What Are The Real Assets In Your Marketing Firm?

April 9, 2013 By NewBusinessHawk

Outward vs. Inward Leadership

Constantly changing client demands, new marketing technologies and shifting options are all circling overhead, claiming the attention of agency leaders. These red herrings have shifted the focus outward, away from the IMPORTANT day-to-day operation of the agency. As agency leaders focus on the external forces, the tendency is to start creating a mental wish list. Most leaders are always looking over the fence, thinking “gee… the grass sure is greener over there! If only we had award-winning talent. If only we had more money in the budget for xyz. If only we could establish a presence in a more competitive market.” This type of thinking leads to a very reactive way of doing business.

These are the murmurings we hear at agencies of all shapes and sizes. The feeling is that the “environment of opportunity” is a feast fit only for other agencies – the bigger ones, the richer ones, the ones with cool space – whatever excuse one can dream up. No one would argue that some agencies have distinct built-in competitive advantages – better city, recognizable name, big account, etc. But how do you explain occasions where the “best-of-the-best” gets decimated in a drought and the weed-filled lawn suddenly turns a lush green? Clearly, there is more to the equation than meets the eye.

Back To Basics

For every big plan, there is a simple reality to consider: the day-to-day details surrounding the operations of your agency that can make or break your performance in today’s environment of opportunity. And make no mistake, tough economic times create new opportunities. Most agency leaders are focused on maintaining their current position – without first looking at the greater opportunity. What it boils down to is your agency’s ability to manage, develop, and leverage its assets in meeting new challenges and achieving your goals. An agency, even one with deep pockets, that pays no attention to its assets will eventually have nothing to show for themselves but empty pockets.

Agency ASSETs are the Accounts, Specialties, Skills, Experience and Time that define the very who and what of your agency.

Read on and see if you can make the grass greener on your side of the fence…

Agency Post: Simple Rules for New Business

February 19, 2013 By NewBusinessHawk

The Agency Post, an interactive publication for ad, PR and marketing professionals, was kind enough to post some of my thoughts on new business here. A short snippet:

At its heart, new business is not hard. As one old agency wag used to tell me, “This is an easy business kid — find the damn client, keep the damn client.” The rules for winning more new business are not difficult to understand. If your new business program isn’t producing, chances are someone is making it more complicated than it needs to be. Or, maybe your new business effort is focused on the wrong thing.

The concept I outline is that firms often focus on the wrong areas when chasing new business. Please head over and read the whole thing, as there are some simple rules for how to build relationships as well!

Additional Thoughts on Relationship Building

Clients are being contacted daily by sales people from within our industry who attempt to pitch without permission. The fact of the matter is that most new business people lack the skills of adding value and relationship building these days. The problem is they don’t know any better. They’ve been instructed by the agency presidents to speak to anyone who has a pulse. Something to think about – would you get involved in a multi-million dollar deal without knowing someone from the agency with whom you are dealing with?

I’m sure that you know the answer to that question!

We teach agencies how to Spark – The Worlds Most Powerful New Business System. A critical fundamental skill of the spark system is the process of building relationships. Clients must never know you are selling. Clients must never feel they are being solicited. You have to take the long view and look towards building trust over time.

5 Strategies To Help Your New Business Person Build Relationships

Focus: Develop an expertise on a narrow subject. As an expert any comment and or advice brings more value. Show how your expertise can benefit the prospect. Experts in any field and are heavy relied on as a trusted resource.
Network: We all know that people do business with people whom they like and trust. Choose to make a new friend over just creating a new business transaction. This will pay off in the long run.
Nudge: Establish yourself with your prospects by creating a dialog on things that you have in common. You must be able to establish rapport. Be a steady source of ideas, tips, and advice.
Add Value: Become a teacher to your target market, and educate people on best practices – draw information from any and all sources. You don’t have to create them all. Link, summarize, send.
Close: Seek constantly for an opportunity to visit the prospect when there is a need. Then follow set rules to enhance trust, discover needs, when to leave them wanting more, and how to close.

The agency world has changed a lot, but two things remain the same: The necessity to win new accounts and the need to keep what you win. Becoming better at building and keeping relationships will help with both.

Focus Your Brand: Focus Your Efforts: Win

January 29, 2013 By NewBusinessHawk

How did an agency in the middle of nowhere Amish country grow 50 percent at the height of this recession? At a time when agencies around the world are cutting back, down-sizing, reducing staff or just flat out closing, how did this agency seize this opportunity to grow? I recently met a fellow new business person, Lance Baird, whose B2B agency, Godfrey, has been recognized by Advertising Age as one of the fastest-growing advertising agencies in the country. The secret to their success: focus your brand so you stand out in the market.

Lance said this about Godfrey: “Regarding a specialty, initially, to be honest, people were extremely uncomfortable with this position as they felt it confined us. Today, this positioning is not only internally accepted, it’s promoted. We help highly technical manufacturers market themselves better. Period. I think this concept is really, really important for agencies: define who you are or someone else will do it for you.”

Don’t Label Me Bro!

Most marketing firms I’ve worked with are afraid of developing a focus that stands out. They never go beyond the generic “full service marketing firm, great creative, outstanding service” shtick. They never shout from the rooftops “we’re the world’s best at … something, anything!” Without focus you run the risk of trying to be everything to everybody and fail to be remembered – your brand effectively fades into the haze gray of marketing speak. In other words, you become one more marketing firm that is “integrated-marketing, brand-building, highly-strategic, results-oriented, media-natural, crowd-sourced, social-media, idea-driven.” The more precisely you can describe your ideal client, address their marketing needs, and deepen your knowledge, the more new business you’ll get.

Growth With Focus Is Easy!

Marketing an expertise is easy! If you commit to an area of focus, you then have a very specific client in which to market. Social media makes this more of an opportunity for you than ever. Focus your efforts, build targeted content and get found. New business efforts start to make sense.
Referring prospects to an expert is easy! If your agency is known as “the expert in …” then it becomes simple for clients, friends, family, and staff, anyone in your network to refer prospects to you. Focus means more leads through referrals – it’s that simple.
Familiarity makes relationship-building easy! Prospects don’t mind having a conversation with someone who has deep knowledge in their field. They need to know that you understand their specific industry and have something of value to offer. We’re in a relationship business, and relationships drive growth. If you are positioned as an expert, then more people will be interested in developing a relationship with you.
Winning a pitch is easy! There will be less competition, as you provide specific services for specific clients, in a specific way. Walking into a pitch as a recognized thought leader in a field gives you more freedom. Free to make a solid case for your recommendations. Free to stretch your strategies, ideas, and creative into real award-winning work.
Growing existing clients is easy! Experts understand how to get more organic growth. As you provide increasingly better service based on your client’s needs, the chance is that you will get more organic growth. Clients will come back for more and often will start spending more with you as the relationship grows.
Accepting projects outside your focus is easy! Becoming an expert doesn’t mean that you won’t get work outside your niche. In fact, I’ve found that the more an agency clearly defines their expertise, the more their brand stands out. And the more the brand stands out, the more prospects notice. And prospects are busy people, so they really don’t care what your expertise is IF they’ve noticed your brand. Counterintuitive I know, but it works.

If you are unsure of how to develop your unique area of focus, get help. Don’t keep doing the same ol’ same ol’ expecting different results. Don’t go in for half-measures. To focus your brand and become an expert, you must go in 100 percent. Seek out help from thought leaders in marketing, existing clients, new staff, and anyone who can assist you in finding that special niche.

Define Who You Are Or Someone Else Will Do It For You

Having a strong agency focus will open new roads to growth.

I thought it would be interesting to see how Godfrey marketed themselves over the last 10 years or so. Going back in time, you may notice a steady narrowing of focus over the years:

1999: Specializing in integrated marketing communications programs, we define, shape, and nurture your corporate positioning through marketing communications. We have the experience, skills, and in-house staff to develop and implement effective marketing communications across a wide range of industries.

2004: A full-service integrated business communications company specializing in strategically driven business-to-business marketing for both national and international clients.

2007: Specializes in developing strategic marketing solutions that drive growth, competitive advantage, and value for business-to-business companies.

2011: Specializes in helping highly technical manufacturers market themselves better.

So Godfrey, throughout the years, has clearly defined and narrowed the focus of their brand. By doing so, they are now one of the fastest-growing agencies in America. The future belongs to those agencies that brand themselves best, don’t compete where the competition is high, and avoid getting marginalized by quicker, cheaper competitors. Agencies are discovering that there are no winners standing in the middle – soon enough they will be forced to move one way or the other.

Update:

According to this recent survey by RSW/US over 77% of prospects state that having a focus, or specialization, is important to them. In the notes section of that survey this is what marketers had to say about specalization:

Reasons why Marketers DO want specialization include:

Agencies can be more focused and strategic when they’re specialized

I don’t have time to train “beginners” in my space

We don’t have the time or money to waste.

We need experts in our industry who know it intimately

Implications: At the end of the day, I personally believe that if Agencies can make the Marketer feel like they know their category (no matter your level of experience in their space), the Marketer will be more likely to feel good about the Agency. I recently wrote a post based on my past two Agency Searches we ran. In both cases, the marketing clients told us that they selected the winning Agency because they “felt like they were already ramping up”. The winning Agencies tailored their presentations to the Marketer, they showcased their knowledge of the space, and they shared smart, strategic thinking applied from the Marketer’s and other industries. In both cases, there wasn’t any marked advantage that the winning Agency had over the other Agencies in terms of category experience. They just came to the table with a smarter, more creative, more strategic, and more energetic approach.

Bottom photo by ~wojtaaa

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: Ad Agency, ad agency branding, Advertising, advertising agency consultant, advertising agency consultants, agency brand, agency branding, agency focus, Agency New Business, Agency Positioning, leadership, leading ad agencies, Marketing, marketing for a new business, Winning New Business

The Most Important Client At Your Agency

November 13, 2012 By NewBusinessHawk

This management team is working on the agency’s most important client.

They’re at a leadership retreat planning the agency’s future. And the management team understands that the agency is the most important client in the agency.

Unfortunately most agencies spend too much time doing client business and forget to do the agency business. And that attitude can get an agency into serious trouble in this fast-changing marketing-communications environment.

The best advice might be to get out of town, away from the phones and the pressures of everyday client concerns and focus on the agency’s concerns. Where is the agency going? How to get there?

What resources are needed for the agency to prosper and not just survive? Do high investments in creative talent pay off or should the agency take some new initiatives into consulting, planning and brand building? What’s the right balance between new business and client retention? What are the best agency practices around the world? And what is the right management structure?

These are critical decisions for all agencies but most agencies leave them to chance. You wouldn’t expect a smart client to let the future just happen. Why let the future happen to your agency?

It All Starts With Vision

Look at it this way. Having a vision marks you as a visionary. Then if you have the ability to get others to buy into that vision, you’re called a leader. The reason is simple. You know it will take others within your organization to help you achieve your vision. And you have seen what happens when businesses, both large and small, try to operate without a clear vision.

Trying to managing a firm that doesn’t have a strong vision is like trying to get a group of friends to run through the woods at night. You might cover a lot of ground but you and your friends get banged up a lot. There is a better way.

Why: Vision seems so simple but it’s so important. With a strong vision, you know where you are going and how you hope to get there. That’s the start. Then you need to let others in on that vision so they can help you achieve it.

We work with firms of all sizes around the world helping their owners and operators set a vision for what they can become. And then we work together to make that vision a reality. If the vision word troubles you, then just consider the whole vision thing as a way to create the future.

We Can Help

Sanders Consulting Group has been a leader in the marketing communication industry for over 20 years. Our track record for helping agencies grow through client retention and new business wins is unparalleled. In any given year, Sanders Consulting works with most of the top ten advertising agencies and hundreds of local and specialized firms. Our extensive roster of programs and services is unique in the industry.

Beyond agency growth, Sanders Consulting has developed practice areas dedicated to agency re-branding, operations management, productivity improvement and information technology, as well as a wide variety of management concerns and ownership issues.

As you evaluate opportunities and challenges at your agency, never hesitate to give us a call.

Phone: 1.800.899.1538

Mail: info@sandersconsulting.com

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: Ad Agency, ad agency branding, Advertising, advertising agency consultant, Agency New Business, Agency Positioning, leadership, Leadership Training, leading ad agencies, Marketing, new business agency, standing out

Take Care of Your Own: Leadership!

May 23, 2012 By NewBusinessHawk

In this tough economy, employee training and development is the last thing on your mind.

In fact, how many times have you thought or said to someone, “You should feel lucky to have a job.” Is this the attitude you want to project at your agency? Fearful of the future, you may feel reluctant to add more staff even if new projects, client work, and prospects are on the horizon. Your employees, also fearful, are hanging onto their jobs with every ounce of strength even if they are unhappy. You may have even resorted to more cost-saving strategies by cutting your own pay, eliminating perks, and slashing operating costs trying to squeeze every nickel out of your budget.

During this fallow period, however, you must never lose sight of the critical role employee development plays for an agency—especially YOUR agency.

Eventually, and we’re starting to see some signs now, the economy will rebound. And then many, many people will leave their jobs in the hopes of greener pastures, to improve their reel, to find better benefits or better pay. Or they may leave just to help them forget the unhappy past at your agency and move on…

But, with the right planning and foresight, this does not need to happen to your marketing firm.

There are some practical strategies for building continued morale, engagement, and growth for times good and bad. How?

5 Leadership Strategies To Transform Your Firm

1. Stress open and frequent communication:

Be sure to hold effective agency meetings, briefings and update sessions
Schedule regular Q&A’s with groups and departments
Simple and consistent works better than complex and infrequent (KISS)
Recognize positive movement
Identify quick wins and implement them NOW!
Look for opportunities to help solve issues
Share good news with everyone

2. Take strong action that directly impacts agency morale:

Celebrate the work and the people behind the work
Select great plans, creative ideas, strategies and showcase them
Look outside the agency for trends and hold round-robin learning sessions
Provide training to introduce new competency requirements
Recognize extra effort spent
Provide support and offer rewards (simple non-monetary works well)

3. Enlist your up-and-coming leaders. Possible roles and responsibilities include:

Facilitating the day-to-day direction of agency projects
Meeting the goals for the client, agency, and individuals
Coordinating training and development programs for staff
Monitoring overall budget/profit & loss for the client
Facilitating communication between departments and leaders
Calling and facilitating meetings
Forecasting material, human, and technical resource requirements relative to projected workloads

4. Deploy cross-functional teams to work on achieving agency goals and specific, longer term issues:

Streamline your processes and workflow
Implement new technology/social media to promote your agency
Discover new ways, new tools, new resources to train employees
Revisit your performance criteria and incentives ensuring they are inline with your brand and operational strategy
Redesign your space and facilities – think about workflow, logistics, and never forget the importance of setting up a powerful tour

5. And finally, treat everyone with respect and honesty. They won’t forget that.

Strong Leadership Transforms Your Staff

If agencies want to move from client conference rooms to client boardrooms, then major shifts are needed. Essentially agencies must shift from worrying about ads to worrying about the client’s business. Give us a call to see how focusing on skill development and leadership can transform your firm from talking about advertising to talking about strategies that drive business. This shift transforms the agency from a marketing communication vendor to trusted advisor with an honored place in the boardroom. But it all starts with leadership. This isn’t about looking at old problems from the same angle. We offer a fresh perspective and new ways to improve your agency’s performance with clients.

Photo by *xOxChrystalxOx

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: Account Executive Training, Account Management Training, Account Manager, Ad Agency, ad agency leadership, Ad Agency Training, Advertising, Client Bonding, client retention, Client Retention Strategy, Client Service Training, Improve Client Service, Keep Clients, Keep Clients Forever, leadership, Marketing, Marketing Decline, Negotiation, operations, Teamwork, Training

Advertising Agency New Business Resolutions

January 12, 2012 By NewBusinessHawk

Things Agencies Should Stop Doing Today

Need to stop doing what you're doing now!

Ad agencies really need to stop doing bad things or...

It’s a new year– time for renewal, reflection and looking forward to a better 2012! As part of that process it’s helpful to review this past year and think about what worked and what didn’t. Time for some New Year’s resolutions! After all, a New Year’s resolution is a challenge to achieve one or more goals. Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands honesty.

But sometimes it’s not about what you need to start doing; it’s really about what you need to stop doing that’s important.

So here’s our list of 6 things agencies should stop doing right now:

STOP thinking you can control or slow the pace of change. Any attempt to control it flies in the face of reality. It can’t be done. Stop reacting and stop trying to manage what can’t be managed. Instead, focus on what you can control. Agencies can dictate the pace of change only by getting out ahead of it. Clients spend big money making sure their firms operate the fastest, quickest, smartest way they can. Take a page from their book and focus energy on building a better marketing firm that is faster, more effective, and more responsive.
STOP trying to be everything to everybody. Too many marketing firms are focused on the past where a great ad agency was defined by being “a full-service agency that offers outstanding creative!” Those days are long gone. Your agency needs a brand that is current and memorable, and you have to offer strong proof that shows what you stand for– what is important to prospects. Do you know? Reinforce your efforts by getting all your resources, including the agency website, in congruence behind the agency’s brand. Make sure your agency location is identified, has strong curb appeal, and your space is propped for a tour that supports the agency’s brand. And more importantly, make sure your agency’s personality is clear and projected in all of its new business materials.
STOP waiting for the phone to ring. Client churn is at an all time high, but your phone isn’t ringing off the hook… Why? You must be active and reach out. Constantly. Many ad agencies have no formal new business system in place, and any new business activity is sporadic. The result is agency growth is slow, staff interest is mixed, and management frustration with new business is high. All leads are from “over the transom” and you have no system in place to generate leads. The phone never rings because prospects haven’t heard of you, you have’nt reach out to them, contacted them, built a relationship with them. Prospects don’t know you’re interested in them. Or prospects think your firm is not a good fit based on an old brand long out of date. Resolve to have regular outreach to your prospects. Move to have all of your prospects in a strong CRM program so you can track and maintain contact with them. Hold an annual reception and make sure you have a strong publicity program in place. Consider holding a supplier open-house to get your brand message out in the market. The best advice we can offer is make sure you have a full-time person to build relationships with prospects full-time.
STOP treating prospects the same way. Each prospect is different: different values, different world views and different ways they make decisions. If you often find yourself not making the final presentation set, if what seems like strong a relationship doesn’t turn into a solid prospect, or if you come in second on key pitches, you have a chemistry problem. Other symptoms include poor client retention, and your superior creativity, strong marketing and solid experience are not winning accounts. Start profiling all clients and prospects. Winning agencies change their presentation strategy to fit the profile of the prospect. Control the chemistry from the first meeting through to the final presentation. Build a comfort zone for prospects early in the relationship. After all, we all know the “birds-of-a-feather” rule. So if you treat all prospects the same way, then the only birds that will flock to you are the ones exactly like you.
STOP sending proposals and presenting. The ability of your agency to successfully respond to a prospect’s show of interest is critical in understanding how best to win the account. Too many agencies have no idea how to handle prospect interest. Do you send proposals on a regular basis without positive action resulting? Or end up doing a “capabilities presentation” with little or no follow-up? If your “First Visits” with a great prospect generates no action and the prospects show little interest in proceeding, then you need to change. Your ability to handle the first interview with a prospect is the key to winning. It’s better to focus on building trust when you see a prospect. Limit your presentations of samples or case-studies and focus on sharing your competency story in a trust-building way. Keep the time talking about yourself short and powerful. Remember, less is more at this stage. The most successful agencies have a solid first visit strategy and know how to return with solutions to win the account. The simplest path is often the right one – as long as you stay focused on winning.
STOP being tactical. The line between strategic and tactical was once open and fluid, where ideas, staff, and agencies could freely roam up from one to another. Today, much of the strategic work done by a traditional agency is for new business, or for “free” just to win or keep the account. Very little advertising revenue these days would be considered strategic. Management, branding, marketing consultants and research firms have all moved to fill what was once the purview of traditional agencies. As a result revenue on the strategic side continues to grow faster than tactical – but agencies are being blocked as they are “creative” or tactical. Take a page from the consulting firms and understand how to be more strategic. Challenge the management consultants with better processes, procedures, methodologies and tools. Build a consultancy around packaging “Business Building Ideas” with outstanding deliverables. Better reports. Better communication skills. Better results.

You’ve enjoyed a long and, we hope, relaxing holiday break. Now it’s time to focus on your agency plans for the New Year. It’s time to make the changes needed to support your vision. One last reminder: the sign of a highly successful marketing firm is its willingness to move beyond methods that are currently working well, with the expectation of discovering something even better. So stop doing the “same-ol’-same-ol’” and focus on making some resolutions for 2012! Cheers to another chance for us to get it right!

Sanders Consulting Group has for over 25 years helped over 2,500 agencies as the leading new business consulting firm. Working with some of the best managed agencies on the globe and selected as the new business training provider to the largest agencies in the world. We show you how to win, not just play the game.

Photo by ~Luria-XXII

Filed Under: New Business Tagged With: Account In Review, Ad Agency, ad agency branding, Ad Agency Winning New Business, Advertising, Agency New Business, Agency Positioning, Agency Search, Agency Shoot Out, Formal Presentation, Marketing, Marketing Decline, pitch consulting, Pitch Training, Presentation Strategy, Presentation Tactics, Presentation Training, Presenting Techniques, Winning Formal Presentations, Winning New Business, winning the pitch

Ad Agency? The Times, They Are A-Changin’

November 16, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the world we live in.

Change. It happens every day, every moment, everywhere. Marketing firms, at the intersection of consumers and brands, must learn to embrace change.

Your Client Is Changing: Change How You Manage The Client

Clients today are looking for business-building ideas, speed, and firms that understand how to stay within budget.

Now is the time to think more strategically to determine exactly what your clients want – and deliver it better than anyone else! It’s time to rethink your account service team, move faster than ever, while boosting profits and lowering costs.

But first, you need to change.

The Consumer Is Changing: Change How You Sell To The Consumer

The consumer today is exposed to more messages than ever before from all types of media. Great creative can make a brand standout and generate that all important conversation. Now is the time to rethink the business and generate new ideas targeted to this new consumer – to make your agency more successful. Win awards. Attract new clients. Boost staff morale.

Time for more creativity from all members of your team… and to have a creative process that is faster, better, and more profitable… clients will be more satisfied and loyal.

But first, you need to change.

Marketing Is Changing: Change How You Market

Social media, conversations, listening to the consumer and more are changing the way agencies do business. Clients are demanding more. Consumers are becoming smarter. Now is the time to change how you view marketing – to improve your agency’s social skills and get an unfair advantage over your competition.

It’s a time when technology can bring you inside information, to make your creative more focused and insightful…. speed up your operations, to make you more efficient and cost-effective, to make your agency more profitable and even grow your business.

But first, you need to change…

You Need To Change: Change Your Agency… To Do It Better!

This is a fantastic time to be in advertising, full of incredible opportunity for growth and success – if you’re open to change. To change successfully, you must question everything you do. And discover new ways to do it better! It means asking tough questions, like:

What do we do better than anyone else?
What is our vision for the future?
How can we serve clients better?
How will we handle the impact of this digital world?

When you answer these questions, you’ve found your vision. But putting that vision into action can be challenging.

You Need to Change

To turn your vision into action, you’ll need to change the way you work and develop effective solutions to the barriers that stand in your way. You need to build on the unique capabilities of your agency – to take advantage of today’s market and become the agency of the future!

How long has it been since you took a long hard look at your firm? Your brand? Your new business efforts? Maybe you have been operating under the same brand for years without giving it much consideration. Or using the same processes and structure without reviewing all the changes in technology.

The bottom-line is the world is changing, and we all need to change with it.

Photo by ~gffrycole

Filed Under: Operations Tagged With: Ad Agency, ad agency branding, Advertising, Agency Compensation, Agency New Business, Agency Positioning, Agency Search, Marketing, Marketing Decline

The Future of Advertising Agencies: Learnings From Forrester

October 5, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk

Over at Edward Boches blog Creativity Unbound is some interesting research on the future of advertising from Forrester – from a while back that I just found and read. I encourage everyone to read the whole thing. Pay close attention to his addtional thoughts… Go read, now!

I’ll wait.

The key findings topline is:

It is a new world defined by technology and consumer control
Consumers hate most advertising
Adaptive marketing is the new model
Media needs to combine paid, owned and earned
Successful agencies will move well beyond campaigns
Clients will look for three things
- Ideas: note this does not mean messages or ads
- Interaction: engagement, connection, community, media
- Intelligence, as in you need to collect, report, analyze and predict: if you don’t have robust analytics, you’re in big trouble

Edward goes on and cuts to the chase with this additional thought:

Chief Innovation Officer, Mullen; Marketer; Blogger

If I were to sum up even more.

content lives everywhere, there are no walls

experiences more than messages

consumers aren’t audience but participants

agility is essential

measure, predict, act

Changing Technology Study

Back on November 11, 1996 I was part of a team that published a research paper for one of the largest marketing firms out there. The purpose was to examine how trends and new capabilities in information technology would impact the world of marketing. Back then ”information technology” is what we called everything from the new “world wide web” to networks just being developing in-house.

Just to give you an idea on just how much the world has changed think about this - In 1996 the DVD was launched, in Japan, not in the US. Windows NT 4.0 was released by Microsoft and Apple was losing money. Internet Explorer 3 was just launched to fight Netscape. The New York Times just started its own website. It was a big deal that time as very few newspapers bothered to bear the expense of having a website and publishing their own materials in it.

The Findings

What were the results of our study? From the findings we found 1996 to be a year of change:

As the number of messages in the marketplace rises exponentially, the perceived value of each message has diminished over time. New technologies have not only reduced the value of each message, but also provided each consumer with greater control over the messages they receive. This newly created consumer power will continue to drive the marketing communications industry. Consumers can now dictate when, how and where they will listen to marketing messages. The net effect of this empowerment on the industry is substantial:

The proliferation of mass media is giving way to alternative media outlets and vehicles, absorbing greater proportions of client marketing budgets

Agencies who focus on traditional mass media are threatened with extinction because they will be able to add little value to the planning, buying and execution process

Agencies need to take a much stronger leadership role in integrating with clients and their end customers

Agency professionals need far greater access to information on their target audience and must know how to use it effectively

Traditional compensation and commission schemes will continue to evaporate in favor of project, performance or consultative-based value creation

We summed it all up by stating “The advertising industry is at a critical juncture in relation to the effective utilization of technology. It must find new ways to harness the power of information to influence the consumer, integrate its existing client base and attract new business. The alternative is to let the industry’s core business continue to erode by adding little or no value to the advertising process.”

The more things change…

The more change there is. There was a time where ad agencies and clients were tied at the hip – structures aligned – CEO’s/ad agencies communicating almost daily. Back then the ad agency was a titan in the corporate world – could create markets, brands, and shape public perception with strong impactful marketing ideas. Of course it was much easier back then when almost everyone would tune into a show like Ed Sullivan.

In this hyper-marketed world the power of any one marketing effort is severely diminished. CEO’s have recognized this and now spend more time with business strategist, management consultants and such… The board room used to be a regular meeting place for the agency, now it’s not. This is not to say there’s not a few powerful brands that still rely on marketing, and use it in a strategic way… only that is increasingly the exception.

The rules HAVE changed, and unless marketing firms understand the basic fundamentals of the change many will be just changing deck chairs.

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: Ad Agency, ad agency branding, Advertising, Agency New Business, Agency Positioning, future of advertising, Marketing, Marketing Decline

Want More Revenue? Do More Consulting!

September 21, 2011 By Stuart Sanders

The phone calls into us always begin the same way. It’s an agency owner online who has a prospect for some agency services, and the prospect’s product or service is new, untried, money is limited, or time is short. You know the drill. The typical agency owner is planning to sell in a focus group or two to get started and wants confirmation that that’s the right thing to do.

Ugh. First off that sounds so simplistic, sort of like your doctor saying take two aspirin and call me in the morning. There’s a better approach.

Start Consulting by Starting Simple:

What’s needed is a simple consulting arrangement that maximizes value for the prospect, revenue for the agency owner and a more professional approach for the agency. The strategy is to move the prospect into a consulting arrangement, not a marketing answer.

You sell in a basic short-term consulting arrangement that will allow you to do a deep dive into the product or service that needs to be marketed. You are selling in your time to talk to users, investors, bankers, and other contacts that have insight on the product or service. Figure to sell in 5 days of consulting time, and now show how the 40 hours will be spent by your team, hour by hour. It all adds up to the fee you are proposing. For the client it’s more professional, simpler to understand and easy to see where the time goes.

The key is to make the list of projects you plan to undertake sound long and exhaustive and important to know. Now use your agency team to burn the hours doing a thorough situation analysis but don’t waste any time on preparing a report or passing money on to research houses, focus group facilities, etc at this stage. You keep the full fee as revenue.

At the end of the time, present a charted out SWOT program to the prospect showing how to solve the problem, meaning how to launch the product or service, what to call it, what follow-on research you need, and all the trimmings to do a good job for the client.

Your ideas at this stage are just rough. Don’t waste any creative time on concepts or tactics at this stage.

And don’t spend more than a minute from the end of the first 40 hours of your consulting study until you present your SWOT and you don’t want to mention you will be presenting a SWOT but call it something like a Flashplan or Impact Study or whatever you name it to get it started. SWOT is the format you are following to make it understandable and easy to follow. Nothing more is needed at this stage.

To sell it in focus the prospect on the need for the first phase, not the second phase, so you can be general on what the pay off will look like because you don’t know until you get into it.

This is a much better way to get started with a new client because it lets you learn about them and you learn about the market. And the start up money available comes to you, not to a research facility down the street.

Move into Consulting. Control Your Future!

It’s called consulting and any agency with more than four people ought to be doing a half million in consulting revenue every year. This simple consulting approach will get you started toward that goal.

Many marketing firms are feeling like they’ve missed the boat. Time to change the rules and get back in the game… it’s not too late. Consulting is the lost art that agencies need to rediscover in this new world we are now living in.

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: Ad Agency, ad agency branding, ad agency leadership, Advertising, Agency New Business, Agency Positioning, consulting, Creating a new future, future of advertising, Marketing, marketing consulting, Marketing Decline, Move into Consulting, Strategic high ground

Ad Agency Leadership: Planning for the Annual Retreat

September 20, 2011 By NewBusinessHawk

Time to break from routine, an opportunity to step out of day-to-day life and reflect on purpose and meaning, clarify direction, and fine tune processes.

‘Tis the season for reflection and planning about the agency and where you want to go in the new year. We typically help agency leadership approach the planning question three ways.

1. Focus On Growth:

The first way is New Business oriented since so much planning for agencies typically starts and stops with getting more new business. We run a standard new business planning session in one day that agencies love. The day is built around a basic planning track that cracks open the best growth options and gets a management team to decide together how best to solve new business. We call this the DayOne. It involves a half day of one-on-one meetings with the senior team so their concerns get heard, followed by a group session focused on new business growth. The objective is to build a strong new business plan for the new year by the end of the meeting which the team commits to execute.

2. Focus On Change:

The second approach is more of a general management meeting. New business is only one item on the agenda, there are other issues that are very important like structure, profitability, M&A, adding new talent, expanding PR, growing subsidiaries, etc. We work with the management team one-on-one to get their feedback to build an agenda, get ownership direction on where they want to take the meeting, and then structure a one or two-day meeting with sub-groups perhaps, focused on the most important management concerns. This is often an off-site meeting with a dinner the night before to set up the teams and the time schedule and then launch the program the next day. We have some exercises that agencies like and the session is very popular since agencies usually don’t focus on themselves as much as they need to, so putting this time on the most important client in the agency, the agency itself, is a welcome change. We refer to this as the Agency Retreat.

3. Focus On Operations:

The third way is moderating a one-day session that outlines changes in the industry in a way that allows you to pick and choose what applies to your unique needs and goals. You benefit from our experience of visiting and working with over 1000 agencies. After your management team develops a common understanding of what can be accomplished, we work with you to identify productivity issues and opportunities within your current operations. Specific client service issues are surfaced, product development lead-times are reviewed and agency definitions of service and quality are clarified. Finally, the consultant then works with your management team to evaluate how a range of operational solutions can address these strategic needs. A plan for action is created that allows you to build on the day’s experience. This is built around a standard planning session with an outside moderator very experienced in the agency world there for perspective, insight, help and a neutral POV.

When it comes to planning, we have been helping agencies do this successfully for over 25 years. Contact us at info@sandersconsulting.com and let’s start your planning the right way.

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: Ad Agency, ad agency branding, ad agency leadership, Ad Agency Offsite, Ad Agency Retreat, Advertising, Agency New Business, Agency Positioning, Agency Retreat, Annual Planning, leadership, Marketing, Marketing Decline, Planning for the New Year, standing out