In a recent blog by Michael Gass titled: FUEL LINES: tips, tactics, trends, talent and tools for ad agency new business. He raises the question: Is Cold Calling an Effective Ad Agency New Business Tactic? The responses brought an overwhelming majority of respondents, 69%, provided a negative response when it came to cold calls. 29% said they were sometime receptive and only 3% said they were often receptive to a cold call. Tim Williams, founder of Ignition Consulting Group and author of the book, Take a Stand for Your Brand, states in a recent article, “Ask any agency principal what he or she dislikes and avoids the most and the answer will almost always be the same: cold calling new business prospects. Not only is this the most dreaded activity among C-level agency executives, it’s also among the least effective.” Today’s CMO lives in a world where traditional marketing practices are no longer acceptable. “80% of decision makers say they found the vendor, not the other way around.” Prospective clients Don’t want to be interrupted and have found ways to screen out, throw out and tune out unwanted marketing messages
They Use online tools and techniques to seize control of their buying and vendor selection process
They seek out the information they want how they want it and when they want it.
How does this impact ad agency new business?
The growth of Social Media will dramatically impact how agencies promote themselves in the future.
Agencies that must rely on cold calling as a new business tactic will find it even less effective in 2009.
Ad Agency Survey Finds Traditional New Business Methods Aren’t Working
For success in agency new business, you must lead. To get to and maintain a position of leadership within this industry you need a consistent and strategic program for professional enrichment.
So you have rich content automatically sent rather than manually searching for it.
Use an RSS Reader. Or Google Reader.
Then store info in specific folders that can be like instant access:
Agency New Business Blogs
Social Media Blogs
Client Blogs
Competitor Blogs
News Feeds
Sports Feeds
Read the daily newsletters – there are a bunch of those here are the links:
· Management Tip of the Day: Harvard Publishing
- Smart Brief: Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA)
- Propulsion: Ignition Consulting Group
- Steal This Idea: Neutron
- The eMarketer Daily
There are many more but you get the picture.
As an overview of everything I’ve read over the past hour and a half it all points to Social Media as the next and tool. It’s a difficult challenge in our business of dealing with mostly luddites who haven’t got the smarts or the patience to respond to a Twitter or a Text message. Verizon says it best in their current advertising when they mention the teenagers are sending text messages at 70 wpm while their parents are sending at 8 wpm. Of course, the most stunning example of Social Media Networking was used quite successfully by President Obama’s team during the last election. It was actually a takeoff on the old word of mouth times ten thousand. You tell a friend and friend tells me I tell a friend and so on – except we were telling everybody in our address books in our emails and our ‘phones.Apparently there are companies already well versed in how this works and are taking advantage of all the tools they can. One other thing that seems very important in the blogs and all the email / emarketing sites is to know that this is not our Father’s way of Advertising. Emarketing, Twitter, eblast campaigns are not those which run for a couple of days or weeks and then suddenly create results. This seems to be especially true when chasing new business. The people who are aware of the technology already have a team around them who know what they’re doing.The people who aren’t aware will probably never see what you want them to see unless you promise them a penis enlargement with your service, if you know what I mean.
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