What if creative agencies like Wieden + Kennedy, Grey and Droga5 spent all of their award-winning creative efforts on growing their own agency brands? It’s likely they’d be household names. But they’re not, because the client’s charge for agencies today is as transparent as it was a century ago: Deliver results against goals.
One of the core reasons that drew me to Write2Market in the first place was a genuine spirit of empathy for what agency executives are up against, daily, and cohesive plans to provide them with real solutions to grow their business. If you’re fortunate to have a crack writing team, strategic account people and web developers, all committed to growing your agency brand, pat yourself on the back. You’re an anomaly.
If you’re like the majority of agencies I know and have worked for over the past 15 years, here are three reasons why your agency might need an agency:
The Mirror Marketing Trap (Oh The Irony)
There’s an assumption that agencies know how to market to their own prospects. And why not? They spend their days creating big sexy anthemic campaigns for the likes of Nike, Apple and BMW, that resonate with consumers and help boost sales. But being well-versed in CPG or automotive doesn’t make marketing your agency a cake walk.
The challenge when turning the tables to connect with actual prospects is a tendency to communicate what keeps agencies up at night, missing the big picture for the client altogether.
Engaging the outside perspective of a B2B agency who has a history of delivering rich content to C-level decision makers gives your agency some fresh ammunition for opening new doors.
FOLAC (Fear Of Losing A Client)
Agencies are notorious for burning the midnight oil, whether it’s submitting an RFP at the eleventh hour, preparing for endless waves of new business pitches, or accommodating urgent client requests after 5pm on a Friday. An unfortunate side-effect of this hyper-commitment and a genuine fear of being axed, is that agencies are often poor marketers of their own agency brands. This agency bandwidth issue can quickly jettison any hope of growing your own lead generation efforts.
Enter an outside agency. A dedicated team who can allot the resources for submitting your agency leaders to speak at critical conferences, submit campaigns and best practices for prized industry awards and help land in-depth content that speaks directly to your prospects across top tier media outlets.
Routine (Steady-As-She-Goes)
Perhaps the most critical reason to align with an outside partner is discipline. How else can you expect to see results when your entire team is buried in the sand focussed on retaining existing clients? A partner agency acts as your bonafide utility machine, developing content calendars for churning out weekly blog posts, e-newsletters, media outreach, awards and conference submissions. Our job is getting you and your clients on the record, completely uninterrupted by all those darn RFP’s.
Our job at Write2Market is to get you and your clients on the record, completely uninterrupted by all those darn RFP’s. You work in advertising. Your plate is permanently full. Let us help take agency marketing off your plate.