I spend my days looking at agency websites, reviewing creds and asking agency owners to explain why a prospective client would choose to work with them. Sometimes people even pay me for this privilege.
We’ve all been there. The team have put together the monthly stats report. The numbers are all going in the right direction. In fact, since you started working with the client, results have been fantastic.
High fives all round. Head to the pub for much backslapping and a celebratory pint.
In the recently published Benchpress agency survey, 38% of agencies stated that winning business was their biggest challenge.
Whilst the specific reasons were not cited, I have a theory.
Inevitably, the resource, skills and processes for winning business differ greatly from agency to agency. However, I have found there to be three issues, common to many agencies, that impact their ability to win and retain the right clients (and therefore to grow).
For many small agency owners there comes a day when investing in a business development manager (BDM) is not only financially viable but integral to the next phase of growth.
Speaking to agency owners over the years, their efforts at recruiting and managing a BDM often don’t work out. The solution was the right one but the execution failed.
A while back, I shared 10 guiding principles to help small digital agencies win more business. The pop-pickers amongst you would have noticed that ‘proposition me’ came in at number two.
A relevant, compelling and credible value proposition is very much the foundation of a successful business development strategy, so let’s spend some time taking a closer look at what it is, why it’s important and how to go about creating one.
If you’re a digital agency, business development is hard work.
Your average ecommerce manager or head of digital marketing is absolutely inundated with calls and emails making grand promises of ‘bigger this’ and ‘better that’.
What should a mono-brand think about as they go on the journey from wholesaler to fully-fledged online retailer?
What should its digital strategy look like?
In the recent Econsultancy/Adobe Quarterly Digital Intelligence briefing, 25% of companies said they placed most emphasis on “making our experience as personalised and relevant as possible” in terms of improving the overall customer experience.
I’ve been working in digital for more years than I care to mention, witnessing a huge amount of change in that time, especially where SEO is concerned.
Clearly SEO is no longer the ‘stand-alone’ technically-led discipline that it once was back in the day.
I think we all agree that delivering a consistent, seamless, joined-up (delete as appropriate) customer experience, especially in a retail setting, is important.
Really important in fact.
A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for Econsultancy stressing the importance of writing a brief when looking to appoint a search agency.
This was in response to the fact that, in my experience, so few businesses seem to do so.