It's often overlooked, but you realize how valuable it can be once you spot an agency who knows exactly what is keeping their clients up at night. 

The guy sitting next to me literally leaned over and said, “this is like an advertisement for better positioning”.

I couldn’t agree more.

There isn’t a silver bullet for marketing your agency.

That’s proven by the fact that there are a lot of successful firms out there who employ different tactics. So, what do the best agencies all have in common?

Screw marketing and sales - do great work and clients will come. I can agree with the sentiment there. But I think it overlooks two things.

There are quite literally thousands of agency awards that exist simply because agencies do. Each one of them makes their money by charging hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars for the honor of recognizing you.

There are a few effective and interesting ways to approach it, but for the analytically minded folks, here’s a potential equation for better agency thought leadership.

Whether you like it or not, your agency is the first case study your clients see. Do it right and make sure it’s not the only one.

What are the differences, categorically, between the marketing that I admire and the marketing I recoil from?

As surprising as it may be, many firms want to position themselves around service offerings that are far more attractive to their practitioners than their clients.

Published content offers dual benefits. The first is to attract new clients . The second is to use thought leadership to reduce the cost of sale in competitive or procurement driven situations. 

Wow people who want to be wowed.

Be straight with people who want to hear it straight.

Around the 15th of every month I would get a lead generation report.

Around the 16th of every month I would sit dumbfounded as I read it.

Agencies have an imperfect “what have you done for me lately” attitude with a glaring problem. Nothing lasts forever.

Continuing to add useful pieces is great, until it isn’t.

Rather than generating a compelling perspective and figuring out how to say it in an interesting way, we flood the internet with listicles and blogs that regurgitate the same stuff we all already know. 

Everyone wants to know why they get hired.

After you get the good news from a potential client that they want to move forward, that’s usually the next question you hear, “did they tell you why they went with us?”.

Our continued refusal to focus on our strengths comes down to two things:

Capability and Commitment.

The job of the agency marketing team is to amplify the work and thinking being done by their billable teammates.

That’s it.

Half my brain was already doing mental calculations on commission and payout structure.

The other half of my brain knew we would never win the deal.

I sent off the proposal.

How you tell your agency’s story matters.

It has to be quick. It has to be relevant. And for god’s sake, it has to be different.