Bob Weissman, Your Agency Specialist Consultant

Customer Strategies

By on July 31, 2014 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

Customer Strategies and Agency Growth

Every agency wants more business – new business development is dependent on your VISIBILITY, CREDIBILITY, and a USP. These are the core elements of your customer strategies.

Start With Your Current Customers

I always recommend starting with current clients. It is far easier to sell to people who know you then finding new customers. I like to see 70% of your forecast to come from current clients – perhaps selling them more – this can be accomplished thru effective account planning, strategy, mapping and maybe introducing new capabilities.

Review your sales history over the past few years and determine whether you should reconnect with past clients. This is your first step in evaluating your customer strategies.

Then Finding New Customers

After that it’s all about finding new clients – lead generation.

Most agencies do a poor job of marketing themselves – while they do great work for their clients, they don’t get paid to do this for themselves. So, I always recommend Make Yourself a Client.

It all starts with a well thought out Marketing Plan. Do you understand your target audience – how and where do they consume information? Remember, FOCUS is important! From here you can utilize the appropriate integrated tactics to communicate, further developing your customer strategies.

As with any Marketing Plan, you must first establish a budget – this will inform the tactics to implement – for example, I assume Super Bowl advertising may not fit. You must build campaigns which are consistent. Remember, marketing is REACH and FREQUENCY.

Visibility

Visibility can be established in a number of ways – in today’s world, it’s about integrated marketing and we all know digital marketing may become the most cost effective way. No matter what approach you take, new business prospects will check you out. So having a strong website and digital presence is essential. With your website I always recommend clearly articulating your USP, highlight marquee accounts, case studies or results, and have testimonials which are highly visible.Having a great website is important; driving traffic to it is as well. So, tactics such as SEO, PPC, social media (like Linked In, Facebook and YouTube), mobile, email marketing, etc. should be considered.

It’s about integrated marketing – digital marketing alone is typically not enough though, besides more traditional channels like direct mail, print and radio, other approaches such as networking, webinars, events must be built into the plan.

USP & Credibility

Assuming you achieved some level of Visibility, you differentiate yourself with a clear USP, and declare yourself the industry leader – so demonstrating THOUGHT LEADERSHIP is critical. By now I am sure you have heard that content is king – you can deliver this thru white papers, blogs, speaking engagements, etc. I have come to learn that video is the king of content so it should be utilized effectively.

You support your USP by articulating the RESULTS from your engagements. Typically identifying marquee accounts, showing case studies with strong testimonials establishes your CREDIBILITY. While showing portfolio is helpful, RESULTS is what matters.

Execution

Building the Marketing Plan is the first step, executing and implementing it flawlessly will make the difference. To get the uplift you desire, you must have an effective business development process with the appropriate resources applied. I favor marketing managers who can implement campaigns as opposed to hiring salespeople (a real crapshoot).

Are you suing the right tools to using to track and implement activity etc.? The industry giant is Salesforce but this may or may not be best for you. Others use Mailchimp, Constant Content, Google Analytics – there are so many to choose from.

This is just the tip of the iceberg on how you can attract new business – there is so much more!

How Good Are Your Customer Strategies?

In over 10 years of consulting, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a wide range of agencies, 50+, and in every case, customer strategies have been key. As an agency specialist, I’m uniquely qualified to help you understand the pros and cons of various growth strategies as applied to your highly specific circumstances.

As this series of blog posts and videos continues, I’ll walk you through alternative agency growth strategies that can be applied alone or in conjunction with others. So make sure you get on my email notification list using the form in the right hand column on this page.

And if you’d like to have a personal chat about how your agency is dealing with growth (or the lack thereof) then please contact me directly. I’d be happy to provide you with a free consultation.

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About the Author

About the Author: Bob Weissman has consulted with more than 50 marketing, advertising, PR, and technology agencies. He's helped them develop an agency growth strategy targeting a 20% minimum growth rate. He is a board member of the Philadelphia Ad Club and has been a consultant with the AAAAs and Ben Franklin Technology Partners. .

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