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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...

Who doesn’t love podcasts? I almost want to take up running so I can have more time to listen to podcasts! Usually I plug in my headphones on my train journey to London but I always find it hard to decide which one to listen to. Here are some of my favourite ones that the moment which I think Agency owners will find most useful.

1. JFDI - this podcast by Matt Miller from Millsustwo is raw, honest and entertaining. He talks about “just f**king doing something - stop procrastinating,...

There’s so much content out there, it got to a point where I had to start unsubscribing to all the newsletters I had signed up for but there are a few blogs and newsletters I do read on a weekly basis. A few where I know each week, I will get some valuable insight that I can share with agency owners. This is going to be a short blog post where I simply give you some links to the blogs I read on a regular basis. I hope you find them as useful as I do:

1. The Duval Partnership - this is a...

When marketing and brand directors are looking for information on an agency, most of the time they want to see real-life examples of how you have solved businesses challenges, business challenges similar to theirs. It’s best practice to have a bank of case studies for each client project that you can then pick and choose from when you have pitches or need to send information to a prospect.

As soon as a client project is finished you should have a process in place whereby assets are...

I was at The Agency Summit last Friday held at The Ned and run by Ian Harris of Agency Hackers. For anyone who runs an agency, this is definitely the must attend event. It’s the second year running I’ve been to the event and I’m always blown away by the mix of speakers and interesting content.

There was a lot of chat this year about the future of agencies. The industry has become more commoditised, companies are consolidating their agencies, it’s a tough marketplace to...

There’s no doubt about it that creative agencies love to win awards. If you have the budget and the resources, entering and winning awards should form part of your overall new business process,. It’s a great way to raise the profile of your agency, you gain free publicity. Awards add credibility to your work, many clients love to know that their work has won awards and they are also brilliant at boosting employee morale and spirits. Also, the whole process of entering awards is a...

GDPR is definitely causing unnecessary fear amongst agencies. Many of my clients, past clients and contacts have asked me recently what they should be doing around GDPR, whether they can still use the database we have put in place and how this will affect new business. We are all receiving daily emails from various companies, some I definitely don’t recall subscribing to, asking us to opt in to receive future emails. Which, according to Adam Rose, Head of Data Protection and GDPR at...

Given that it’s now quite rare for marketing and brand directors to meet agencies just to hear more about them, hosting events where you take attendees through some valuable insight and give them an opportunity to network with and learn from peers is a great way to build the profile of your agency. They add credibility to your agency and it’s a chance to get your agency brand and name in front of more prospects. At Cherry, the new business consultancy I co-founded 14 years ago, we...

Is an agency deck the best way to sell your agency culture, ideas and services? Is the old PowerPoint presentation still a “crutch” agencies need or would it be better to ditch the deck in favour of a more interactive, informal conversation?

Jeff Bezos famously banned PowerPoint at Amazon replacing it with a four-to-six page memo which they call a “narrative” a number of years ago and Jeff Weiner, CEO from LinkedIn put a stop to them too so why are agencies so slow to...