In June, we had our Red Zone Agency Roundtable, sponsored by CEO Stars. Attended by agency leaders, there were over 22 insights in one-hour and every one of them capable of making an enormous impact on any agency’s business and take you from the Red Zone to the End Zone. Here are 5 actionable insights for those ad agency executives who couldn’t make the online session.
1. Establish Internal Communications for Agency Organic Growth: Many concurred that organic growth was a challenge due to lack of time. Understanding the importance of it, the attending agencies said they’re going to select a “leader” to schedule sessions twice a month for the sole purpose of discussing their clients’ businesses, seeking out new ideas for them. One agency leader shared a “million-dollar organic growth idea” that’s generating huge profits for him.
2. Leverage External Whitepapers & Research to Become A Business Insider: One agency leader suggested going to sites like Bain & Co. and Accenture Consulting to download their white papers on various industries. Often these papers will you great insight into your clients’ business categories, resulting in new ideas for them.
3. Dial-In on Your Niche to Explain Your ‘Why’: Agency leaders all agreed they are challenged in brand positioning – telling their story and explaining their ‘why.’ One of the reasons for this is a lack of agency focus. If you have a focus or a specialization, then you’ve got a compelling story to tell.
4. Re-Engineer Your Agency Messaging to be Client-Centric: To resolve this agency brand positioning challenge, stories and positioning statements must be restructured so your client is the ‘star’ rather than the agency. We discussed several examples and the best positioning structure an agency can write.
5. We Helped One Agency Leader Dodge a Bullet: In our Wildcard portion where we do a deep-dive on one agency’s issue, we solved a major hiring decision that involved culture and salary. We discussed background checks and personality tests to ensure this agency leader was making the right choice in adding a major talent to her team.
Just One Insight Can Move You from the Red Zone to the End Zone: We do the Red Zone every month. With over 22 insights that came out of our one-hour Red Zone session, here are five actionable nuggets that can make a shift in your agency’s business and take you … from the Red Zone to the End Zone.
Our next Red Zone date: Thursday July 19th 3pm Eastern.
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It’s challenging running an ad agency in today’s volatile landscape where clients want more for less and the knowledge curve becomes higher to climb every day. Joel Cohen makes ad agency owners lives easier by bringing successful ad agency leaders together online to share ideas, resolve issues and experience the comfort of being part of a support team, rather than working in an isolated vacuum, where you’ll never know as much as you need to know to become truly successful.