First off, let me say that I’m not a huge fan of growth for growth’s sake. You can have a great firm and be that same great firm at the same size for as long as you want. But there are some advantages to being a bigger firm, and growth might be on your radar. So if it is, but it’s not happening, why is that? I’m going to give you the five most common reasons I see.
There are some great tools for growing existing accounts (like this webinar, $160). Decide how big you want to be and make it happen. You might be the only significant obstacle.
Marketing firms do this all the time. Most of them don’t put it front and center, instead describing what they’ll do for a client and then giving them a price (e.g., $140,000). But then the hourly rate will sneak into the small print when they talk about what will happen during scope creep: “After seeking your prior approval, we will bill additional work beyond the scope of this estimate at $xxx per hour.”
Here’s why you don’t want to talk about your hourly rate:
I recently keynoted a conference on UX and before and after taking the stage I made a point of asking as many of your clients the same very specific questions about how they hire agencies. Two newer trends quickly became apparent, and it would be good to keep these in mind.
Most of you would like a prospect--in the early stages--to assume that working with you will be a fit. Then you want the opportunity to move them along during the sales process until the check clears. You don't want them making any early decisions on their own, deciding that it's not a good fit, possibly, and looking for a different firm to work with.
We know this is true by looking at your website, which is welcoming, friendly, and sometimes full of those faux tests that help a prospect determine the fit. "Here, take this four question test and see if we should work together: First, do you want a true partnership. Second, do you want good value for your money. Third, do you want quick results. Fourth, do you want lasting results." And then, after a drum roll, they learn that it's a good fit! Surprise, surprise.
Your website should help a prospect make an honest decision about whether it's a good fit to work with you, and they should do this on their own, before they ever talk to you, for these two reasons...
There's nothing quite like an empty pipeline to get your attention, right? In those times, panic overcomes inertia and you find the time to do the marketing. But what about the long periods between those bouts of panic when you push your marketing to the back burner and joke about the cobbler's son who never has any decent shoes? What's a realistic amount of time to spend on your own marketing? Here are seven ideas to get more with less of your time:
I love it when an agency tells me about their sophisticated clients. They make an agency better primarily for four reasons:
You are very smart people, and so I can make some bullet-point observations without much explanation and still be helpful to you. Read these and see if they ring true to you:
I consult with one new agency every week through our TBR, and a question that comes up regularly is how to transition a new client from the sales team to the account team. Here's how to do it well.
As a student of positioning, I've grudgingly noted that many very poorly positioned firms are doing well. The common thread is that they are confident, which prospective clients sense and are drawn to. If you lack that confidence, consider the two ways normally available to fix it.
The first is your Mommy telling you how great you are. A parent's job is to believe in their kid in spite of any lack of evidence to support that. My parents believed that I could do anything, and we still believe that our kids could do anything. But that matters more when you're young. And besides, I often believe in my clients' ability more than they do, but it doesn't matter. They don't believe me because I'm not their Mommy. (tweet this)
So in your case, we have to default to the only other reliable method of confidence-building, and that....
You have something your client needs--how do you deliver that effectively? Here are the six best avenues to deliver your expertise to an agency prospect or client:
Sometimes it's helpful to step back from all of the positioning and service offering differentiation we play around with and get back to a basic question: what is it that clients are really buying from your agency? It's two things.
The websites that marketing agencies are building for themselves are better than they ever have been, but only 20% have stellar sites and another 55% aren't embarrassing. When talking with an agency principal on the phone, I'm surprised, too, at how often I hear this: "Yes, I know that's what our website says, but...." So if you see a revision in the works in early 2015, here are the 10 most impactful features of your new website.
