Five Easy Steps You Can Take At the End of The Year to Drive Growth

The year is almost over.  If you work at a small to mid-sized ad agency or other small service industry business, chances are your company is scrambling to get client work in good shape before the end of the year. Since your job requires you to juggle multiple priorities, you may find yourself working late every night to make sure you can get everything done - and done well. But you also have to develop a plan for growing business for your agency in the New Year.

You totally agree that this is important, however you are feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment so you have put new business initiatives on the back burner. You haven't even begun to think about your holiday shopping or to plan the festivities for the twenty relatives who are coming to town in a few weeks. In fact, when Cathy in the cubicle across from your office happily chirps she's gotten everything done for the holidays as she skips out of the office at 5PM, and Brad smiles smugly and says his wife worries about all that stuff, you have to fight the urge to throw something at them.

To make things worse, you know that as you procrastinate, your biggest competitors are making friends and developing relationships with the prospective clients you have been salivating over. You've read all the press on them touting their latest client wins so you know they have found ways to service their current clients and proactively pursue new prospects at the same time. You also have a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach that they have a healthy pipeline of new leads that could have been yours. 

STOP WORRYING AND GO FOR IT!

There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. Making a new business action plan doesn’t have to be a long and laborious process as long as you already have a clear company UVP (Unique Value Proposition) also known as USP (Unique Selling Proposition), Brand Positioning Statement that all internal stakeholders have embraced, marketing materials and sales tools in place and you have designated new business hunter(s) who are ready and raring to go. (If your agency does not have any of these assets, forget about what I said about this being simple and easy. Your agency hasn't done the work necessary to help win new clients and you will face an uphill battle. It might be time to talk with your boss about what is realistic.) 

Assuming you have a designated hunter or hunters who are prepped and ready and your company has a clear brand positioning strategy and marketing tools in place, following the 5 steps listed below  can get the ball rolling fairly quickly, without killing yourself or your agency team.  

Step 1: Choose a specific new business growth goal for the New Year. Here are a few examples:

• Increased revenue from total new business by X percent
• X number of new clients from X industry
• X number of closed proposals
• X number of retainer clients
• Other? 

Step 2: Confirm the following:

• Average size of the businesses you want to target (revenue, number of employees - Fortune 1000, Local businesses etc.)
• Industry category  (choose one or two at most)
• Geographic target 

Step 3: Based on your new business growth goals identified in Step 1:

• Estimate how many proposals/estimates it will take to win enough new business to achieve your growth goals. (Use past data to help you figure this out. If you have not been keeping track of this give it your best guess. IE "On average we win 1 out of 4 proposals we pitch.")
• Estimate how many meetings with new qualified prospects your agency will need to schedule per week or month order to generate the number of proposals/estimates you will need to achieve your average win. Set that as a goal.
• Estimate how many initial and repeated calls/emails/ per prospect it will take a day to get your number of meetings goal. Set that as a goal.
• Develop a prospect list that has enough qualified contacts on it to reach the goals above.

Step 4: Review your prospect list to make sure that you have eliminated prospects that are not qualified and added those that are. Make sure the list has the decision-maker contact information in it (email and direct phone number).  If you do not have a qualified prospect list – you need to make one right away. If you have the budget for it, you can subscribe to list sources to do this quickly. If you don't have the budget for this, it will take longer to get the information you will need to avoid gate-keepers. You might want to get an intern to help here.

Step 5: DO IT! Using a combination of your agency’s positioning and your target industry/category hot buttons in prospect communications, your hunter can start making those calls and sending emails now to set up meetings. They should use a CRM program like Salesforce to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Is that all ????

Is this all there is to new business development? Certainly not. I wrote this article to provide an easy action plan for procrastinators with good intentions. Executing these tactics ASAP could help your business win new client projects as soon as in the first quarter. If your agency's average sales cycle is longer, making new connections now can work to begin new relationships and build rapport with these decision-makers to help generate future new business opportunities.

So, stop rationalizing that client work always comes first as a reason for not putting together a new business plan for the New Year. If you wait until things slow down and your company is desperate to win new business, you will be behind the game. You will have a much better chance of reaching your growth goals sooner if you actually take action to make them happen now.

Whatever your goals are, if you want to see a busy first quarter, don’t wait, go for it now. You have nothing to lose.

By Laureen Peck

Interested in learning about more new business development strategies for ad agencies?  Check out any of the following articles:

• FOUR GROWTH STRATEGIES SMART AD AGENCIES FOLLOW DESPITE A BAD ECONOMY
• BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT OR SALES; IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?
• HOW MANY HOOPS SHOULD YOUR AD AGENCY JUMP THROUGH TO WIN A PITCH?

Four Growth Strategies Smart Ad Agencies Follow Despite a Bad Economy

Most advertising executives from partners/owners to account managers are well aware that during a recession, one of the first places many businesses cut budgets is in marketing, advertising and programs focused on promoting long-term business growth. This is why advertising agencies and marketing services companies have been seeing continuing lay-offs and many have gone out of business over the past few years. Their clients have cut budgets or have simply left to find other agencies that they think might get better results for them on a smaller budget.

Probably, the most frustrating part of this for ad agency professionals is the common knowledge that companies and brands that continue to invest in marketing and future growth will keep and/or gain market share once the recession ends, and those that do not, often stagnate or fall behind.

Ironically, the same ad agency professionals who express annoyance at clients for being so wrong-headed about marketing investment are doing exactly the same thing to themselves. Agency professionals, particularly at smaller agencies will say that client work comes first to explain why their own marketing and business development programs are poor or non existent. The sad news is, that if they do not continue investment in their own marketing and business development outreach, “The shoemaker’s children have no shoes” could just as well turn into, “The shoemaker has no business.”

The good news is there are ad agencies with leaders who want to be around a long time and practice what they preach to their clients. They continue their marketing and business development programs in good times and bad. Here are four strategies growing agencies employ to help them stay on top, sustain growth and win new business despite a bad economy.

 
1 - They continue to pursue new business and new relationships.
Pursue is the key word here. Agencies that are proactive about new business and do not wait for referrals, RFPs or incoming calls to win new clients will be better positioned for continued growth than their competitors once the recession ends. Having a large, qualified pipeline of leads that may not have an immediate return on investment but will pay off in the long term is possible if the right person(s) are in place to build and nurture new relationships and to direct/develop agency promotion and marketing to attract and engage targeted prospects. I know from personal experience this can yield large rewards.

Case in point; My team and I doubled the size of one agency I worked for by acquiring clients in a particular industry category where we had little experience, but the industry itself was booming and the agency principals really wanted to get a piece of that pie. I knew however, that it was smart to make and keep connections with decision-makers in other industries as well. I kept these relationships alive through systematic and continuing personal communications and through agency communications like case studies and e-newsletters.

When the bubble burst for the"boom" industry I had been pursuing and many of the accounts we won started to disappear, I and my peers at the agency did not panic because I had built up relationships for us with marketing decision-makers in other categories. We soon won more accounts in other categories, while agencies that had focused only on the “boom” category and did not have someone working other leads, suffered.

2- They make sure their marketing communications will engage and attract the decision makers in the industries they are targeting.
This may seem like a no-brainer but there are tons of examples of ad agencies with really cool looking websites that seem to be designed to impress other agencies or creative personnel, rather than the CMOs at the companies they are trying to build credibility with.

A CMO’s tenure today on average is between 2-3 years primarily because they are under increasing pressure to produce measurable results for the company that employs them. A recent article from Ad Age, Why It’s So Hard for CMOs to Keep Their Jobs , sums up their dilemma beautifully.

CMOs today are unlikely to choose to work with agencies that do not appear to have experience in their category. Right or wrong, they are wary of working with an agency they perceive will have a long learning curve. So, if they go to an agency’s blog, LinkedIn profile or website and see nothing that pertains to their industry or industry’s business challenges, they are much less likely to answer that cold call, respond to a letter or return the email of the person at the agency who is trying to get that first capabilities meeting or introduction.

When working for one agency, I had conversations with numerous CMOs and Marketing Directors who told me that they had not responded to my calls at first because when they went to my agency’s website, they did not see anything there that pertained to their industry, an industry I was tasked with penetrating. Fortunately, in most cases, if I was lucky enough to get them to talk with me anyway, I was able to persuade them to meet.

I would then spend the next few days scrambling to develop case studies that would be relevant for my prospect. Or - I would work with my team to develop a top line marketing strategy or some ideas that would address a challenge they were having based on pain discovered. All of this took a good deal of time and effort. Reinventing the wheel for each new prospect often ended up with an eventual win, but the up front investment required to win the new account meant that account would not yield a strong return on investment for the agency as quickly as desired.

Ad agencies that do not have or are not willing to develop the marketing materials necessary to support new business development teams’ efforts are setting themselves up for failure. Business developers are usually fairly independent, self-motivated, persistent and smart. Some make excellent marketing strategists as well. Without the right marketing tools however, agency hunters may not have the edge they need to compete effectively against agencies that have made it a priority to give their new business team the support required.

3- Their case studies are substantive not fluffy.
Case studies with real results are a must-have for any agency that wants to be taken seriously by the decision-makers they target for new business. Assuming the agency’s leaders know that CMOs are under pressure to produce strong ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) they should also realize that having a case study in their target audience’s industry is not enough if the case study does not include tangible results. I cannot tell you how many case studies I have seen that end with something like, “The marketing collateral and brand advertising we produced made our client stand out in a competitive market.”

This leaves the CMO thinking, “Really? And how many new inquiries, web hits, etc did the campaign generate? How were the results tracked? How do you know that the campaign made your client stand out? Did they stand out in a good way or a bad way?”

I can hear some ad agency professionals saying, “But we signed a client confidentiality agreement. We cannot share anything like that.” Yes you can. If your client gives you permission to talk about or show work from their campaign, but you cannot give specific results, ask them if you can talk in percentages instead. If your client will not allow you to mention them at all, create a case study that describes the client, the challenge, the solution and the results without actually using the client’s name.

If your case studies do not include the kind of results that prove you did your job well, you would be better off not having them at all. Ad agencies that win new business understand the importance of ROMI to Marketing decision-makers and respect their audience.

4 - They are up to date on all of the new marketing trends, tactics and technologies.
Not much needs to be said about this. Full-service ad agencies that claim to deliver integrated marketing communications but have not developed capabilities or expertise beyond traditional advertising and/or have not developed partnerships with companies that do offer that expertise, are unlikely to achieve sustained growth. When the “next new big marketing thing” arrives, the agencies that have kept an eye on the future will continue to prosper.
 

So, will following these strategies guarantee an agency will thrive and grow during and after a recession?

Of course not. But the ad agencies that have a strong new business development team and/or leader as well as a marketing team that believes in the importance of developing and providing the tools and strategies that will support new business development, will certainly have increased the odds that they will grow and prosper for years to come. 

By Laureen Peck

Marketing Sustainability B2B; Accenture Survey Provides New Insights

By Laureen Peck

Marketers focused on promoting renewable energy, energy efficiency, demand response and other sustainability initiatives learned something new when the New Accenture Survey Results came out recently. Not only did the study find that sustainability initiatives are becoming an integrated part of the majority of business operations today, it indicated that old perceptions of what motivates business decision-makers to operate more sustainably may not apply.

Marketers have assumed for years that business audiences are motivated almost solely by logical, feature-based considerations. It is no different when it comes to marketing sustainable solutions, services, or products. Looking at most trade magazines or online ads on business websites today, it is obvious that marketers appear to believe that business decision-makers tasked with purchasing or researching this type of product are motivated almost exclusively by mandated regulations and/or budgetary concerns.

The majority of advertisements that promote sustainable solutions, whether they pertain to energy efficiency retrofitting for buildings, energy efficiency products, renewable energy services or some other sustainability-producing product or service, rely on “safe” messaging and images. Most of these types of ads have headlines that say something like, “Save X percent on your building’s energy bills!” and use the same tired imagery over and over again. There are literally hundreds of ads online and off that utilize the same stock photography or images such as pictures of solar panels, wind turbines or buildings with tree symbols on them. Because most of the ads look, read or sound the same, there isn’t much to engage business decision-makers enough to make them want to pick up the phone or go to the website for more information.

There is a real opportunity that is being missed by most marketers to steal market share by stealing business peoples’ hearts. Case in point; although Accenture’s survey results showed that reducing energy and material costs was a certainly a top driver for business decision-makers, the number one motivation for this audience was their genuine concern for the environment and society. These decision-makers worry about the future of their children. They want to live in a healthier environment. They want to be heroes at their companies and in their own eyes. In other words, they are human beings who care about more than dollars and cents alone.

What this means is that if B-to-B marketers want to differentiate their brands’ sustainability-producing offerings over their competitors’, they cannot afford to ignore the deeper motivations their potential customers have. Decision-makers may use facts to justify their desire to buy a particular solution or to sell it through to other stake holders in their companies, but it is the emotional connection between them and the brand that will make them feel compelled to purchase one brand’s solution over another. The bottom line is one should not assume that engineers or CFOs only care about the bottom line. They have hearts to go with those minds. Business to business advertising particularly when it is trying to persuade a person to make a significant purchase needs to create a strong connection between that person and the brand, even if the person is sitting behind a desk. END

Marketing Sustainability; Making a Paler Shade of Green, Chic

A couple weeks ago, I attended GEED (Great Energy Efficiency Day) on Capitol Hill where I rubbed elbows with politicians, policy wonks, government officials and industry leaders. I also listened to numerous speeches all promoting sustainability.

According to the 1987 United Nations General Assembly’s Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development; Our Common Future, “Sustainability is the capacity to endure. In ecology the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of well being, which in turn depends on the well being of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources.”
 
The GEED conference speakers all claimed to believe that moving the world away from polluting fossil fuels and towards renewable and cleaner energy sources was a worthy goal. The main message of the event however, seemed to be that complete conversion to clean energy by consumers and businesses would not happen quickly due to costs of developing these new technologies and bringing them to market as well as the current economy’s dependence upon fossil fuels to function. Their general consensus was that conversion to a new energy economy will happen, but it will happen gradually.

So, they argued, the next best thing to going totally green is to promote sustainability because this is something that can be done right now that can positively impact the economy and the environment. The belief is that taking this “Light Green” approach will jump start the process of cleaning up our environment as green energy technologies continue to be developed.

The message that saving energy and promoting sustainability is good for economic reasons has taken root and has begun to grow in our political system and corporate culture. ARRA, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has had a major influence on industry leaders when it comes to promoting sustainable products and practices primarily because of the Green Technologies appropriations in the final bill which total $61.3 billion. Even skeptics who do not believe humans have anything to do with climate change are being persuaded that sustainable development is good for the economy, good for cost savings and therefore good for business.

Although investments in renewable energy are included in ARRA’s Green Technologies funding, loans and investments into energy conservation and energy efficiency programs such as funding for development of an electric smart grid, funding to state and local governments to be invested in energy efficiency, funding for weatherization of modest-income homes, and funding for increased energy efficiency in federal buildings make up the largest portion.

This has led to recent agreements between industry and advocacy groups on new federal minimum efficiencies and initiatives like Home Star credits and Rebuild America. According to the National Academy of Sciences, buildings consume 1/3 of energy worldwide, are the single greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage from buildings is expected to grow to become 40- 50% of total operating expenses of commercial and residential buildings, so these are important, positive steps for the environment that will also lead to growth in industries that support energy efficiency retrofitting and upgrades.

So what are the barriers to increasing the demand for sustainable products and services? I asked GEED’s “Energy Efficiency Technologies, Today and Tomorrow” panel that included Robert Dixon, Senior Vice President & Global Head, Efficiency & Sustainability, Siemens Industry Inc., Steve Hochhauser, President, Residential Systems, Ingersoll Rand and Michael Lawrence, Vice President & General Manager, Johns Manville that very question. They all agreed that a lack of awareness from the public of how their sustainable products and services could benefit them on a personal level was the single greatest barrier to growing that portion of their businesses. After all, as Michael Lawrence stated, “Insulation is not a very sexy product.”

He may have a point, but he also may have become victim to his own assumption that building products aren’t sexy. In fact, it appears that other business decision-makers in his category and other industry sectors such as energy engineering and environmental services share this same self-perpetuated stereotype. Not many companies that sell siding, windows, insulation, HVAC, water filters, utilities products, etc., have even tried to evolve their brand image and messaging from sensible and utilitarian to sensible and chic – probably because they don’t realize they can. It is actually surprising to see how many businesses in these categories, even the mega corporations, share similar, unexciting branding that could almost be interchangeable.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS SUSTAINABILITY MARKETING NEEDS A MAKE OVER. Studies show that building owners, home owners and employees want to support energy efficiency because they know it will save them money and/or because they genuinely care about the environment. In addition, investors, governments, and businesses are beginning to demand efficiency because they need to meet mandates and/or comply with new building codes. The piece that is missing is that consumers and business decision-makers feel no excitement or emotional connection to particular products and brands that can help them meet their sustainability goals.

For example, corporate representatives attending GEED were heavily promoting the message that energy efficiency should be embraced by all industries because it can both increase revenue growth and is the socially responsible thing to do – but this just addresses the logical reasons for becoming more efficient.

My years of marketing experience has taught me that whether a company sells their products to consumers or businesses, people are people. We all respond to emotional triggers as well as logic. Good branding encompasses both logical and emotional components. This is why in addition to stepping up public relations and corporate communications, companies promoting energy efficiency would be smart to hire marketing partners and advertising agencies that know how to create a compelling brand message to make a paler shade of green chic.


By Laureen Peck

Is Social Media Marketing Necessary?

I confess that when Twitter first made the scene, I personally could not understand its importance as a marketing tool. Fortunately, my agency’s Web 2.0 marketing team did “get it”. This is because they had been implementing social media strategies for our clients before it was popular and saw the possibilities Twitter offered to marketers long before I did. Now I “get it” too.

According to Forrester Research, social media marketing is projected to grow at an annual rate of 34% in 2010, faster than any other form of online marketing. A recent eMarketer study found that the Fortune 500 companies that are not using social media dropped dramatically – from 43% to 9% last year.

However, many marketers, especially at smaller companies or larger, more conservative establishments, are still wrestling with how exactly to use social media to help them meet their marketing goals. To make things even more confusing, although 75% of Fortune 1000 companies have implemented an online social media program for marketing or CRM purposes, at least 50% of those campaigns will fail to produce the results expected, according to Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner.

As marketers start seeing weak or non-existent results, they will either give up on this tactic entirely because it “doesn't work” or they will start looking for partners to help them navigate through this channel if they haven't been completely turned off.

If marketers decide to engage a partner, but don’t really understand what social media marketing can and cannot do for them, they can easily fall prey to agencies who claim to be fully Web 2.0 literate, but actually have no idea what the latest trends are, how develop a social media strategy, or how to measure and track results from it. Given that social media and the Web 2.0 landscape is constantly changing, it is essential full-service advertising agencies are either staffed with experts who understand how to integrate social media strategies into clients’ marketing communications plans or who have partners that do. Smart marketing communications vendors will also have developed mechanisms for measuring results from these types of campaigns.

Social media marketing, done correctly, can provide important metrics, such as numbers of new users, unique visits, page views and time spent on the site as well as providing marketing research opportunities such as opinion polling. It can also be used for direct marketing. For example, LinkedIn recently launched “Faceted Search” a new feature that makes it easier for marketers to reach out and engage specific market segments. Twitter's microblogging service is developing a feature that will link individuals to various brand websites allowing them to contribute to the discussion. Social media features that work to support marketing efforts are constantly evolving.

Marketers searching for social media marketing partners need to choose wisely. I'm sorry to report that there are ad agency sharks who will take advantage of advertising and marketing managers who believe they need to invest in social media marketing because "everyone else is doing it", but who really don't understand its role as part of an integrated marketing communications strategy. Marketers who get taken in by these shark types are likely to get less than optimal results.

In addition, marketers sometimes make the mistake of expecting the agency partner to provide all of the content for their social media outlets, or they assign a low-level person at the company to do this. The best content will come from brand stakeholders at the company who know and understand the brand attributes and the principals of creating a strong level of engagement between potential customers and the brand.

The most effective way to employ a marketing communications partner is to have them create the social media marketing strategy based on marketing goals, business challenges and target audiences. Advertising agency partners are best utilized as trusted advisers who work closely with a company's internal social media manager to provide strategic direction, analyse results and help optimize the programs.

It should also be noted that social media marketing may not work for every brand and target audience. Social media strategies that work well to engage and motivate one group, may be totally ineffective for another. The best marketing approach is always going to be the one that will be most likely to generate the results desired by the marketer. Tactics should be developed based on the marketer's goals and take into consideration budget, target audience, geotarget, timing etc.

To remain relevant, marketing and advertising agencies need to make an effort to learn and understand when and how to use new media tools effectively and when not to pitch social media as part of an integrated marketing communications plan. They also need to be ready and willing to educate clients and prospective clients on best practices for the medium.