How Are You Spending Your Time for Ad Agency New Business?

time management for ad agency new business

Time is often your greatest enemy when it comes to consistently acquiring new business opportunities so knowing where to focus your time is critical for the best results. 

I talk to people on a daily basis who don’t have enough time. Just this week, I was talking with two agency principals and a new business director that all basically said; “I’m out of time”.  Each said they had no more time to give their schedules were overloaded. They were stressed and mentally and physically exhausted. To top it off, for most, all of this busyness isn’t effectively creating new business opportunities for the agency.

Does this sound familiar? Learning additional time management skills isn’t the answer, if the activities where most of your time is spent is no longer effective.

The cure is in understanding:

  • How new business has changed
  • How social media makes new business easier
  • How to use social media to be easily discovered
  • How to re-prioritize and refocus your daily activities

A paradigm shift for new business has taken place 

A paradigm shift is simply a change from one way of thinking to another. It’s driven by agents of change.

Social media is an agent of change which has created a significant paradigm shift in how new business is acquired. There is a permanent shift from chasing after business to earning the attention of prospects and making yourself easy to be found. This requires that you grasp the importance of social media as a new way of thinking for new business. You’ll never re-allocate the time and resources to it until you are convinced of how it has changed business development. You must also realize that it is a more efficient use of your time than the “tried but now faltering” way you’ve done it in the past.

Social media makes new business easier

Social media is a savior not a nemesis, an asset not a liability, a time saver not a time killer for ad agency new business.

Business development is a tough business which requires a considerable amount of time and energy for success. It can grind you down, use you up and burn you out.

Here are some of the benefits for using social media that will make new business easier:

  • Provides a better focus for new business
  • 24/7 top-of-mind awareness without interruption tactics, such as cold calling
  • Allows an agency to be more narrowly niched without the risk
  • Pre-qualifies prospects
  • Networking on steroids and increase in referrals
  • Winning new business without having to pitch
  • Eliminates the dating process with prospects
  • Greatly enhances offline networking at seminars, conferences, trade shows and other events
  • Consistent new business pipeline that is sustainable when the agency is at its busiest
  • More qualified new business opportunities with less cost
  • A greater market area, with the potential for national and international new business opportunities
  • A positioning of expertise that allows charging higher premiums and working with fewer clients that are a better match

Social media allows you to be easily discovered

We are experiencing a paradigm shift in ad agency new business programs. The old way was the agency new business hunter seeking and intercepting prospective clients. Today, it is all about positioning your agency to be found by your prospective client community.

Instead of being the hunter, you learn to become the prey.

Almost five years ago I had an epiphany for new business. It came from a CMO Study, released in early 2008, where 85% of decision makers said they found their vendors not the other way around. I realized there was a paradigm shift taking place for new business. It became more important to be found by your prospective client audience than chasing new business through interruption type tactics such as cold calling.

Here are some ways to use social media to be found:

Re-prioritize and refocus your daily activities for new business

Be an active participant in social media. It should be part of your daily routine. Remember that it is networking on steroids. It it not a time killer it is a tremendous time enhancement for new business. You will only understand social media’s potential value by actually participating in it.  When you come to know its potential first hand you are more likely to commit time to it.

Here are some additional resources to help:

 

photo credit: BramstonePhotography via photopin cc

Filed Under: New Business Tips, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,
About Michael Gass

Michael is an international new business consultant to advertising, digital, media and PR agencies. Since 2007, he has led in the use of social media and content marketing strategies to make agency new business EASIER.