Owners of small to midsize advertising, digital, media agency and PR agency’s need to WRITE
Owners of small to midsize advertising, digital, media agency and PR agency’s need to WRITE!
This isn’t a new discovery for me. Since starting my new business consultancy, I’ve written my way into a thriving business. Creating helpful content has provided me with a consistent flow of inbound leads. In over eleven years, I’ve never had to make a single cold-call for new business.
What are prospects looking for? They are looking for expertise.
“Fortune 500 companies have an average of 17 agency relationships.” – Association of National Advertisers (ANA)
It’s incomprehensible for prospects to think that one agency can provide all of the resources they need to reach their marketing objectives.
This paradigm shift isn’t a detriment. It’s a great advantage to the smaller agencies. It may seem counter-intuitive, but you can win bigger accounts and well beyond your local market if you will become a specialist.
There isn’t a more effective way to build your agency’s brand than by becoming a thought leader to a specific target audience. This is the way to differentiate your agency.
Agencies understand the importance of building a brand and creating a differentiated market position, but they seldom do it for themselves.
Most agencies are target-less. They have no definitive audience.
Over the past three years, it seems like everyone has jumped on the content marketing bandwagon. Online content has doubled, if not tripled, over this period of time.
Almost 90% of companies see the importance of content marketing and have implemented it in some way, allocating about 25% of their marketing budgets to their content efforts. Click To Tweet
But, companies,including marketintg agencies, have often fallen into the trap of creating content just for the sake of creating content. We now have a gluttoney of generic content that isn’t helping to reach the objectives for obtaining new business. The content they are creating is generic. It has very little appeal and receives virtually no traffic because it gets lost in a sea of similar content.
Content marketing is the fuel for an inbound marketing strategy for new business, but only IF done the right way.
Industry expertise is more than credentials, capabilities and case studies. The commonality among experts is that experts write. This makes content marketing a tremendous tool in establishing a positioning of expertise quickly. You’re not “selling” your expertise, you’re demonstrating it. Your content becomes the fuel that builds relationships and trust.
“I like the process of leading with benefits instead of credentials and capabilities because it helps us to start thinking more like the prospect instead of like the agency. We’re so accustomed to our selling ourselves. We need to step back and ask ourselves, what does engagement look like from the perspective of the prospect? What’s their benefit or takeaway going to be?”
Since 2007, I’ve worked with over 360 agency owners to create content for new business. The writing process helped them to better define their audience, create a strong point of differentiation and gain a positioning of expertise quickly.
I’ve known of Michael and his work in helping creative firms improve lead generation through social media for a few years now (I finally met him earlier this year) but recently I started to get reports from agency principals who had worked with him. I was surprised to learn that the impact Michael was having on their businesses was not in their use of Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn but in transforming the principals into writers who write meaningful content. – Blair Enns, author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto
Here are some examples of agency owners who have created content for a specific niche:
- Jeff Fromm – Millennial Marketing
- Eric Kiker – The Digesitble Brand
- David Schuemann – Drink with Your Eyes: Increasing sales through strategic branding for wine, spirits and beer
- Ernie Perich – 0 to 60 Branding: Marketing and Advertising Insights for Automotive Suppliers
- Kathy Selker –The Fem Factor: Marketing Hospitals to Women
- Brad Ball, Brian Morris – The Silver Rush: Marketing to the California Consumer
- Frank Gussoni – Frank’s Take: Boosting Mid-Market Media Buys Through Uncommon Sense
- Chris Ramey – Upward Home: Marketing for High End Home Brands
- Marc Benjamin – Omni Channel Outcomes: Audience Reach and Activation Insights for Digital Pharma
- Mike Ciavolino – Healthcare Recruitment RX: Prescriptions for Recruitment Marketing Success
- Diane Martin, Jeff Walter – Marketing to Farmers: Insights and Expertise
- Tom Matte – Madness, Math and Marketing: Out of Your Mind Thinking for Mental Health Marketing
- Kristi Bridges- Health Craze: Marketing Healthy Food to Families
- Elton Mayfield, Renae Gonner- Navigating Manufacturer Brands Through the Building Supply Channels
- Bob Williams – Building Brands Through Celebrities Music and Sports
- Jose Vasqueze – Build.Brand.Blast: Propelling Startup Tech Growth
Content marketing is the present and future for agency new business. It’s efficient, persuasive and best of all, it works.
Email me at michael@michaelgass.com if you’d like a copy of my guide, Seven Steps for Fueling New Business.
photo credit: verchmarco Nahaufnahme von Händen auf Laptop Tastatur- digitaler Nomade arbeitet online via photopin (license)
