inspiration, head over to Chamber Media.

Me

A personal note: I am just getting started on my The People photo project. My goal is to shoot more portraits of more people on more continents than any other photographer. I will discuss this in detail in a future post. So far, I have over 300 portraits all shot with the same look = outside against a portable white background. I’ve now shot in China, Mexico, Selma, and L.A. Here are two from this week’s Venice Beach series. I think I’ll head back to Mexico with over 60 new portraits.

 

What’s Your Smart Guest Blog Pitch?

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I’ve done a fair amount of guest blogging on advertising and marketing industry websites to drive my awareness within the advertising agency market. Based on this experience, I strongly recommend the guest blog opportunity to my agency clients and give them both strategic and tactical methods to amplify their messaging on OPW – other people’s websites.

As you might suspect, how one delivers the guest blog pitch is critical.

To start, these are the core objectives of the guest blog (care of Neil Patel):

Positioning yourself as an authority and well-known name in the industry. (This is especially important for an advertising agency that wants to get in front of a specific target market that reads their large audience industry blogs.)

Getting exposure (traffic) back to your website.

Building backlinks to your website.

An Incoming Guest Blog Request

I recently received a request to guest blog on my website. I believe that the incoming email provides a teachable moment. Here is the email from Piyuesh Modi of Amsterdam + Bangalore + Melbourne’s PagePotato Digital Marketing.

Hi,

Hope you are doing great.

I was searching on relevant influencers talking about content marketing and stumbled upon your blog
https://peterlevitan.com/the-history-of-podcasting-9181/

Being the co-founder of Digital Marketing agency and sketching enthusiast, I have tried to put my sketching skills to use and made sketch notes on topics related to content marketing. The attachment has one example and this has many more
https://pagepotato.com/content-marketing-doodles-sketch-notes-piyuesh-modi/

Entrepreneur.com and YourStory.com have found it interesting and went ahead to publish them (the links will take you to the published blogs). This made me think that content marketing readers are finding it useful. Since I saw that your blog is already helping a lot of readers, I thought it would be a good idea to reach out to you and offer my content marketing sketchnotes FREE for use in your blogs or in your social media.

I am not expecting anything in return for this. However, if you choose to share it with your audience, it would encourage me to keep doing this 🙂

Moving a step further, if you have any valuable fresh content, then I would also be interested to share with my audience.

Thanks,

Piyuesh’s Guest Blog Pitch

Let’s break down Piyuesh’s guest post ‘pitch’. [Read more…] about What’s Your Smart Guest Blog Pitch?

Advertising Agency Marketing and Getting Past Sameness

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Beyond Sameness: An Advertising Agency Marketing Objective

This mini-thought-piece is about getting away from the awfulness of advertising agency marketing ‘sameness’.

First of all, of course, all advertising agencies are by nature the same. All dry cleaners are the same. All bars are the same. All optometrists are the same.

All advertising agencies make or deliver ads. Dry cleaners clean clothes, bars serve drinks and optometrists check out your eyes.

However, some agencies get past sameness and stand out from the pack. How do they do that?

How To Leave Sameness Behind?

Sameness sucks, but if you are like me, you do have your favorite dry cleaner (mine looks very modern); bar (mine is on a roof) and optometrist (mine is young and knows the latest methods and speaks English) I live in Mexico.

How can you get your advertising agency away from acting and looking like the agency down the street?

It isn’t by delivering the same message. “We are cool” / “We are smart” / “We know social media” / “We are creative” / “We have nice furniture” / We have a very human culture” / “We know content.”

The way out of this mess (the mess is huge given that there are over 4,000 ad agency-type choices) is to make looking and sounding different a goal. I call it being “Unignorable.”

6 (Easy) Paths To Being Unignorably As IN Un-Same-Ness Advertising Agency Marketing

Get past sameness. Make not being the same, make not being IGNORABLE an agency objective. Here are some things you can do.

  1. Market the hell out of your agency. This means having a super smart plan, a plan that you run 24/7. Good news for you… most agencies do not do this. Just by running a solid business development program, you will be not same-like. How is your outbound program? Your account-based marketing calendar? Your must-read blog? Your Linkedin program? By the way, could you swap out your name and put in another agency and have all of your marketing activity be too same-like — as in not branding you? If so, you are screwed.
  2. Get specialized. Pick something narrow to be known for. What’s available… Think expertise. Be the micro-expertise digital specialist example: Own search engine marketing like HawkSEM. Own data marketing expertise like Delve. Own category expertise like Red Interactive and entertainment.
  3. Own geography. Portland’s Grady Britton is not only one of the oldest agencies in Portland, but it also supports the city. Check out its Portland non-profit grant program.
  4. Own a high-interest demographic. Miami’s Viva owns multi-cultural marketing. Linda Gonzales, its leader, is a recognized expert. She gets the calls from the trade press about anything related to cultural marketing.
  5. Own a personality. The essence of getting past sameness is having a personality. The clients you want, buy people (you are in a people business). Australia’s Tiny Hunter does a couple of things right from the go. First, they tell the market that they specialize in family business marketing. Second, they introduce you to the leadership team right away via a home page video. Tiny Hunter is all about people: the type of client, the client’s customer and the agency leaders. How clear are your agency’s message and personality?
  6. One more. Have a website that isn’t interchangeable with your neighbor agency’s site. And, remember, ask for the order. Your website is a sales tool.

If you make sameness your enemy, you will become unignorable.