All the names listed can be purchased by subscription from our sister website Brands Seeking Agencies.com
Remember, many of these businesses visit our site because they are looking for information about new business and about creative marketing agencies. They may be in the market for a new agency – try getting in touch.
Agencies
- Mindspring, product development and training tools, New Zealand
- Publicis, advertising agency, UK
- Teehan & Lax, customer experiences in the digital channel, Canada
- A + A, communications agency for events, PR and training, Goteborg, Sweden
- EuroRSCG, above the line advertising, London UK
- Codestorm, direct mail and e commerce fulfilment services, Hampshire, UK
- MediaEdge:CIA, consumer engagement & brand insight, Switzerland
- Silver Cup Studios, full service film and TV production studios, New York, NY, USA
- la comunidad – a global, independent advertising agency, US and Argentina
Brands
- zedIT Solutions, eHealth and government IT consultancy, St John, Canada
- Fujitsu Siemens, computer manufacture, Augsberg, Germany
- EDS, electronic data processing systems, Portugal
- eConsultancy, training organisation for online business, London UK
- Columbia College, University education services, New York, NY, USA
- Credit Suisse First Boston, Merchant banking services, London UK
- Placement UK, undergraduate placements and internship recruitment services, Warwick, UK
- CPP, credit card protection services, York, UK
- Harper Collins, book publishing services, London, UK
- Camelot Group, UK national lottery operator, Watford, UK
- Rogers Communications, media and telecoms servicees, Toronto, Canada
- Southgate, shopping centre, Bath, UK
- Alonex, reducing healthcare costs, USA
Brands seeking agencies
- Car trading and exchange website searching for ‘creative agency’, Germany
- Technology platform for flash websites searching for “creative agency”, Tel Aviv and USA
- Global Hotel Group wants “best questions to ask creative agency at a pitch”, GA, USA
- Social monitoring chat app, searching for early adopters marketing agency, Slovakia
- Handicrafts website wants “British brand PR agency, Devon, UK
- Turnkey IT solutions provider needs creative agency, Pakistan
- Menswear brand, looking for advice on “perception in advertising”, Switzerland
If you’d like to purchase just one or two of these brand names listed above, get in touch. $3 each. No need to subscribe!
Creativity in business is a good thing.
The idea is brought home to us every day: creativity will benefit our careers and personal goals. We all have to think outside that box. Those of us who are not ˜creative by trade, whether visually or in the written word, will all see and recognise this, wherever we personally think we may be on the creative spectrum.
So, why is it that within the creative agency world, there is little similar reflection about deploying business techniques and processes?
Of course, agencies grow from small seeds and acorns into flourishing shrubs or trees, not by sheer creativity alone. We all know that tending to our own internal business needs is important “ that stimulating and measuring effectiveness within any organisation, especially within the service industry, requires this.
But why is it that, in 2012, so many smaller concerns, which predominate in the creative industry landscape, which want and need to grow, are not employing the proper business sales techniques in order to do so?
Note, no use of the term ˜business development’ a sanitised phrase for the agency world. In fact, this I believe is the root cause of the problem (as well as a serious lack of sales skills).
For if you truly believe that your agency will standout purely on the face of your work alone, you are mistaken. And ˜business development and ˜new business? They wont get you there without you fundamentally embracing what ˜sales means first.
Lets face it, sales,is still a dirty word
To admit that, in life, we are all selling something to someone else is hard. But we do sell, each of us, in every communication we make. Whether the stakes be conveying a particular point in a meeting to gain a desired response or negotiating your next trip away with your loved ones, we are each selling.
Selling is about need and fulfilment.
Selling and buying are fundamental to gaining food, a roof over our heads and warmth in the home.
The stereotype of a sales person is a used car salesman, or a double glazing cold caller. The negative associations of these images still exist within the agency environment. Often large agencies will employ a ˜business development and marketing team but wont understand how to measure effectiveness or set realistic targets in the first place. All too often this is because the process is little understood and is simplified into sending out mass mailshots and slamming out phone calls, which is a fundamental mistake.
The whole dirty sales process is misunderstood, seen as necessity, somewhat sordid, beneath the agencys shiny creative output.
The effects of denying selling for an agency
Sadly, what this does is remove the knowledge-gathering, in the form of empowering the whole business with sales techniques, and just engenders an ˜us and them feeling within an agency: ˜me creative, me accounts person, you sales monkey.
Until the murky mystery of ˜how to sell is unravelled and embraced within a business, that business is not going to effectively sell itself. In fact, most creative concerns can benefit from as many client-facing roles being fully versed in sales techniques as possible.
Key truths about selling
Here are some skills to acquire and engender throughout the business:
- Selling is about building trust. So it is not a one-off push for a meeting, it is about relationship building. To sell, you pull, you dont push. You build up a dialogue to get into the privileged position of listening, then diagnosing the problem and then suggesting a solution.
- Research, planning and preparation are key to developing a true sales pipeline because whilst you are selling services not widgets, understanding your marketplace rather than selling your own talents will provide more new quick wins.
- Selling is intrinsically connected to marketing and the two teams should be as versed in PR and creating marketing tools as they are using those tools across all new and traditional platforms.
So, what does this all mean for your agency?
Most important of all:
Showing off your work is not enough.
Whether a stunning show-reel, something funky on Facebook or worthy on LinkedIn or beautiful in print, or with gravitas in a brochure¦ it is not enough.
You need to join it up.
Its the SO WHAT? factor. It ultimately comes down to effectively understanding that your offer is brimming with ˜features but your clients will buy benefits.
To discover the benefits your clients truly want, you need to apply the above methodology “ research, listening and planning, in order to sell. With your head held high, you will have uncovered the benefits that your clients truly need, indeed desire.
To learn more about making the above a reality within your business, contact The Hand, we offer bespoke business development services and training workshops for sales and account management teams.
This is a Guest Post from The Hand – a tailor made business development and marketing service.
Related articles
- Improper sales techniques (practicebetterbusiness.wordpress.com)
- Top B2B Franchise Shares Best Techniques for Turning Cold Calling into Warm Calling (prweb.com)
How big does your company need to be before you use marketing professionals?
For brands who are growing and becoming profitable there comes a time when you choose to professionalise your marketing. Many businesses decide at this point that they have two choices: to hire a staffer or to buy in expertise from an agency.
Why you need better marketing
The needs are clear – you want more traction with your marketing, you suspect that there are better ways of doing promotion and marketing to get inbound leads and you can afford a budget just for marketing. These are good signs.
You have identified clearly that your brand has a need and the possible shortcomings of your current set-up.
Hire versus buy: the dilemma
There are advantages and disadvantages – the internal member of staff will need to have well-rounded skills in a range of marketing disciplines (web, advertising, PR, copywriting, print design) and therefore a senior hire with this range of skills is more expensive than a junior.
Using an agency also requires decisions about their skills and area of expertise compared with the type of marketing and communications activity your brand has done in the past or plans to do in the future.
Costs are usually the determining factor
It may be less costly to hire external advisers compared to the cost of a senior member of staff – compare the full cost of hiring and paying (including office costs) a new senior marketer with the price an agency would charge you.
Have a couple of ‘chemistry’ or getting-to-know-you meetings with local marketing agencies and ask their advice. Also ask to speak to a couple of their recent clients to see if they also made the same transition.
A third option worth reviewing is using a freelancer. You don’t have the full hire costs of a full time person but can often get very experienced people at lower fee rates. Check out the freelance hire websites like eLance.com and Freelance.com, Freelancer.com and guru.com. I’ve successfully hired people for my agency and for clients using eLance.
Creative Agency Secrets has two current clients who use us for mentoring work. They hired a junior marketer and we speak weekly to review their work, priorities and give guidance. Could this work for you? Give us a call – we always offer a free 20 minute first call.
In the meanwhile here are a few other articles that may help you figure out what to do
- Advertising – do it yourself or hire
- Hire a PR firm or do it yourself?
- Do it yourself internet marketing, or hire
- Hubspot offers inbound marketing tutorials for people using its website / content marketing system.
- Read Creative Agency Secrets’ assessment of Hubspot and how to do it yourself
- SEO do it yourself or hire a professional
- Small Business marketing – DIY or hire a pro?
- Web design – do it yourself or hire someone
- DIY or hire a market research company?
Image via Wikipedia
Getting awesome marketing campaigns for your brand is your aim. Getting the right agency and the right brief is key.
In our experience, time and again, we find that a poorly executed campaign can be traced back to sloppy agency selection and poor briefing. Any time invested up front at the beginning of the campaign will be repaid many times over in a successful outcome.
So we’ve done some research for you and here are our top 5 steps for selecting an agency
- Write a short list – yes we mean a short list. That means fewer than ten names on it – preferably five. When compiling your list have about three criteria that are critical and each agency must have. These could relate to the type of work (SEO, content marketing, direct mail); the location of the agency (geography) or the industry sector in which they are experienced (B2B, food and drink). Some people also put emphasis on not having conflicts of interest.
- Reduce your short list to a VERY short list. This is the group you will interview: Now prepare for the interviewing stage
- You may want to set out an RFP if that is the way your industry works or your prcurement department insists on competitive tendering. Otherwise, set out your campaign plan and what you want your new agency to do with your brand. Get internal sign-off for the briefing document. Be sure you’ve thought of everything up front.
- Call each agency on your list. Introduce yourself and your company, and tell them you’d like to include them in your agency selection process. Three reasons to do this 1. it allows any agency to opt out of the process right away. 2. It enables you to speak directly to an appropriate individual at the agency and begin establishing a rapport. 3. It assures that you will be sending your agency selection document to the right person.
Part two of this post will publish tomorrow.
With thanks to Webbiquity for giving us the idea for this post.
If you are an agency looking for more leads take a look at Brands Seeking Agencies – the weekly marketing leads service for creative marketing agencies.
Image by imjustcreative via Flickr
Sometimes it’s nice to be on the receiving end of some in-bound agency marketing. There’s a nice branding agency we have been following based in Birmingham, UK. They sent us a little slide deck.
It had some background slides about the company and some case studies of client work. All very nicely presented.
BUT
There was no apparent purpose to the communication. The deck arrived with a nice covering letter but no call to action, no reason for the email except to say they had some ‘exciting news’.
So we launched in to a critique and sent them this email
That’s a very interesting slide show you’ve presented. Thanks for sharing it.
However, you really do sell yourself short in an email shot like this – what would a prospective client like myself think after reading it…… “Nice slideshow. What was the ‘exciting news’ anyway? What now? Back to my work.”
Using some direct response copywriting in the covering letter/email can you provoke me to deliver a response? For example – get an answer to questions like ‘what did Rebecca think?’ and ‘could they do this for my brand?’ Both questions that will help to narrow down your list of ‘suspects’ and take them one step closer to becoming prospects and then clients.
What about building on the campaign like this?
- Having a special website landing page just for people who got the email?
- Use the landing page to measure click throughs and get a poll / survey / comments / discussion going?
- Sharing the slides on slideshare / docstock so others can embed them and let them go viral
- Putting them up on your website for others to ‘like’ on Facebook / Twitter
- Asking for a meeting in the email text so you can show your credentials in more detail
- Asking questions about my brand so I can see if I ‘suffer’ from the same problems you solved for your clients
Anything but just sharing your slide deck…
So that’s just my two pennyworth suggestions for you – free of charge.
You can take them and put them into practice yourself.This is an unsolicited approach offering you some free advice on how to improve your marketing. I just happen to be on your mailing list and so hope I’m trusted.
And they replied
Thanks so much for your thoughts.
This soft launch does indeed have a plan underpinning it, with more activities to come.
That said your passionate response is appreciated. We will keep you in mind for future activities!
What would you do in response to an unsolicited email?
Image via Wikipedia
Imagine you have launched your business and the brand is up and running. You are receiving enquiries but not enough are converting to paying customers.
Even though you may be the genius behind the business idea, you have no idea how to successfully pitch your business to potential clients and convert them.
Why not hire a professional to pitch for you?
Successful Marketing agencies know how to pitch a business/ brand. Full stop. That’s what makes them successful.
So why not pitch your business/ brand to an agency in a relaxed environment where your pitch won’t matter and let them transfer it into the professional and suave format needed to win you new clients?
It’s as easy as choosing an appropriate agency and filling them in on your business/ brand, the goals of the pitch and background information on who they will be pitching to. If they are good at what they do, they will do their own research and put a creative agency swing on things.
Choosing an agency
When choosing an agency to pitch for your business you will be faced with the choice of an agency that has previous experience in your industry sector or an agency that doesn’t. Although this seems like an obvious decision, don’t write the latter off straight away, everybody needs to start somewhere and often an agency new to your industry sector will have fresh ideas and be able to think outside the box, which is often a key trait of a successful pitch.
Shortlist and meet with a couple of agencies, keeping in mind that you will have to work with these people and rely on them to secure your business. Your aim from these meetings should be to work out if the agency is as motivated about your business as you are.
Filling them in
Provide the agency with all the information necessary to make a winning pitch including;
- Names of the clients they will be pitching to
- Background relationship between your business and the potential client
- Outcomes you hope to achieve with the pitch – remember credentials meetings and chemistry meetings should still have stated outcomes planned in advance.
Related articles
- How To Fix A Broken Pitch Process (adpulp.com)
- Winning pitches is fun! (creativeagencysecrets.com)
- The Art of Pitching (creativeagencysecrets.com)
- Cynicism, duplicity and institutional incompetence (stephengreensted.wordpress.com)
- The Unspoken Evil Of The RFP (socialmediaexplorer.com)
- RFP Hell (kula partners)
Pitching is a very important tool for generating new business, but certain aspects of a successful pitch can sometimes be overlooked. When approaching a pitch with a prospective client, try to imagine you are pitching yourself to someone you would like to have a long relationship with.
How can you come across as the kind of person they want in their life?
What should I always do when pitching?
Of course there are obvious things which should be commonplace every time you make a pitch:
- Dress Snappy – better to be over-dressed than underdressed; research your prospect company’s dress code to make sure
- Arrive early to the meeting and familiarise yourself with the environment – this will allow you to be more relaxed during the pitch. If possible scout it out a week in advance. Check power socket locations and AV equipment.
- Always be grateful for the opportunity – if the pitch doesn’t go the way you wanted it to, thank them for the chance. Never cut ties with anyone in business. You never know, they may recommend you to someone else or ask you back for another chance
Recently I have been a part of two creative agency pitches to two very different businesses. The first was a gas fire manufacturer and the second, a real estate agent. Although both pitches went well, what quickly became apparent to me was that having the confidence and public speaking skills to pitch your business is only half of what is required for a successful pitch.
The first pitch
I entered the first pitch knowing very little about the gas fire manufacturer and the meeting quickly became a one-way flow of information on who the company was and what they did. This was possibly time wasted. They wanted to tell us about themselves and if I had prepared properly for the meeting I would have known all this and the time could have been spent on discussions on what we could do for them as a creative agency.
The second pitch
Taking this into account, I prepared for the second pitch and did deep research on the prospective client. This not only impressed the client but it saved us time where we could get down to the nitty-gritty on how we could help his business. This pitch went well and there was agreement on a further meeting to discuss our proposal.
What should you do
Below is a checklist on what sort of research should be done for any public relations project, which translates very well to pre-pitch research. Click here to see the full checklist and article. Work through this checklist to ensure you have done all you can to research a prospective client before entering that all important first pitch
- See what’s being said on social media - This can be a great real-time window into what others know and think about your client and a great way to make sure that your pitch will go over well.
- Spend time with your client – Set their expectations that you want more than a one-hour meeting. You want a few hours to mine them for any and all information.
- Spend time without your client – Ask them to put you in touch with people from other areas of their company: sales, customer relations and even those on the floor (front desk personnel, those at the cash register, tour guides, etc.).
- Get on site! – If your client is a hotel, be a guest. Spend the night, try the food, and ask for suggestions of surrounding things to do.
Rob Lane
Rob is Marketing Assistant at Creative Agency Secrets.
Related articles
- Cynicism, duplicity and institutional incompetence (stephengreensted.wordpress.com)
- Knowing Your Client Inside and Out: A Checklist For Client Research (dontdrinkthekoolaidblog.com)
- How To Lose A Pitch When You Thought You Were Winning (stephengreensted.wordpress.com)
hello and welcome to an awesome week of new leads
Agencies
- Taproot Creative, integrated marketing, Tallahassee, FL, USA
- BBDO, Advertising agency, Russia
- Beckerman PR, creative public relations, NJ, USA
- The Bounce Agency, creative solutions for the right answer, South Carolina, USA
- Intermark Group, Top 100 advertising agency, Birmingham AL, USA
Brands
- Equifax - credit scoring financial services, Atlanta GA, USA
- Houses of Parliament, Government, London UK
- Tallinin Science Park, Business location and offices, Tallinin, Estonia
- Riverside Graphics, printing company, Reading UK
- Cheshire County Council, Government, Chester, UK
- Barnes Aerospace, manufacture and repair of turbines, Cincinnati, OH, USA
- SOLA, corporate recruitment agency, London UK
- Computer Concepts Ltd, network expertise and disaster recovery, New Zealand
- Wandering Wifi, wireless internet services, USA
- Forestry Commission, Government, UK
- The American Game Factory, software games, Denmark
- Kelkoo, retail comparison website, UK
- TED Co, entrepreneur business incubator, Tyneside, UK
- B&Q plc, DIY retailer, Southampton, UK
- Yapi Kredi Bank, retail banking services, Turkey
Brands seeking agencies
- Worldwide telecoms and data service “business development for advertising agencies”, USA
- Global insurance company wants “creative agency Koln”, Germany/Austria
- National newspaper group needs “cold calling digital media”, USA
- Network design and management “How to write a campaign proposal”, South Africa
- Web security agency “marketing agency pitch brief”, London UK
- Magazine for retailers “sample brief pitch creative agency” Romania
- Regional Development agency “new business development creative agency”, Regions UK
- Mobile telephony, “Brief pitching agency”, Jakarta, Indonesia
- City council, “Creative agencies in Indiana”, USA
We worked hard to get more posts up last week and were rewarded by great new followers and readers this week. So, hard work does pay off. Expect a drop off in the following weeks as the Christmas holidays approach.
If you do agency integration there must be some work out there… a couple of searches for this. Anyone want to write an ariticle for us on this theme?
Agencies
- Off Madison Ave, public relations and digital agency, Phoenix, AX, USA
- BBDO, advertising agency, New York, NY, USA
- Omnicom Group, Global advertising seeking ‘agency integration’ – anyone want to help them out?
- Compass Healthcare Marketers, Ewing NJ, USA
- Tribal DBB, Global advertising, seeking ‘conversation monitoring’. Hamburg, Germany
- Publicis Groupe – Advertising, Singapore seeking ‘agency integration’ – anyone want to help them out?
- Start Design
Brands
- Amputee Coalition of America
- Lyris, email marketing services, USA
- Little Brown, book publishing, UK
- Department of Primary Industries of Queensland, Government, Australia
- Bank of America, banking, USA
- Attolon Partners, consulting & recruitment for Accountancy, Radnor, PA, USA
- Texas Library Association, TX, USA
- Lehder Environmental Services, Air quality monitoring, Canada
- Blue Square, online betting, UK
- Michigan First Credit Union, banking, USA
- Central Otago District Council, New Zealand
- Polson Higgs, Accountants and business consultants, Dunedin, NZ
- Cannock Developments, Birmingham, UK
Brands seeking agencies
- Data center service “Working with a creative agency”, Worldwide
- Oxfam asking “does anyone use conversation monitoring?” Charity Not for profit, UK
- Database cloud services wants “Recruitment innovation ideas”, Germany
- Medical professional organisation “social media most creative agency”, London UK
- Food brands manufacturer, “brief advertising agency pitch”, Denmark
- Health care provider “writing a brand agancy brief”, Canada
The internet makes it easy to get in touch with people and organisations – right?
WRONG.
Day after day working for my business and my clients’ I find examples of organisations that make it really difficult for people to get in touch.
Here’s the latest crop of examples.
- Author gets article into Harvard Business Reivew (like WOW) and states at the bottom that he’s a Senior Adviser at Oaktree Capital. Can I find him mentioned on their website? Does their site have a news page with a link on it? Has it been updated since the 2009 copyright statement in the footer?
- I write to Claremont GI, an interior fit-out company, enquiring about their products for a client. They only offer one enquiries@ email address and it returns an undeliverable bounce message from the server. How much new business are they losing?
- Working for a self-published author, we try to contact the buyers for large book retailers. Their websites give no contact information for the corporation – just online store customer service. Whitcoulls,PaperPlus – this is YOU.
- A national bookstore chain, Borders, that doesn’t list a single email address on their contacts page.
- Groups of companies that list the PR company as the main contact point. Dot Digital Group lists their PR agency above the corporate HQ on their website – and that’s for a supposedly digital organisation. Fails the basic “do what you preach” test.
I would love the result of this blog post to be a comment from each of the organizations named telling me why they choose their contacts page design as they do and advising how we should get in touch with their people.
Dot Digital Group contacts FAIL
