Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

digital marketing

The 88% Interest Message: Use Video Marketing

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Video marketingVideo Marketing Drives More Interest & Leads. Like 88% More Interest. 

(Side note… Keep reading to find out why Gandhi is in the pic above…)

Here are a couple of paragraphs on how to build a great/powerful advertising agency website from my book. It is amazing how few agencies use video marketing to tell their own brand story.

It is a long detailed chapter, this is just a tidbit. I’ll get personal below.

Video, Please

Too few agencies include brand-building video on their website. If they do, there’s a high degree of chance that it will be a sizzle reel.

I prefer a video that helps deliver the agency’s USP. The digital agency HawkSEM opens with an animated video that clearly states the agency’s mantra and client benefits—in 10 seconds:

“We could start by talking and bragging about award this and featuring that, but who cares? We believe in results. At the end of the day delivering measurable marketing results, predictable revenue, and high ROI is what matters.”

Another approach is to put a real human in the video. Why not have an agency leader deliver the message, and while they’re at it, also deliver some agency soul? You can make a compelling video introduction. You are creative.

Videos engage, are more memorable, are better at brand recall than text and… increase buying intent.

Still with me? MarketingProfs reports that “the average user spends

88% more time on a website with video than a website without one.” How can one ignore this 88% finding? 

Ok. I admit it. I haven’t used enough video enough.

I spent some time today looking at how to use Apple’s video apps. If I can do it, you can. And, yes, there are ways to make your videos better… from editing to including subtitles. Let me know and I can turn you onto some new AI tools and a smart video production company that is waaaaay affordable.

The video that Mahatma Gandhi made for me!

Check out even more thinking on advertising agency video marketing: HERE

Plus why haven’t you bought my Guide to Building A Kick-Ass Advertising Agency book?????? It is a paperback & eBook.

Improve Your LinkedIn Profile Fast (2023)

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LinkedIn ProfileGo To My LinkedIn Profile To See How To Improve Your LinkedIn Profile In Five Minutes

See it here.

You can have one of your own little powerful baby speakers in your LinkedIn profile to tell the world what you do or who you are — go to your profile and the edit section.

You will see “Your Audio Recording” — Well use it for an audio message.

2 More Things.

Advertising Agency Thought Leadership Distributition

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How To Distribute Powerful Advertising Agency Thought Leadership

advertising agency thought leadershipI am writing a new book about how to build and run a highly profitable advertising agency. Chapters of the book cover the art and science of developing impossible-to-resist, as in unignorable, thought leadership as an account-based marketing and inbound tool.  Here is a quick list of advertising agency thought leadership distribution platforms. You can see more advertising agency resources right here.

Note that anything you produce can be efficiently sliced and diced and put on other platforms. Think content amplification.

13 Advertising Agency Thought Leadership Distribution Platforms

  1. Your website. In a blog post or via a downloadable white paper, webinar offer, or podcast page. The advantage of a PDF offer is that you can ask the interested party for their contact information. Gently, please.
  2. Your company newsletter. Build the list via website offers and gentle outreach. I’ve employed contractors in the Philippines to help build mailing lists.
  3. LinkedIn. Three basic opportunities: 1) Post on LinkedIn (note that LinkedIn loves video). 2) Put your thinking in LinkedIn groups (for example I am a member of Digital Marketing – 2 million members). 3) Use LinkedIn Navigator to make direct connections.
  4. Publish a LinkedIn newsletter. Your connections and followers will be invited to subscribe, and LinkedIn will alert your network whenever you publish new editions.
  5. TikTok. TikTok has become a new gen search engine. It is currently an underutilized ad agency universe.
  6. Video platforms. Australia’s Tiny Hunter agency has over 210 videos. They tell me that the videos help them close deals with the right new clients (right is the operative word), client types that spend time watching Tiny Hunter’s advice. The agency’s founders are more about closing the deal than racking up huge indiscriminate view numbers.
  7. Audio platforms. Build and distribute your own podcast then transcribe it into bite-sized content and roll it out.
  8. Leverage OPA = Other People’s Audience. Guest blog. Guest podcast. Why work to build an audience when you can borrow it?
  9. Paper: Zines and, yes, old-fashioned letters. Hmm, or a targeted very cool (has to be cool) postcard series. So, 1986. However, so 2023 clutter busting. Paper breaks through
  10. Write a book. Both paper and digital. The ultimate proof of expertise. Go self-published. There is no need for a time-consuming traditional publisher to write that B2B book.
  11. Advertising. You use advertising to generate awareness for your clients, right? See What LONDON Advertising did.
  12. Conferences. Go where your next client hangs out. Give that insight talk and make friends. Hand out that book.
  13. Doughnuts? My agency once delivered insights directly to prospects in Portland and San Francisco using a customized and personalized Krispy Kreme box. Free doughnuts to grab attention. The box delivered awareness, actionable insights, and the offer to get some recently launched Krispy Kreme stock. It made us friends.
  14. Write and produce your advertising agency thought leadership and get it out in the world to the right clients. They will love the good stuff.

More to come… in the new book.

How Does A Personal Brand Work? Ask Gary Vaynerchuk & David Droga

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The Powerful Advertising Agency Building Personal Brand c/o Gary Vaynerchuk, David Droga, and David Ogilvy

personal brandI’ve been thinking about the power of the personal brand of Gary Vaynerchuk, David Droga, and David Ogilvy. The power of their brands to drive advertising agency awareness, expertise, and new business.

What is a personal brand? There are many definitions. I went to the website PersonalBrand.com for this definition (why not go to a company smart enough to have bought the URL PersonalBrand?)

“A personal brand is a widely-recognized and largely-uniform perception or impression of an individual based on their experience, expertise, competencies, actions and/or achievements within a community, industry, or the marketplace at large.”

Kinda wordy but you get the idea. My definition: “How people perceive you.”

I am keen on the idea of building and managing a personal brand for agency leaders and senior managers.

One’s personal brand is how you present and control your image to your market – your current and potential clients, your competition, and your staff (and, I can’t stress this enough, your future staff.) Your personal brand puts you in charge of your professional perception and lets you highlight your skills, thought leadership, strengths, and history.

The Advertising Agency and the Power of the Personal Brand

A master… David Ogilvy.

As I’ve discussed in my agency naming chapter, many agencies are named after their founder. In most of these cases, the founder is the face of the agency. The founder embodies the agency mission and soul of the agency.

Ogilvy the global agency continues to use the brand essence of its founder David Ogilvy who passed away in 1999. The agency’s Careers page quotes David and leverages his personal brand to help sell the agency’s creative street cred and soul to future employees:

“As out founder David Ogilvy put it, we seek people who are bigger and smarter than ourselves. That’s how we create a company of giants. We’re always looking for modern marketing and brand experts with big hearts and enormous talent.”

How is this for branding? In 1962, Time Magazine called him “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry“. Believe me, this recognition did not happen by accident. Ogilvy was a PR brand master. [Read more…] about How Does A Personal Brand Work? Ask Gary Vaynerchuk & David Droga

An Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy

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Optimized Search Engine Blog StrategyI started blogging in the early 2000s. I really cranked it up after I sold my advertising agency and became an advertising agency business development consultant. Below is a list of my blog posts. The subject matter of these hundreds of blog posts reflects my dedication to having an optimized search engine blog strategy. It worked.

My Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy.

I am going to keep this easy. I could ramble on but these are the core elements of my blog strategy.

  • Understand your objectives. Mine is to entice advertising agency leadership to contact me about helping them develop an unignorable business development program. This has worked for me every week.
  • Understand and meet the needs of your market. You are writing for them. Example: My evergreen list that is just for advertising execs… Top Advertising and Design Awards.
  • Use all available SEO tools to help you determine trending subject matter and keywords. There are a bunch of tools listed on my advertising agency resources list.
  • Study your direct competition. What are they writing about? What are their best keywords?
  • Be consistent. As you can see, I have written, on average, over one post per week. In 2013 alone (when I wanted to really drive Google love), I wrote 188 blog posts.
  • Have your very own voice. Write with gusto,
  • Amplify the reach/frequency of your blog posts: post em on LinkedIn; use them in your agency’s email newsletter; send them directly to clients and prospects (even try paper), and on…
  • Go mega amplification. I am going to use some of these very best Levitan blog posts to form the basis of my new book.

OK – Here You Go… Levitan’s 750 Plus Blog Post Archive

[Read more…] about An Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy