Ultimate Guide to Agency New Business
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Agency Marketing - Building Agency Brands

agency marketing Oct 23, 2019

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 marketing and agency new business teams should work hand-in-hand, working closely together to build the agency brand, build the agency reputation and build relationships with the companies you want to work with. Over the next few weeks I’m going to share a series of blog posts covering all these areas - sharing insight on what you should be doing to:

 

  1. Build your agency brand - looking at positioning, websites & case studies
  2. Build reputations - events, social media & thought leadership
  3. Build relationships - direct marketing, networking

Building Your Agency Brand

Agency Positioning

Your agency positioning needs to be clear and understood by all your team and clients, it needs to be ingrained in your agency culture. I wrote an earlier blog post all about agency positioning here and in that post, you can grab my free agency positioning template. Agency positioning is about understanding why you exist. What are you striving to achieve?

Is it to create award-winning work, is it to make a difference to the environment or is it to impact a client’s bottom line for example? There tend to be reasons why agencies exist beyond generating profits. Understand these reasons, speak to the founders, agency heads and other employees to hear their thoughts and opinions and write these down.

You also need to understand your audience, who is your best client, What are their characteristics – consider their size, their turnover, where they are in their life cycle, the team you work with, the challenges they face. What kind of companies do you like working with the most and where you can do the best work? Think about those companies and understand what their challenges and pain points are.

Then finally be clear on what you do. What is the one problem you can solve? Make it about the client, not about you.

When crafting your agency positioning, make sure it’s accurate and authentic. Mark Duval wrote a great post on this here. Avoid using agency jargon, keep the language simple. Bring it all together into a statement that says what you do, who you do it for, why you do it and how. Share it with the agency and get feedback and then live and breathe your positioning. Make sure your website, how you work, and all your communications reflect this positioning.

 

Agency Websites

Think about why a prospect will want to look at your agency website? Your agency website needs to communicate what makes you special, what’s distinctive about you and most importantly clearly communicate what you actually do!

DO’s

  • Make sure it communicates your agency positioning!
  • Easy, simple navigation
  • Clients want to find info quickly
  • What you do, who you have done it for.
  • Proof points
  • What are you best at
  • Make it easy for people to connect with you!

DON’Ts

  • Too gimmicky
  • Too much copy
  • Slow to load
  • Out of date blogs/news
  • Too much hype
  • Have client logos than cannot be clicked on 

Lucy Mann from the Small Sparks Theory Podcast did a great episode on Agency Websites which you can listen to here. 

Agency Case Studies

Clients want to see real-life examples of how you have solved business challenges, business challenges similar to theirs. Make sure your case study is taking them on a journey, tell the story from where the client started, not where it ended.

DO’s

  • Use testimonials - from CEOs and founders as well as marketers
  • Use plenty of Images
  • Draw attention to the results - hero with graphics
  • Make sure it has a structure - use headlines but be more inventive than the usual Challenge, Campaign, Results
  • Perhaps consider telling the story using film
  • Use infographics to draw out key points

DON’Ts

  • Be too generic
  • Lack context - make sure it relates back to the business issue
  • Too much copy - so many case studies are far too long. Marketers just won’t read it
  • No before & after - particularly for design or branding projects, clients like to see the evolution of the work.

Below are some examples of great case studies (in my opinion 😉)

Great example of using images, photography & stats 

Good example of a short, simple case study

Example of longer-form storytelling ones that work well online but would need cutting down in a slide format 

Examples of film case studies

Good example of using film to bring a case study to life

Next week I’ll be sharing thoughts on how you can use events, content and social media to build your agency reputation. To make sure you don’t miss out, subscribe to my weekly email as I share the blog posts

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