1. Walk the halls of your client’s business to get more business.
Do you have a strategy for ad agency new business that you execute brilliant?. Too many agencies today get lost behind emails, phone calls, text messages and Go To Meetings. Get out from behind your desk and discover that there’s more business to be had with the clients you already have.
Twenty years ago when I launched the largest consumer magazine campaign in Mohawk Flooring’s 120-year history, my Miami agency missed a wealth of new business by not being closer in proximity to Mohawk’s headquarters in Dalton, Georgia. I’m sure that if we walked the halls of this client every week, meeting other VPs and Presidents of other flooring divisions, we would have picked up incrementally more business from other carpet brands within this huge corporation. Perhaps smarter agencies would have opened a satellite office, but we were just not financially strong enough nor staffed for such an endeavor. That was a mistake. We should have found a way to tap into the huge potential of this client.
Of course, most agencies have existing clients within their own backyards that make it easier and less costly to visit. Cater an annual strategy lunch meeting at the client’s offices. Meet their new staff members and see the back office in action. Let everyone see your face so they know that you are a partner in their business. After a few weeks of walking the halls you may walk away with a new sales kit to design, a new digital campaign to launch, or a new trade show booth to create. Who knows?
2. Anticipating your client’s future needs brings you more business.
Frequently, agencies fail to communicate all their offerings, or fail to anticipate a client’s future needs, leaving the door open for competitors to step in. The ability to “cross-sell” and “up-sell” services to your clients is just as important as signing a new client. In fact, many experts believe that it can help boost your revenues by 30 percent or more.
All too often, when an ad agency has a client for a considerable amount of time, the relationship becomes defined by the past or present instead of the future. The focus tends to be about getting the work out, and not about future strategies and ideas that can generate incremental revenue for the client.
Part of the reason I helped Office Depot grow from 3 stores to more than 600 stores was our agency’s ability to “up-sell” and “cross-sell” them. When I came up with the idea of Office Depot selling school supplies, the idea was met with a tepid response from the client. “Why would our business customers want to shop in our stores with a bunch of screaming school kids,” was the Marketing Director’s response. It took me two years to convince senior management that they were missing millions of dollars in incremental sales by not promoting Office Depot as a back-to-school headquarters. We not only became the first office products retailer in our category to do so, we also helped the back-to-school season to become one of the company’s largest revenue producing periods. And we followed that up a few years later with an Cause Marketing campaign with a TV spot that won a Gold Award for Best Specialty Retailer from the National Retail Federation in 2000.
Similarly, when our agency suggested a Holiday Promotion for Office Depot, it was the first time any office supply retailer promoted holiday shopping. We even helped the client select the right gifts to promote in their advertising and created new in-store signage. The initiative was a major home run!
This is precisely why it’s important for agencies to make at least 20 percent of their conversation with existing clients focused on the future.
3. Categorize your clients and improve your agency’s new business performance.
Experts suggest categorizing your clients into four segments. The first: clients who have given you all the business you can get. (Those are the best clients to have.) The second: those you do considerable business with but have potential for growth. The third: those you do a little business with but could be doing more. The fourth: clients you don’t do much business with and don’t have the potential to do much more. (These are the worst clients to have.) I always tell agency owners to get rid of the fourth group. It makes more sense to spend your time and talents on the second and third categories.
You also can’t ignore dormant accounts. Agencies should continuously review accounts that they’re not working with any longer. Try to reconnect with dormant accounts by offering something new, something of value. Like a new digital marketing capability, a new analytical tool, a new creative director, or a recently successful campaign in a similar category. There’s a good chance that the VP of Marketing that let you go is no longer there, or the company now has a new CEO or President who sees the wisdom in spending money on marketing. My agency won and lost Office Depot 3 times, and each time there were a few new people driving the bus.
4. Recurring revenue clients trump project work.
The key to sustained agency growth is getting a consistent stream of recurring revenue clients that can be relied on. There’s a huge sense of security that results from seeking and winning recurring revenue clients, yet too many agencies spend their time and talents to win non-recurring project work. Recurring revenue B2C clients like car dealers, restaurants, and hospitals, or B2B clients that need to always be acquiring new customers, are fertile ground for this business model. Recurring revenue clients allow ad agencies to budget for the future and take more risks, especially when one-time projects slow.
5. Don’t get lazy. Get pumped!
We are all guilty of this. Once a client gains traction and its advertising gains recognition, many agencies go into maintenance mode. Not surprisingly, that breeds a reluctance, unwillingness, or laziness to explore new approaches.
Marketing experts estimate that it’s five to ten times more expensive to acquire new clients than it is to retain existing clients. So it makes sense to grow your existing clients. Set up a quarterly meeting for a review of their present marketing plan and tactics, and let your client know about any new areas you can help them with. In other words, if you recently did a website for a new client, why not meet with them to discuss social media or SEM? If they’re expanding their stores and restaurants, why not suggest some new signage, or a rebranding?
Don’t get lazy with your clients. They come to you for ideas and you must ALWAYS be presenting them.
6.Re-bundling is a great way to add new business to your bottom line.
Today, agencies are re-bundling disciplines that were historically unbundled—creative, media and analytics. And with the help of strong data and measurement metrics woven into the creative and media disciplines, it’s a great way to re-introduce your re-bundled services and to get more business from existing clients or dormant ones.
I think one of the reasons why agencies don’t get as much business from existing clients is they take it for granted that they know everything we do, and they don’t. Agencies need to educate and communicate continuously with clients, whether it’s a new digital strategy that’s producing tangible results for other clients or a new way to grow their business.
Developing the Back-to-School and Holiday initiatives for Office Depot not only made our agency more valuable to the company, it earned us exponentially more billable income in the process. Never get lazy with your clients. There’s always a new idea that can improve their business and they need to hear it from you!
STUART DORNFIELD is an award-winning freelance Creative Director/Copywriter with more than 40 years experience in marketing, strategy, advertising and production. As the former Sr. VP-Creative Director of Zimmerman Advertising and the former co-founder of Gold Coast Advertising, ranked 3rd largest agency in South Florida, today Stuart offers his creative services for Sandals Resorts and freelance copywriting in New York and Miami. https://stuartdornfield.com