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?

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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?

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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)

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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)

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Peter Bregman writes on the HBR blog about the importance of correct interpretation of communications – the message versus the “package” [or medium IMV].

Helpfully he gives four steps to follow which will help you to make the best of poor communication situations:

1. Notice. Anytime you feel a negative emotion about something said or written to you, it’s a warning sign that you might get distracted by the package. Anger, sadness, frustration, disgust, and disbelief are all good prompts to go to step 2.

2. Pause. Take a deep breath. Then recognize you’re vulnerable to reacting emotionally to how something was communicated. And remind yourself that communication is hard and often done poorly. Cut yourself, and everyone else, some slack. Don’t assume malicious intent. Don’t take it personally. Resist the urge to be offended.

3. Interpret. Now reread what was written, or think about what was said, and unscramble it. Think about what the person was trying to convey. Search for value. Strive for understanding.

4. Respond. A good rule of thumb is to use a different medium than elicited your emotional response. If a text upset you, don’t text back. If an email set you off, pick up the phone. And when you do reply, ignore the package and focus on the message.

I  add a sub-step between 3 and 4.

Time.

Leave some time (overnight is good) for you to reflect on the anger the message created in you and whether your reply will communicate the right message in the manner you intend.

When you read the article, reflect on the male : female responses to the same message.  They matter a lot in business and if you’re a woman working in a male environment, you may find you get a better outcome if you use male messaging mores.

The same rules apply when pitching for new business – when you receive a message back from your prospect, can you correctly interpret what they mean?

Related articles

• Don’t Let the Package Distract You from the Message (blogs.hbr.org)

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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.

1. 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?
2. 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?
3. 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.
4. A national bookstore chain, Borders, that doesn’t list a single email address on their contacts page.
5. 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

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Cold calling – The folly of pre-mailing

Recently I was asked how would I write an introductory letter to send prior to cold calling?

My answer “I wouldn’t”.

Reasons to write

There are a couple of key reasons people send an introductory letter:

• They believe it will be read and as a result the prospect will be more open and receptive to their call.
• It makes the call feel less cold so makes making the call easier.

The reality:

The vast majority of your mailings will go straight in the bin, a few will get skimmed first and then binned.  A few will find their way into a pile and become buried, and if you’re lucky and the gods are on your side a few may actually get read.

When you call

So how does this translate for someone receiving a call from you?

If they just skimmed the material or binned it without reading it they probably have no memory of ever receiving it.

Straight away this triggers two doubts:

1. Did you even send them anything or is this just a gimmicky opening you use to get them chatting?
2. Secondly, if you did send them something it must have been of no interest to them or they would have remembered it.

This is not the best footing to start a call.

In short, pre-mailing prospects is time wasting, ineffective and often leads to doubt and mistrust in the minds of those you call.

Invest your time and energy into making more calls and asking more people to take the next step with you.

Success belongs to the askers, so stop mailing and keep asking: the results will speak for themselves.

Paul Foley, Noodle Coaching

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We have been members of BIMA for a while – it’s a trade body for digital agencies.  They ran an event called “New business generation – farming style” earlier this month.  It was a panel discussion with Chris Cowpe – The Caffeine Partnership, Paul Kirkley – JWT, David Hart – Codegent and Mark Clark – @JFDI.

Here is Jane’s take on the event with her own views expanded.

Changes in Business Development

A subtle yet important shift is starting to change the way we look at business development. The change can be best described as a move from hunting to farming.
Seth Godin articulates the shift in his blog:

‘Five thousand years ago, every human was a hunter.  If you were hungry, you got a rock or a stick and you went hunting.  The problem was that all of the animals were either dead or really good at hiding.

Fortunately, we discovered/invented the idea of farming.  Plant seeds, fertilize em, water em, watch em grow and then you harvest them.   The idea spread and it led to the birth of civilization.
Everyone got the idea… except for marketers.
Marketers still like to hunt.
What we’re discovering, though, is that the good prospects are getting really good at hiding.’

Why prospects hide and how to overcome it

The shift is brought about by a realisation that it’s clients who define agencies; they’re agencies’ biggest assets.  To make the most of the opportunity client development presents, we’ve outlined some straightforward steps to winning new business.

Step 1 – re-focus

Did you know you’re five times more likely to grow existing business than win new?  What’s more, growing existing business is your only real chance of short term revenue.  Ask yourself some questions about your organisation:
★ Is winning new business viewed as sexily as winning new new business? Do you celebrate those who grow existing clients rather than viewing it as everyday?
★ Is your approach to new business as formalised and structured as your approach to new new business? Are you investing enough energy and resources?
★ Are you leveraging relationship equity by sharing responsibility for business development with senior management?
★ Have you equipped your staff with new business tools and know-how so everyone knows what to ask and how to ask it?
The usual goal of growing business by 10% if very casual and non-specific, versus someone telling you they can see a £500k opportunity with an existing client.   Make sure your culture is such that people aren’t afraid to ask for time and resources to pursue client development opportunities.

Step 2 – pick your targets

Every client represents some opportunity, but where should you invest?  The key is to identify a manageable number to pursue. If you’re finding it tricky to decide, ask yourself:
★ Which clients will most enhance our reputation?
★ Are we in danger of chasing those who already have strong agency relationships?
★ Do we have a great rapport with this client?
★ Have we defined what we want? e.g. are we good at taking clients from offline to online, or do we want sophisticated clients only?
Remember winning extra assignments is better, creds wise, than having a wide array of fragmented business.  If you’re wasting time and not getting traction, change tactics or cut your losses and switch from target A to target B.

Step 3 – winning

Too often agencies claim to do everything, when in reality they only really do two or three things exceptionally well. Clients are fed up of agencies trying to sell them everything when they just want X, so focus on your strengths.
Digital agencies are in the perfect position to assume the role of trusted adviser – armed with knowledge and insights that your clients are desperate to understand.
Yet do you find yourself trapped in a tactical, project orientated role (‘build that site’, ‘do that DM’)?  The good news is clients want more retained relationships.
★ When was the last time you asked your clients what their business plans and life plans are?
★ Have you asked what keeps them awake at night?
★ Do you understand their business objectives and individual ambitions? Just by asking you might reposition yourself in the client’s mind. Even if they’re taken aback, go with it!
★ How can we position ourselves in the wider context? Can we merchandise the work we’ve done through the lense of building brands as opposed to completing projects?
★ Can we engage clients at a higher level, by helping instead of selling? Are we investing enough time without an order book down our trousers?
★ How can we convince our client’s board they aren’t pursuing a digital fantasy?
★ How can we validate what we’ve done through measurement? Does each piece of work have measurable business objectives?
★ Are we measuring the quality of our relationships?
★ Have we made our organisational objectives clear to the client?  Can they help write our business plan? (brass neck required!)
Agencies often make the mistake of waiting until a job is done and the honeymoon over to try and expand.  Instead try to use honeymoon periods, when you’re in the thick of it, to win more work.
It’s also worthwhile doing client audits. They’re nothing short of revelatory. If you’re not scoring seven or eight out of ten you need to get your house in order.  Scoring high means you’ll get more business.
By understanding your client’s business in greater depth (through questioning with confidence) – and ensuring your client understands yours – you can avoid typecasting one-another.  Don’t assume ‘they’ll never do that’ and prevent your client falling into the same trap, leading to lost business for you.
It’s up to you to prove to your client that there’s value in moving to a closer, more strategic relationship, as opposed to buying project by project.  To be a trusted adviser you may have to offer yourself and your advice free – but very selectively; aware of to whom and why.  If you underprice you’re not leaving room for (‘free’) honest advice.
Given that it’s clients who define your next steps, be very speci!c about what your piece of success looks like, while remaining agile and a step ahead.  It’s helpful that outsourcing and freelancing are easier now than ever.
Finally, procurement are your greatest friends in growing organic business.  If they think you’re doing a good job, ask them what else you could do.  Invite them over and they’ll warm to the fact you’re helping them understand what you do.  And remember they’re trained negotiators – so dedicate at least a day’s training to your staff so it isn’t a disadvantage.

Just be sure not to offer them champagne!

Jane Young tweets (@resonanceblog) and works both with Kanbee, a digital agency and is the founder of Scramblr the creative collaboration tool.

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Reading Jay Baer’s recent post about truth and candour, I think he has got a great point.

The RSS-reading public loves a screw-up – an opportunity to poke fun at hubris and pride brought low.  Domino’s is the most recent example of a long list of internet marketing screw-ups.

He says

I never thought I’d see a day when corporations were the most trustworthy and forthright among us, but it draws nigh.

Wow.

The honest corporation is coming… can’t wait.  And yet, a small part of my brain seems to doubt this.  Many people would love to see honesty triumph over evil manipulators but human nature being what it is makes me think that ‘trying it on’ will continue.  It’ll just take a new form.

But taking the moral high ground and thinking positively – I’d like to set a challenge for you.

What is the worst rumour or gossip about your organisation?

I can’t answer this for you.  If you are party to the senior corporate people, policies, strategies and mess-ups that have happened in the past year in your company – you can answer this.

• What is the one thing that has the potential to most embarrass your organisation if it were leaked to the public?
• Which bit of bad news would cause you the most sleepless nights / stress headaches?
• How would you choose to publicly humiliate your employer?
• What could an employee reveal that would make your share price tumble or clients to resign?

The short, easy answer to all of the situations is to not let it happen in the first place.

Quick fixes

Go read about Crisis PR and get some free or professionally paid for advice on how to handle a situation if true but bad news does hit the headlines.

Check employment contracts for privacy and secrecy statement clauses and enforce them if needed.

But in the medium term, surely it’s better to run a clean ship?

What might you choose to do differently if any of the scenarios above came to public light?

Becoming a trustworthy corporation

Firstly, do you want to be a trustworthy corporation?  What are the benefits?

If yes, go and make a list of things to do differently.  Share it internally and make your own subsequent management decisions about what changes to make.

‘Nuff said.

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Image by macinate via Flickr

No matter whether you are proor anti the arguments for doing speculative work in order to win a client are discussed in many places – particularly for design agencies.

Jacob Cass has written a good summary of the arguments for and against.

when I was researching my own view I was persuaded by a friend who runs an interactive agency who said he'd successfully crowdsourced designs for website front -ends while his team were building the techy backend.  He said the quality was 'surprisingly high' and although he found that he needed to actively manage and engage with the bidding process, he found it worthwhile.

 He did it three or four times.  Only once was he disappointed.  And in all the other instances, his company gave further work (without pitching) to the winning designer.

What do you think?

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