Mark Schnurman will lead the “Winning New Business by Perfecting Your Pitch” workshop, sponsored by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), September 16 at the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center, Philadelphia, PA.
As the founding partner of Filament Inc., Mark has spent the last 10 years working with agencies throughout the world. As a pitch consultant, Mark works with agencies to better craft their message and differentiate themselves from the pack.
Filament wins 62 percent of the pitches that it is involved in, including some of the largest pitches that have been awarded in recent years.
Mark has worked with agencies like The Martin Agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, MediaVest, Abelson-Taylor, Northlich and Grey to name a few, helping them become more effective at pitching new business.
HIGHLIGHTS
Explore how to better differentiate your agency
Learn the 5 biggest mistakes agencies make when pitching new business
Better understand how it is difficult to win a pitch during Q&A but very easy to loose the pitch during Q&A
Learn how to trim the fat out of your presentation allowing your core messages more opportunity to resonate with the audience
Discover your agency’s bad habits and how to get rid of them
Learn how to better relate to your client/prospect
Learn how to deliver case studies that build enthusiasm for your agency
Better understand the prospect’s decision making process
Understand how to streamline the pitch process
Learn how to better run pitch prep meetings
Better understand the prospect’s typical selection criteria
Learn how to better establish your brand with the prospect before and after the pitch
Who should attend?
New business directors, C level staff, creative directors. The more you are involved in the new business process, the more you will get out of the workshop.
During an economic downturn, a strong advertising/marketing effort enables a firm to solidify its customer base, take business away from less aggressive competitors, and position itself for future growth during the recovery.
Coopers & Lybrand
When times are good, you should advertise; when times are bad, you must advertise.
Making A Recession Work For You, American Business Media
Advertising in an economic downturn should be regarded not as a drain on profits, but as a contributor to profits.
Harvard Business Review
Advertising through both boom and down times sustains the necessary brand recognition.
Making A Recession Work For You, American Business Media
Agencies need to practice what they preach. Now is a great time to promote your agency during this economic downturn.
Michael Gass, agency new business consultant, primarily to small and mid-size advertising agencies, utilizing both traditional and new media tools.
Marty Neumeir, President of Neutron, simplifies the art of branding like no other. His brand agency has developed many online promotional tools that has put Neutron at the forefront of brand agencies. Marthy has put together the most powerful presentation on branding I’ve seen yet. The presentation has already been viewed by over 339,049 people thus far on SlideShare. Not a bad way to demonstrate your agency’s expertise utilizing another new media tool.
SlideShare makes for a great tool for ad agency new business.
Michael Gass Consulting, has launched a survey of over 4,000 small to midsize advertising agencies regarding the current state and trend of their new business efforts. The results will provide an objective view from the trenches during this troubling economy.
How is the economy impacting your agency? Is new business easier or harder than last year? What are your top sources for new business? How is acquiring new business changing?
Send Michael an email and he’ll provide a free report at the conclusion of the survey. Just include “Survey Results” in the Subject Line of your email.
Michael Gass, agency new business consultant, primarily to small and mid-size advertising agencies, utilizing both traditional and new media tools.
83.2% of marketers in a February survey by Datran Media list email as their most important advertising tactic for 2007
Email marketing needs to be among the promotional tools for small and midsize advertising agencies new business programs. It has the potential to deliver the best ROI (time and money) of any of the tools in your new business program’s arsenal. Agency new business is going through a paradigm shift. Using online marketing tools, such as emails, has become essential securing new business opportunities.
It is typical for email marketing campaigns to top the 2% conversion rates typically expected from direct mail.
In fact, email delivers the highest return-on-investment among marketing mediums by an eye-popping margin: a whopping $57.25 for every dollar spent on it in 2005, according to the Direct Marketing Association’s “The Power of Direct Marketing”(October 2006).
Not only that, but email is delivering sales at an average cost per order of less than $7! Compare this to average cost per order of $71.89 for banner ads, $26.75 for paid search and $17.47 for affiliate programs, according to Shop.org’s “State of Retailing Online 2007″ (September 2007).
Some helpful email marketing stats and metrics:
Wednesday is the most popular day for opening emails, followed by Tuesday.
Text drives more email click-throughs than images
11 a.m. has been the highest time for email recipients to open their email messages.
304: Average number of business emails weekly
83.2% of marketers in a February survey by Datran Media list email as their most important advertising tactic for 2007
HTML has nearly universal adoption among consumers: A Jupiter Research consumer survey found just 3% receive only text email
67% of survey participants said they read at least three out of four promotional emails they receive from direct marketers
A great way to demonstrate your competence is email marketing is to demonstrate its success in your agency’s own promotional efforts. Practicing what you preach and using the tools you recommend for your clients.
SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. It is a great tool for ad agency new business.
Agencies can upload presentations to share their ideas, connect with others, and generate leads for their businesses.
You can find presentations on topics that interest, tag, download, or embed presentations into your own agency’s blog & website.
SlideShare is also the best way to get your slides out there on the web, so your ideas can be found and shared by a wide audience. Your target audience.
Do you want to get the word out about your agency? Do you want your slides to reach people who could not make it to your talk? It only takes a moment - start uploading now, and let your slides do the talking!
Some of the things you can do on SlideShare:
Embed slideshows into your own blog or website
Share slideshows publicly or privately. There are several ways to share privately
Synch audio to your slides
Market your own event on slideshare
Join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share your interests
Small agencies are especially vulnerable during a bad economy.
Bart Cleveland, AdAge’s Small Agency Diary provides some excellent advice for hard times. He shares that this recessionary period is the time for small agencies maximize their opportunities during lean times to gain ground in achieving their business goals:
Keep what you have while getting someone else’s. Advertisers aren’t just trimming budgets; they are re-evaluating their relationships to determine if they are getting the most for their money.
Great agencies shine brightest during dark times. When times are bad, there is better talent available to small agencies. Due to layoffs or the fear of them, good talent can be open to working for an up-and-coming agency.
Work hard even when there isn’t a lot of work going on. Staying busy is the key to getting out of the gate fast when the economy rebounds. Good employees expect to be challenged.
I’ll include a fourth, contributed by ad agency digital consultant Jason Baer, Convince & Convert:
Focus on marketing tactics where success can be measured and defined. Marketing directors are running scared (or are likely to be eventually), and in that scenario that want to minimize risk and waste. The inherent measurability and relatively low cost of digital tactics are more attractive to clients when the economy is less robust, and digital will be the one area of the business that will grow this year.
Agencies will have much more success acquiring new business if they diligently pursue their new business goals despite the economic conditions.
David Ogilvy practiced what he preached and instilled the belief that his agency’s job was to create advertising that sells. He demonstrated that the advertising that sells best is advertising that builds brands.
Building brands today requires a keen understanding of how new communications technology, new channels, and vibrant creativity combine. This is a world where the consumer is now in control, and consumer insight is paramount.
It’s time to create and connect your agency’s brand for new business.
A review of Social Media. A compilation of social media thoughts from the experts point of view. Over 122,000+ page views on SlideShare. A good informational resource for Ad Agencies regarding the impact of Web 2.0.
To paraphrase Little Orphan Annie, “Tomorrow is only a day away.”
Traditional advertising agencies face significant technical challenges. Consumers have turned away from media channels that built the agency industry and have moved toward emerging internet media. Ad agencies must build new interactive competencies quickly in order to survive.
I receive inquires almost daily from ad agencies who are trying to discern how social media marketing will impact their current new business business model.
The rise of Marketing 2.0 is significantly changing the way agencies develop new business. I’ve highlighted 4 ways social media is changing agency new business:
According to a recent CMO survey, 80% of decision makers say they found the vendor, not the other way around. Instead of finding your prospects, the “new” new business paradigm for Marketing 2.0 is to help your prospective clients find your agency.
According to Marketing Sherpa, 80-90% of business to business transactions begin with a search on the web. That means that SEO is a very important component to your agency new business program.
It wasn’t that long ago that it became understood, every business needed a Web site. Today it’s, every business needs a blog. This is especially true for ad agencies. We’re suppose to be leading not following our clients.
Social media is now mainstream, your agency’s credibility is suspect if it isn’t walking the walk, not just talking the talk.
I can’t imagine ever advising a client to deal with an advertising, PR, or interactive team that doesn’t get social media.
Combining Web 2.0 & ad agency new business, provides a powerful, inexpensive and highly effective combination for your agency’s self promotional efforts.
Thanks to my good friend, Scott Nelson, president of Nelson Creative.net who turned me on to this Boston agency, Modernista! They have the most radical online presence of any advertising agency I have ever seen. You’ll have to see it for yourself to believe it.
Modernista! was founded by Gary Koepke and Lance Jensen in January 2000, both from a marketing/advertising background, as a startup business. In October 2000, Modernista! was appointed the advertising agency responsible for the Hummer brand and remained associated with General Motors thereafter.
The company was appointed as the Cadillac brand agency in 2006. At that time, Modernista! had a portfolio that included a number of prestigious brands.
In March 2008, Modernista! gained some attention for a redesign of its own website, which now displayed the referring page (such as Google search results) all over again, but this time with a small navigation menu overlaid in the upper left corner. Other than basic information, the menu primarily directed visitors to information from other sites, including on Flickr and YouTube, so the effect could be described as going “siteless”.
This is certainly a radical format to traditional agencies. Not something you might want to try as a small to midsize agency. But, you do need to “demonstrate” that you also, get Web 2.0. It’s not enough to talk the talk your agency must walk the walk.
Findings from both The Reardon Smith Whittaker agency poll, conducted in May, a survey of CEOs, principals or senior managers and an April report from Forrester Research collectively, underscore just how difficult it is for agencies to generate new business against client caution and cutbacks.
“In response they [agencies] need to sharpen their approach, said Mark Sneider, managing director at Reardon Smith Whittaker in Cincinnati. It has got to be more intelligent. Tell them how you can help them, give them something useful to work with.”
MoFuse, or Mobile Fusion, is a web application that allows you to easily and instantly create a mobile version of your agency’s blog or website.
If your blog or website has an RSS feed, they will use that as the main source of content for your new mobile site. This will allow you to create your mobile site using MoFuse and forget about updating it. All you have to do is keep posting to your blog!
You can also create static content pages. This gives you the ability to have pages like About the Blog, Contact, etc.
Users can customize almost every aspect of their mobile site. They can also upload their own custom logo or header image!
MoFuse will create a static link to your mobile site for you to share, it’ll look something like this: http://myblog.mofuse.mobi. You can put a link to your mobile site on your blog for your mobile visitors to click to be redirected to your mobile version. You can also use your own domain name.
A Building Block for a Successful Agency New Business Program - Consistency
Definition: con·sis·tent
adj = able to maintain a particular standard or repeat a particular task with minimal variation
While there are different approaches to successful agency new business development programs, they are made up of some common building blocks. The first secret to a new business program is getting started. The second secret is developing a new business program that your agency can consistently execute and sustain.
Your new business activities must be sustainable at the times when your agency is at its busiest. Too often new business development is put on the back burner until existing business decreases and a downturn begins. That creates a roller coaster effect on your agency’s pipeline of prospects which impacts agency income and causes you to accept the wrong type of client, from the wrong pool of prospects which do not fit your agency’s strengths and core competencies.
To be consistent, any agency new business program must be realistically achievable within the culture and resources of the agency, have a manager who is held accountable for its execution and top management must be intimately involved in the process.
Look for ways to simplify your processes. It may also be wise to outsource some services when possible. If you can’t be consistent promoting your agency your stop and go efforts wont be effective.
When that key account departs, getting serious about new business is too late.
“In an age of me-too products and instant communication, keeping up with the competition isn’t a winning strategy. Today you have to out-position, out-maneuver, and out-design them. Discover radical differentiation—the number one strategy of high-performance brands. The new rule? When everybody zigs, zag.”
Martin Neumeier, President of the brand agency Neutron and author of the book Zag, the power of differentiation.
I’m often asked, “Where do you find the time to read and write all those blog posts?”
Then there’s my participation in other social media such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, Podcasting and YouTube to name a few.
For me, participating in social media is a professional survival tool. It keeps me current, connected and informed.
Barbara Bacci Mirque, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, ANA, recently observed that “more and more advertisers are leading their agencies into new media, not the other way around,” and that “clients are the ones who are personally and professionally experimenting with new media forms and directing their agencies to look into them.”
“When I started out in this business in the mid 80’s as an assistant product manager at The Frito-Lay Company, we expected our advertising agencies to be innovative and inform us about what was hip and cool – now it appears to be the other way around,” she wrote in the ANA blog.
I’ve taken the attitude that I’m back in graduate school and I’m putting in the extra time to immerse myself for my personal benefit as well as being able to provide help to my clients. I can say that it has been worth all of the time and effort. The return on my time investment has been tremendous. Lead generation from new media is beyond my expectations.
This is an exciting time to be in advertising. We are in the midst of a communication revolution. It is possible for small and midsize agencies to be ahead of the curve and make great gains for their business.
The best way to understand new media is to experience it first hand. So roll up your shirt sleeves and get involved.
“We needed to use (Guerrero) to reach all those customers who may not be usual symphony-goers,” said S.A. Habib, founder of Nashville-based Locomotion Creative, the agency that designed the commercials.
“We thought he could reach a more youthful market, maybe an ethnic market, maybe audiences that wouldn’t consider going otherwise.”
The campaign has been a huge success for their client and has generated lots of buzz for the agency which has been busy capitalizing on it. Sending an email to their prospective clients with a link to the story. A lot of agencies would let this kind of an opportunity pass without capitalizing on it because they do not do for themselves what they do for their clients.
With the sluggish economy and companies pulling back on their ad budgets, this is actually a great time to up-sell your current clients using new media and gain new business from prospective clients.
Locomotion is on an upswing during a recessionary period because they have bit the bullet and have also educated and exposed their staff to these new tools enabling them to provide fresh thinking to their client’s marketing and their agency’s self promotional efforts.
A number of agencies are reporting a significant change in lead generation and increase in new business opportunities using new media tools.
Web 2.0 is not only a hot button for clients but will generate new business for your agency.
View one of the Nashville Symphony’s videos created for the campaign
This is one of the four 15-second spots produced by Locomotion Creative for the Symphony.
The other three show Guerrero conducting fountains while kids play in them, playing drums with a band, and offering advice on a game of dominoes in a local taqueria. They’re fun and effective. One of the ways in which they’re the most effective is by showing Guerrero in his tuxedo. He’s doing things that subtly undermine the idea that the formal trappings of the concert hall are signifiers of importance and seriousness. Guerrero’s tuxedo is just the costume that he wears.
Update on the Nashville Symphony’s campaign:
It’s hard to say how effective the web marketing blitz has been–the ads posted to YouTube have, as of today, gotten an average of only 510 views each–but whether it’s attributable to the better TV spots, the web marketing, or both, something is working. On July 19, the first day of single ticket sales, they sold $130,000 in single-concert tickets; last year that number was $80,000.
Your headline determines 95% of the success of an article in traditional copywriting.
Article marketing success on the internet must take into consideration how the article is found by readers.
EzineArticles Training Series: An Introduction to Article Writing and Marketing provides some helpful information that you can use to assure that your target audience discovers your online articles and thus discovers your agency.
Myth:
Most people will read your articles because they came to a website and started browsing just like they do if they were at a local book store.
Fact:
Most people search the Internet using one of the major search engines. They will type in between 1 to 5 keywords that are related to the topic of the article or information they are looking to locate. The search engine will then deliver results that best match the human’s interest.
Goal:
Find your articles in the search engine results for the keywords and topics that are most relevant to the content of your article. Most search engines give heavier weight to the first 3-5 keywords and a lower priority to the rest.
The first 3-5 words of your Article Title determine the success of your article in terms of how much traffic your article will generate back to your website. Create keyword-rich article titles that match the most commonly searched keywords for your topic.
You can maximize your article marketing strategy by understanding keyword research and creating keyword-rich, intelligent article titles. You can create massive amounts of traffic to your articles and website thanks to the search engines who love smart, keyword-rich titles.
Here are some Keyword Research sites to help you create your keyword-rich Article Titles:
Think like your target audience, brainstorm and find the perfect target keywords your target audience is likely to use while searching the net.
With a majority of decision makers saying they found the vendor, The smart ad agencies will be the ones which make sure they can be found when and where the prospect is looking! Agencies need to promote themselves using 2.0 marketing strategies.
Today it’s almost impossible to have a discussion about branding and marketing without considering the latest wave of how people are using “digital”. That is also true of your agency’s brand and self marketing efforts. Digital is having a big impact on how agency’s promote themselves and how they are found online by their prospective client audiences.
Having a working knowledge of digital isn’t even an option for an agency new business director - it’s mandatory.
So before hiring someone responsible for your agency’s new business efforts, think about asking questions like these. How they answer will tell you what they really know.
Do you read blogs? Which ones?
Do you have a personal blog? What’s it about?
Do you participate in at least one social network? Which one?
Have you ever uploaded a video online? What program did you use to do it?
What’s your favorite search engine. Why?
Have you ever used an online classified service such as craigslist?
Besides making phone calls—how else do you use your mobile phone?
Have you ever registered a domain name?
Do you use social bookmarks or tagging?
Do you use a feed reader of some sort? Which one? Why?
Now think about these questions. What are you looking for in the answers? You are looking for empathy. You are looking for a sense of understanding that only comes with experiencing something for yourself. You are looking for honesty and authenticity. And you are looking for credibility. It’s not important to have done everything in this list—but for this new paradigm for agency new business, it’s critical to have done SOME of it.
When focus and differentiation are powered by a trend, the result is a charismatic brand that customers wouldn’t trade for love nor money. It’s the difference between paddling a surfboard and riding a wave. Neutron, LLC
Your ad agency’s new business program needs to pay attention to social media. Like it or not, Web 2.0 is now mainstream and needs to find its way into your agency’s self promotional mix. Agencies would be wise to pick technologies like blogs or communities first instead of focusing on what they want to accomplish. Smart marketers recognize that social media work best when used to listen to prospective clients talk about ideas, concerns, and desires — and not for selling.
You should also make sure to execute online tactics like search and email marketing to keep your agency’s lead generation pump primed while integrating social tactics into your new business program.
“The common failing among agencies seeking new business,” says agency search consultant Bob Lundin, “is their inability or unwillingness to name what they stand for and market themselves on distinguishable differences.”
In the midst of so much financial news that is doom and gloom, I thought you might enjoy a bit of lightheartedness created by the Hollywood, Florida agency, AdExcellence.
It is an innovative online platform that allows experts to share knowledge, expertise, wisdom and receive traffic back to their website/blog in return. That makes it a great, no cost, agency new business tool. It can help position you as an expert to your target audience and positions your agency so that it can be found.
Here is additional information about this unique service:
Source of quality, expert content in the form of short, informative and educational or entertaining articles.
A site that only accepts original articles where the author has an exclusive right to the content.
Perfect for email newsletter publishers looking for content they ca
Michael Gass, agency new business consultant, primarily to small and mid-size advertising agencies, utilizing both traditional and new media tools.
Posted by Michael Gass
, the power of differentiation. 
