RESOURCES

I've been reading a lot lately. New business and marketing for agencies needs to always evolve, and no more so than right now. Here are some of the most valuable books I'm referencing a lot at the moment. 

1. The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, and Stand Out From the Crowd - Allan Dib

Allan Dib’s 1-Page Marketing Plan sets out a very simple successful marketing plan. He breaks down the process into three stages:

• prospect,
• lead, and
• customer.

...

My business partner Katie and I were recently invited onto The Fuel Podcast hosted by Keith Smith to discuss whether or not creative agencies should be pausing their new business activity in a crisis and what the new normal of sales looks like.

You can have a listen here.

The upshot is, that new business has always been a long-term process, it's not something that happens overnight so pausing would have a real detrimental effect on your future pipeline. However, any outbound...

Marketing and brand directors get hundreds of emails every day – many which end up in the trash. Here are some tips to help make sure yours get read.

Keep it short
Longer is definitely not better. Everyone is busy and people get too many emails, your audience will need to be able to quickly scan read your email. If it looks too long or doesn’t get to the point straight away then it will get deleted. Think about the first few lines of your email – this is usually what people...

Even as offices are beginning to open up and people are returning slowly back to their desks, we’re hearing that virtual pitches may be here to stay. Especially for those bigger global pitches - it’s just so much easier (& cheaper) to gather virtually rather than fly in from different countries to pitch. 

There are challenges though in pitching to people virtually, especially if you’ve never physically met. Building that essential human connection is the hardest...

When it comes to agency new business, many agency owners are hesitant to make the follow up phone calls, afraid of the possible rejection, unsure how to approach calls and are putting this part off.

Unfortunately with new business, making phone calls is THE most important part of the process, even though these days we mostly reach voicemails. We still need to follow up on the phone, you will still occasionally get hold of people and when you do, you can have some great conversations,...

We all recogonise that COVID-19 represents a humanitarian challenge that is unprecedented in recent times. In the UK we are 6 weeks in lockdown, although it feels like a lifetime but none of us have ever worked through anything quite like this. What we do know is that new business is always a long-term process and so agencies need to work out what seeds they can plant now that will have impact in the future? In this blog post, we are going to cover 6 key areas relating to agency new...

If anything good is to come out of this very strange period, it’s that we are seeing some incredible initiatives emerge where people in our creative industry are offering support and help to others in need. Brands, organisations, and SMEs still need creative or strategic input, they still need work to be done, they still need to run campaigns but most, like our industry are struggling with cash right now. I thought I’d write a round-up blog post highlighting some of the incredible...

According to a recent industry survey on agency new business run by Up to the Light, 78% of clients interviewed stated that they would rather discover an agency than be sold to. Given that this statistic is so high, it’s never been more important as agency marketers, leaders and new business people to really focus on building agency brand and reputation. You need to have a constant, ongoing programme of activity to get yourself known - to help make your agency famous!

Agency...

The biggest challenge for agencies and marketers in 2019 is the uncertainty and unpredictability Brexit presents. PR (& marketing) is often the first budget to be cut when companies are not performing well. Bellweather reported recently that marketing budgets are stagnant after 6 years of growth. The unpredictability of Brexit will mean that it’s even harder to rely on new business pipelines - agencies just won’t know when projects are likely to get signed off and many...

There’s been a big shift in agency new business since GDPR. And if you don’t keep up and make changes to your approach to agency marketing and new business you are going to struggle to build your pipeline.

I wasn’t sure GDPR would make a big difference to agency marketing and new business but I was wrong! I’m seeing prospects being much quicker to unsubscribe from emails. Even before GDPR, trying to get your emails into people’s inboxes and read was tricky, let...