Fueling Advertising Agency New Business Through Social Media

I want to set an example of practicing what I preach. My new business model is simple: I am an active participant in social media and use the tools that I recommend you use to generate new business for your agency. Hopefully you will be able to do the same for your clients. 

Social media “teaches” ad agencies to do new business the way they should have been doing it all along:

• Identifying a target audience
• Leading with the “benefits” to your target audience rather than agency capabilities
• Developing a differentiating appeal that resonates with your target audience
• Establishing relationships first. Ours is a relationship business. People want to work with people they know, trust and like

Social media is networking on steroids.

For you as an agency principal to “get” social media you have to be a participant. I know you probably already feel that you have enough on your plate and you will never be consistent. Just understand that in reality all you will need to do is two things. And they are the two things you should be doing irregardless:

• Online reading (a systematic, organized and pinpointed reading program to keep you ahead of the curve)
• Writing (Greatly improving your communications skills to clients. Learning the language that resonates with your prospective client audience and learn appeals to them)

The great advantage of social media for agency new business is that it allows you to accomplish a number of things at the same time that are of great benefit to you and your agency:

1. Professional enrichment. A systematic way to stay ahead of your clients and provide leadership. Clients want leadership not partnership. It is possible for you to know better than your clients how they should go to market.
2. Hone your communication skills. You don’t know what you know till you write it down.
3. Networking. Social media is networking on steroids. You can reach and engage so many more people on a daily basis through social than you ever could in person.
4. Organic search. SEO is a huge plus from the use of social media.
5. Feedback from your target audience. They are your ultimate judge and jury. They’ll let you know what is appealing and what isn’t. It’s your job to figure it out.
6. Relationship building. It is just natural for people to want to work with people that they know, trust and like. The transparency that is a big part of social media allows you to build more relationships without geographic limitations.
7. Repurpose your content. Your blog posts for instance have a long, long shelf life. You can reuse that content in email newsletters, Twitter, Facebook, press releases, article marketing, white papers, ebooks, slideshare, just to name a few. The time that goes into one post is magnified dozens of times over.
8. Drive traffic. I’ve found that as optimized as my blog is for search I’m able to drive targeted traffic to my blog site using tools email newsletters, Twitter and other social platforms.
9. Improve your outreach. If you can’t measure it you can’t improve it. Social media is more measurable than traditional media.
10. Consistency. No new business program will work unless it is consistent. Social media allows you to “maintain” a new business program even when your agency is at its busiest. The many benefits of social make it prime important to you and to your agency and also to your clients and thus easier to maintain.   

This all sounds like a lot of activity but again all an agency principal needs to do to make this happen is read and write.

Use Google reader to organize your online reading habits and write for your agency’s blog, anywhere from three to five posts per week.  Junior level staff or even interns can be easily trained to repurpose your content across a number of social media channels.

As important as your website was for your agency it is now more important to have an agency blog.

The blog is the gateway to your agency and your website has become your agency’s online brochure. A blog should be your agency’s central platform for all of you social media activity.

I thought you might like to see a break down of my analytics for the month of March, plus some from this past year, to better see how social media is working for me:

It’s been a “March Madness” for FUEL LINES. A number of records were set:

• 25,712 page views for the month
• 99,946 page views for past 12 months
• 2,787 page views, March 25, for busiest day ever
• 824 votes for blog of the month

Page Views By Month

• 15 – March 2008 (changed blog platforms from Blogger to WordPress)
• 123 – April
• 1,150 – May
• 1,483 – June
• 2,995 – July
• 3,817 – August
• 5,170 – September
• 7,829 – October
• 9,506 – November
• 8.478 – December
• 15,554 – January 2009
• 17,241 – February
• 25,712 – March

FUEL LINES Top 5 Posts for March:

1. 30 Ad Agency Blogs, Vote for Your Favorite for March
2. A Guide for Ad Agencies: The Cost and Servicing of New Media
3. Ad agency having explosive new business growth by leading with social media
4. Prediction: Ad Agencies that make social media central to their business model will be hiring
5. Four Ways Social Media is Changing Advertising Agencies New Business

Total page views over the past 13 months (March 2008 thru March 2009) = 99,406. I now have over 292 blog posts that I’ve been able to repurpose through other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, email newsletters and white papers.

I hope that I’ve been able to set a good example. It takes some work to stay out front of your clients but that is where you should be, in a leadership position.

A position of leadership is the best position to be in to gain the right kind of new business for your agency.

I welcome your questions. Please feel free to share your insights and suggestions  for ways that I can continue to improve and to be a better help in the future. 

Thanks for reading and thank you for your feedback.