If you are either looking to start your own agency or restructure your existing firm, Paul Roetzer’s book, The Marketing Agency Blueprint, will be a big help.
Paul is a small agency owner. He is the founder and CEO of PR 20/20 established in 2004. He has built an incredible national and international awareness and appeal for his agency’s new business using social media and inbound marketing. PR 20/20 was also the industry’s first provider of standardized services and set pricing and grew revenue nearly 500 percent in just four years.
Paul’s success led to the writing of his book and speaking opportunities nationwide. As a fellow speaker, I had the privilege of meeting him in person at Hubspot’s Inbound 2012 Conference in Boston, a gathering of over 2,800 inbound marketers from around the globe.
The Marketing Agency Blueprint is more about how to lay the foundation than actually building the house.
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau
The most essential part of structuring a successful agency is establishing the right foundation which provides the support for the entire structure. A lot of your agency’s new business success rests on how well you build the base that supports the weight of the entire agency. Every part of your agency depends upon the foundation for support. Paul’s book provides a blueprint for setting the vision and foundational building blocks for your agency.
Positioning is Foundational to any new business program.
Your positioning is how you will sell the agency. It is also how you will identify your target audience and create a stronger point of differentiation from your competitors. It is how you create awareness, appeal and get positioned as an expert. Positioning provides focus for your continuing education what conferences and seminars to attend, what books, periodicals and other publications you should be reading. It even helps you to know who to hire.
You will find Paul’s book to be a helpful repositioning tool for any established agencies and a positioning tool for startups.
A Paradigm Shift
Paul discusses a paradigm shift to the industry that has taken place and three primary reasons agencies are having to evolve:
- Change velocity: The rate of change is now accelerating at an incredible pace due to advanced technology and innovation.
- Selective Consumption: Consumers now control when and where they will choose to interact with brands. Brands have lost control, but have a greater opportunity of gaining loyalty. Agencies need to to be structured to deliver the types of services that allow clients to get found and drive buying decisions.
- New Success Factors: In the past, agencies got by on meaningless metrics. Things like PR Value, ad equivalency, media impressions, etc. These were things that didn’t necessarily affect the bottom line. Now agencies have the ability, through the advances in technology, to better monitor the results of their efforts and connect to end goal of driving sales.
Paul further describes this new paradigm shift and its impact:
- “The industry will be redefined by marketing agencies that are more nimble, tech savvy, open, and collaborative. Digital services will be ingrained in the DNA of every agency, and blended with traditional methods to execute integrated campaigns.
- Agencies will create and nurture diverse recurring revenue streams through a mix of services, consulting, training, education, publishing, and software sales.
- They will use efficiency and productivity, not billable hours, as the essential drivers of profitability. Their value and success will be measured in outcomes, not outputs.
- Their strength and stability will depend on their willingness to be in a perpetual state of change, and ability to execute and adapt faster than their competitors. The depth, versatility, and drive of their talent will be the cornerstones of organizations that pursue a higher purpose.”
The book is built around 10 “foundational” rules for building a modern/hybrid marketing agency.
“The Marketing Agency Blueprint presents 10 rules for building tech-savvy, hybrid agencies that are more efficient, influential, and profitable than traditional firms, and, most importantly, are capable of delivering greater results for clients”
Here are Paul’s 10 lessons to help your agency accelerate it’s transformation for unparalleled opportunities to transform, disrupt and thrive:
- Inefficiency is the enemy of success.
- A real-time world demands real-time agencies.
- Talent cannot be replicated.
- The best plan is to prepare for perpetual change.
- Doing is the key to differentiation.
- Everything is sales.
- All clients are not created equal.
- Never hesitate to head in a direction that others seem to fear.
- An agency’s value is measured in outcomes, not outputs.
- It is purpose, not profits, which define an agency.
Paul has practiced what he preaches providing personal examples and tips from his own experience that will help grow your agency. I highly recommend his book to you.
For additional information and reviews of this book, click on the following link:
One of Paul’s favorite quotes, that helped to drive his philosophy, is from Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media:
“Create more value than you capture.”
Paul provides an added value to his book with supporting resources you will find at www.MarketingAgencyInsider.com.
You can also gain great insights by connecting with Paul directly on Twitter @paulroetzer
Paul will be speaking at Fuel Lines New Business Conference 2015, which will be held at the new Music City Center, Nashville, Tennessee, October 8-9. Click here for more conference details.
Additional articles that may be of interest:
- 20 Top Inbound Marketing Resources for the Paradigm Shift in Ad Agency New Business
- Pew Research, Ad Agencies and The Future of Mobile
- 25 Ways to Be Found for Ad Agency New Business
- Blair Enns: 12 Revolutionary Proclamations for Ad Agency New Business
- Ad Agencies: 6 Social Media Steps That Changed Client Perception
- Ad Agency Compensation: The biggest frustration of CMOs
How come every blog post for this website ends in the words “new business” or “ad agency new business”. Trust me, Google understands your site is about new business…tell Ashley Cox to write blog posts for humans.
Always great content on this site!!!
Cheers
In a recent meeting with SEO experts in Boston who evaluated my site, they agreed it was the consistency of adding agency new business in the post titles that had accelerated my rankings in Google Search. Another reason that I do it is to connect the content (which is primarily about new business) to my specific audience (which is agencies) on my social media outposts such as Twitter. It generates targeted traffic continually to my site.
As for Ashley – her Twitter account helps to get the content out. Her role has changed and she’s no longer able to devote the hours since graduating from college. We’re in the process of transitioning this account to another person.
Hopefully the “other person” is as pretty as Ashley. I’m sure that helps with click through rates.
Yes, the SEO company you spoke with is right…
Was it Hubspot, or some other random SEO company? They gave you good advice, but it’s a little spammy.
Again, the content on this site is very very good.
It’s a client that is predominately an SEO agency.
I’m not on an agencies radar until they have a need for new business. When they do they commend the single focus of my site. It helps them easily find me and keeps me consistently ranking above the competition.
It’s also one of the main reasons that I have built my consultancy from Alabaster, AL for work with agencies in over 8 different countries and speaking engagements in 43 cities this past year.
Michael — Thanks for the nod to Paul’s book and Marketing Agency Insider. We appreciate the support!
Paul’s book was kinda life changing. I would have paid $1,000 for that book. Just finished reading it a second time last week.
My pleasure Tracy. I’ve read it a few months ago but just now getting around to posting. It’s a helpful guide to any agency. I commend Paul. He did a great job writing it. Lots of value.
Thanks for sharing your insights Jason. I couldn’t agree more.
Michael, thank you for taking the time to read and review the Blueprint. I have tremendous respect for your work and thought leadership in the agency community, so it means a lot to me to see this post.
Also, @JasonDiller:disqus, thanks for the incredible comment. That belongs on an Amazon review;)
I was glad to write the review Paul. It was well written and is important read for advertising, digital, media and public relations agencies principals. Thanks for sharing it.
@PaulRoetzer:disqus I’ll get a nice review on there this weekend.
I’ve been using Hubspot for 2.5 years. I started as an in house marketer, working at mulch company…Maybe you’ve heard Marcus Sheridan tell my story.
Now I’m a the Marketing Director at a full service agency that used to be focused on outbound tactics. My third day at the agency (3 months ago), I bought four copies of the book and gave them to my bosses to get them up to speed…
For the next 2 weeks, your book blew my bosses’ minds. It has been life changing for this agency.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for the book. It seems like it was written for us specifically.
I love reading your book summaries, Michael. You always nail it. Your review of Blair Ennis’s book is spot on too. Great job capturing the main points of Paul’s book.
As you can tell from my previous gushing about Paul’s book and our avid support of it, we think Paul’s insights are spot on. My team talks to 100s of agencies every month. Whenever my rep talks to an agency that has read Paul’s book, my rep gets really excited… Paul has such an amazing way of distilling all of the complexity of running a modern marketing agency into something agencies “get” and can apply to their business. So, my reps have a lot less explaining to do. I wish that every agency principal would read this book.
@Jason Diller I’m a huge fan of Michael’s blog. He’s also built his business based on his blogging. While I dislike the term “new business” myself, it’s what the agency world recognizes. And they recognize Michael as the guy who has pioneered the use of blogs and social media for ad agency new business.
Peter Caputa I think this blog’ strategy is very good…I’ve just never seen the consistency in blog titles like I have here…
Cheers to Michael for great content and laser sharp targeting.
And yeah, I call it “sales generation”, etc……my boss calls it “new business”, and his experience was in advertising agencies in NYC.
We’ve been a huge fan of Paul’s book since reading it this last summer. We’ve been having great success in implementing the strategies and practices discussed. It’s great to see fellow hybrid agencies begin to see results from it!
Great review and summary of key points!
You are very kind Peter. Thanks again for having me to speak at Hubspot’s Inbound 2012. It was a great experience. It also gave me to opportunity to meet Paul in person. Also thank you for all you do for agencies. You are a great resource to them.
Thanks Matthew. It’s good to hear as others have found good success from implementing the strategies advocated by Paul and Hubspot.
Awesome I just bought it on amazon! I just recently stumbled on your blog. I love it! I am a small agency owner so your articles speak right to me.
Thanks for the feedback Keith. Very much appreciated.