How to grow an advertising agency?

Growing the agency

1. The pitch: request for proposals, speculative pitches, pitch process
2. References, image and reputation, public relations

A. THE PITCH

Introduction

A pitch is a demonstration of concepts that an advertising agency offers to create a media plan or advertising message. Winning new commercial pitches is a strategic measurement of success for any ad agency. In the advertising world, obtaining new business is not always a normal process. For agencies, pitching new business is regularly a drain on resources and confidence. Presenting advertisements to a new person or arrival is not an easy task. Probably few strangers may know about the company, but it is not necessary; most of us have heard about your advertising agency.

An ad agency pitch should present the agency’s marketing strategy in a creative way and express how their marketing efforts will achieve the client’s goals and bring the brand’s message. Generally, the authentic content of the pitches may differ by customer and location. Agencies should know the things before preparing for an advertising pitch. Some of the best pitches are mentioned below

1. Make the introduction: Begin a pitch meeting by acknowledging the client for meeting with you, then present your team members, specifically if you’re a new agency and you haven’t worked with them in the past. After the introduction, deliver a short summary of your marketing campaign’s objectives.
2. Including the individuals who will work on the pitch: The meeting room will be filled with the project’s actual workers. Before the client makes such a request, because most of them do, it’s advisable to take the initiative. These actions will show transparency and form more trust in the pitching agency.
3. Drafting the brief: It is often said that the best pitch will be only as good as the brief. Indeed, the most important presentation in the whole process is often the client’s briefing. Time spent here will always be rewarded later by a more efficient and effective process and outcome. The exact same brief should be given to all agencies in the pitch, even if one or a number are already familiar with the brand and project.
4. Use a timeline to show how your company has grown: Honesty is where your agency tells its story, introduces its teams, highlights the brands you have worked with, and possibly includes a reel or a few featured case studies.
5. Provide a real story of the brand and company: Usually, a real story doesn’t just sell the product to the audience, but it also builds the product from in to reality among the audience and consumers.
6. Knowing the variance between advertising and new business: The first motive for demonstration damage by most agencies is the unclear new business with the skills they must have to do good marketing communications. There is a big variance, and the absence of understanding may affect the firms” further growth.
7. Prepare and rehearse: Remember all elements of the client’s creative brief. The more knowledgeable you are, the better your chances of getting engaged. Recognize the client’s goals and possible customers, and then practice the pitch. If the agency works hard during presentation time, you’ll deliver a better pitch.
8. Leave an amusing, long-lasting impression: In the competition world, it isn’t the only one pitching a specific possible client. Here, ad agencies need to find out long-lasting ways to set distance from others, which can be challenging. However, you can search for ways to leave a long-lasting impression for when your presentation is ended.
9. Give a budget figure: In advance of calling a pitch, be very strong on your communications goals to allow you to instruct the agency on its role, possibility, opportunity, and budget.
10. Identify clients and their necessities: It is very essential to identify clients well. Acquaint yourself with their company culture, values, and the general style and direction of similar projects they have hired in the past.
11. Remember that it’s related: it’s easy for agencies, hungry for accounts or eager to work with a hot-shot client, to think they have little say in pitching matters.  CEO Brian Martin says that often companies enter the pitch process as if it is a beauty pageant looking to take home the crown. But that’s missing the point. “Winning the pitch is merely the beginning of a (hopefully) long relationship,” says Martin. “That relationship is going to have significant ramifications on your firm’s future. Therefore, avoid approaching the pitch with the intention of overcoming every obstacle the client presents. Consider approaching the meeting as though you are evaluating them for a potential partnership. Be thoughtful and ask beneficial questions. But most of all, be ready to walk away if the answers you receive in the process aren’t what you want to hear. A partnership is only beneficial if expectations on both sides are in alignment.”

“You are hiring each other,” says Co’s Rosemarie Ryan. “It’s important that both parties are honest with each other about their hopes, dreams, and worst fears. More critically, it’s important that they are honest with themselves about whether that’s something they can live with.”

1. Set realistic expectations: One of the best ways to build a strong relationship with a client is to gain a reputation as an agency that not only delivers results but is willing to go above and beyond. Setting realistic expectations gives you the chance to impress the client and position yourself as a partner. This aspect is especially important when working on behalf of a client. Both parties need to take part in this process to make sure that each knows what’s expected of the other. Agencies may have exclusive methods, but a good degree of transparency is essential. These services create trust and set realistic expectations for clients.

World Federation of Advertisers (WFA)/The European Association of Communication Agencies

WFA/EACA guidelines on client-agency relations and best practices in the pitch process. Here are the 20 key principles that should guide the organization and execution of a competitive pitch. They will be discussed in detail in the below document:

Before the pitch Process	1. Always try to make the relationship work before resorting to a pitch 2. Make a priority of dealing fairly with the incumbent agency 3. If at all possible, avoid a full creative pitch, which can be costly and time-consuming for both parties.
Getting started	4. Form a cohesive multi-discipline decision-making team 5. Use additional consultation if there is no internal pitching experience 6. Before calling a pitch, be very clear on your communications objectives, to enable you to specify the agency’s role, scope and budget 7. Establish a firm and realistic timetable 8. Be clear about policy on communicating with the press and internally
Briefing and selection	9. Write a clear, concise and well-thought-out brief 10. Ensure that the criteria for evaluation/decision-making at each stage of the process is clear and agreed by all parties in advance, to take you from consideration list, to long list, to short list 11. Be disciplined about RFI’s (Request For Information) and RFPs (Request For Proposal), if used
Managing the pitch process	12. Be open about the issue of pitch fees and expenses; always respect national rules & agreements 13. Use “chemistry” meetings to get to know agencies 14. Creative pitches: use “tissue meetings”—if there is time—to help the creative development process
Making the decision	15. Be formal about scoring and evaluating the pitches 16. Conduct pro forma contract discussions to manage expectations, and avoid embarrassment after the pitches 17. Offer the losing agencies a debrief
Post-pitch	18. Manage the pitches sensitively, and treat documents with respect and absolute confidentiality 19. Be scrupulous on intellectual property issues. 20. Manage the transition and hand-over process with care

B. References, image and reputation, public relations

Introduction

A good advertising agency must have specific knowledge and must have a customer-oriented approach. A knowledgeable and experienced agency is the key for attaining goals. The interpersonal chemistry between the company and the ad agency should be in the right direction. Moreover, in the case of the company, they should know their objectives very clearly before selecting an advertising agency.

Advertising agencies, with their enormous familiarity and technical knowledge of the industry, create miracles for the promotional events of any commercial.  Moreover, in the case of the company, they should know their objectives very clearly before selecting an advertising agency.

Before deciding to hire an ad agency for your advertising efforts, you must conduct thorough research on the agency’s background. A few pointers are needed to be taken by the company before selecting an advertising agency.

1. Compatibility: The choice of an advertising agency depends on its compatibility. The company calls many agencies and selects the best agency on account of their team, recognition, experience, talents, and others. The company scrutinizes agencies on how they handle the available opportunities in the market.
2. Focused team: The focused agency team focuses more on business, and they are gladly accessible for daily needs that are occurring from time to time.
3. Resourceful ability: If the client needs it, does the agency have the resource in-house? What tools does the agency have access to? Businesses should estimate the total number of professionals in advertising agencies.  It can be calculated on the basis of quality, specialized staff, effective leadership, and so on.
4. Agency locality: Determining the agency’s locality is essential for healthier communication and relations. The nearer the closeness to the agency, the better the suitability, control, and involvement with its activities. However, sometimes location doesn’t matter much because clients/businesses may close contact with email, FedEx, and mobile phones, which helps to keep in touch 24/7 from anywhere.
5. Client relationships: Relationships miscarry when client hopes are not encountered and disappointment is unnoticed.
6. Involvement: An agency must show full respect for the client and allow it to take part in the activities, give its feedback, and work on the process from time to time. Moreover, monthly or sometimes weekly reports and expenditures should be shown by the advertiser on an alternate basis. These activities have shown full involvement with their respective clients.
7. Detailed acknowledgement: In the selection process, if a business needs to play safe, then it needs to select an agency that is previously well recognized and well known for delivering good services to their clients. To learn what an agency can do for you, talk to their current and past clients.
8. Creativity: Creativity is the leading component of advertising. The creativity of an advertising agency is responsible for developing and designing the campaign for the client across various mediums. Their main job is to come up with the creative ideas that create a demand for the customer’s product within their target audience.
9. Precise perceptions: Don’t just appoint an agency based on its past. Employ its future or its image. Look at what it considers to be the most significant consumer trends.

1. References of advertising agency

Introduction

Running an agency is challenging. According to Kerri Molitor, “It’s a well-known fact that acquiring new clients costs more than growing business opportunities with repeat clients. Getting clients is a big question for anyone thinking of starting a service-oriented business.  As an advertising agency, getting new clients is easy. Instead of sitting back and hoping some will show up, you need to be proactive, get out there, and get the clients you need.

1. Find clients through your place of work

Countless small companies have been started by working professionals who progressed from being workforces of a firm to being servicers or found a praiseworthy client and ran away with them to form their own companies.

2. Let your clients do the work for you (referral).

Letting your clients do the work for you means referrals are remarkable because these front-runners are managed at little or no cost, meaning the agency can allocate more of the marketing budget to diverse projects. Referrals are a fantastic way to get clients.

3. Let’s work with influencers (opinion leaders).

Find industry-connected influencers and offer your services to them for free in exchange for sharing you with their audience.  Influencer marketing is the perfect way to quickly gain more attention from clients. For example, on social media, one post from an influencer can reach a much larger audience.

4. Lean on their followers

The influencers come with their followers, so it is important to build your own network of followers. The more you can depend on interested and promised followers, the easier it is to get clients for your business. 

5. Find clients through family and friends.

If organizations are blessed with family and supportive friends that are always on their side and ready to help if they can. Be sure to tell them exactly what those ideal clients you are looking for for your businesses are.

6. Advertise for clients

Advertising for clients is one of the oldest methods to get clients for businesses. However, it mostly works very well for small-scale industries and businesses.

7. Acquire clients through social media platforms.

The social media platforms give an edge to new relationships in the digital world. The best uses of social media platforms are useful to gain more clients for related groups and businesses.

2. IMAGE AND REPUTATION

Introduction

How do advertising agencies gain image and reputation for them? The ultimate objective of all agencies is to obtain more clients, which brings them success and reputation. It is also one of the best ways to bring your customer numbers up, which is to keep the numbers from going down. The central idea of creating strategic business investments is to get a return on investment. That’s why the primary aim should be to lower retention rates of clients. It is just as significant to keep existing customers as it is to acquire new ones, but it takes time and funds required for both.

Effectively expecting customer erosion and proactively avoiding it represents a huge added potential revenue cause for most dealings. Whether a first-time buyer or a faithful customer of many years, each customer will finally stop his or her association with the business. This occurrence of declining customers is also called customer attrition, customer erosion, customer churn, customer turnover, customer cancellation, customer defection, and customer termination.

Many studies show that when it comes to retaining versus acquiring customers, customer-gaining budgets far exceed those related to customer holding.  There are key benefits that come with putting in the effort to make your customer service truly great. The key benefits are given below, which helps to avoid client/customer turnover.

1. Rejoice important milestones

Establishing milestones to support customers during key periods of their client lifecycle (i.e., introductory stage, establishment stage, mature stage, promotion stage, annual success, and critical churn stages) is important to consolidate customer relationships. Customers who are part of the company need to be appreciated from time to time with incentives, handwritten notes, and gifts.

2. Upselling

Upselling is the method of appealing to a present customer at a vast level. Upselling achieves three important things: first, it deepens relationships; second, it increases the meaning that the client gets; and third, it raises the customer’s client lifetime value.

3. Connect Frequently

On an associated note, you should start making appointments and speaking with your clients on a regular basis. This is also a decent time to bring up any possible queries or concerns with clients.

4. Offer high-class customer facilities

As such, it’s essential to get customer service right. A better customer facility equals better customer involvement. In turn, that will make your existing customers more likely to become faithful long-term clients.

5. Create value

This is an excellent way to continue providing value to your clients even after you’ve completed the task they hired you for. Show them that you care about their happiness and success by supporting them in any way you can.

6. Strategy time

Follow-up is crucial to building relationships with clients and making sure that they know you really have an assigned interest in their approval. Client retention can be a time-consuming process, but businesses want to know that they’re in good hands, and giving them a reliable source of information helps them to trust your services and abilities.

7. Preventive services

In these services let your clients classify future expenses, problems, or occasions before they happen. This helps to create trust, where customers should know that you’re above them in your commercial.

8. Build Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

One of the most noticeable ways to advance your buyer retention rate is to improve customer service. How you make progress can be an irresistible issue, but a countless mode to start is by setting up KPIs around customer service.

9. Damage of trust

Clients want to work with people they can trust. If your clients can’t trust you, then your clients will leave you. There must always be total uniformity between what you say and do and what your customer experiences.

10. Mutuality

Mutuality is the social concept that makes the world go round and keeps customers coming back. The statement is simple: go above and beyond for customers and get rewarded with repeat business.

11. Collective work

Innumerable studies have made one thing clear: when it rises, then create an efficient support system and need to keep everyone in the joint circle. It also comprises speaking to colleagues respectfully and pleasingly

12. Stay in touch

Remember, the best clients are your current ones. Don’t take them for granted. Keep on top of their tasks.

13. Other customer retention strategies include

There are other customer retention strategies, including: Blogs, customer relationship management Systems, devotional plans, magical moments, overcoming buyer’s regret, personal touches, payments and hand-outs, questionnaires and surveys, systematic reviews, social media uses, and so on.

3. PUBLIC RELATIONS

A. Meaning of Public Relations

Public relations (PR) is the practice of deliberately managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a non-profit organization) and the public. Public relations may include an organization or individual gaining exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment.

This differentiates it from advertising as a form of marketing communications. Public relations is the idea of creating coverage for clients for free, rather than marketing or advertising. But now, advertising is also a part of greater PR activities. An example of good public relations would be generating an article featuring a client, rather than paying for the client to be advertised next to the article.

The aim of public relations is to inform the public, prospective customers, investors, partners, employees, and other stakeholders and ultimately persuade them to maintain a positive or favorable view about the organization, its leadership, products, or political decisions. Public relations professionals typically work for PR and marketing firms, businesses and companies, government and public officials as PIOs, nongovernmental organizations, and nonprofit organizations. Jobs central to public relations include account coordinator, account executive, account supervisor, and media relations manager. Public relations specialists establish and maintain relationships with an organization’s target audience, the media, relevant trade media, and other opinion leaders.

Common responsibilities include designing communications campaigns, writing news releases and other content for news, working with the press, arranging interviews for company spokespeople, writing speeches for company leaders, acting as an organisation’s spokesperson, preparing clients for press conferences, media interviews and speeches, writing website and social media content, managing company reputation (crisis management), managing internal communications, and marketing activities like brand awareness and event management Success in the field of public relations requires a deep understanding of the interests and concerns of each of the company’s many stakeholders.

The public relations professional must know how to effectively address those concerns using the most powerful tool of the public relations trade, which is publicity.

B. DEFINITIONS

Ivy Lee, the man who turned around the Rockefeller name and image, and his friend, Edward Louis Bernays, established the first definition of public relations in the early 1900s as follows: “a management function, which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures, and interests of an organization… followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance.” However, when Lee was later asked about his role in a hearing with the United Transit Commission, he said, “I have never been able to find a satisfactory phrase to describe what I do.” In 1948, historian Eric Goldman noted that the definition of public relations in Webster’s would be “disputed by both practitioners and critics in the field.”

According to Bernays, the public relations counsel is the agent working with both modern media of communications and group formations of society in order to provide ideas to the public’s consciousness. Furthermore, he is also concerned with ideologies and courses of action as well as material goods and services and public utilities and industrial associations and large trade groups for which it secures popular support.

C. Scope of public relations

1. It is founding the connection between the organization and the public or government.
2. It is an art or science of increasing mutual understanding and goodwill.
3. It helps to investigate the public insight, awareness, and attitude and classify the government’s or private institutions’ policy with public interest.
4. It executes programs and policies of government and private institutions among the general public.
5. It develops relationships, understanding, and goodwill through the public relations activities.

D. Objective of public relations

1. Media relations

Media relations works with many media for the purpose of informing the public of an organization’s mission, policies, and practices in a positive, reliable, and credible manner. The press coverage is the most extensively used public relations activity that helps to reach a large group of customers. Public relations uses several media relations tools, such as press kits, audio recordings, video recordings, website press rooms, matte releases, newsletters, corporate social responsibility, etc., to manage the flow of information between the organization and its public.

2. Crisis Management

Apart from traditional public relations, there is also crisis management, which works to ease negative press, something that’s essential for prosperous individuals in today’s social climate. Crisis management contains planning for emergency situations. Organizations have a need for fast response plans and precise information delivered to the news media, which those public relations agencies specializing in crisis or risk management often provide and implement in the case of a crisis.

3. Employee Relations

Keeping your employees informed is a necessity for organizations. They are the main representatives of any business and will be the ones who spread word of mouth or inform your customers about your products and services. For any organization, employees are the most important internal public. And therefore, corporate public relations people create several employee communication programs, including internet postings, newsletters, bulletin boards, etc.

There are some other public relations programs focusing on employees, including training them as company public relations representatives, explaining benefits programs to them, offering them educational, volunteer, and citizenship opportunities, and staging special events such as picnics or open houses for them. Other programs can improve performance and increase employee pride and motivation. In this method, the main objective is to achieve a working environment that encourages participation among employees and managers.

4. Community Relations

The community relations are a sub-function that is responsible for forming and continuing relationships with an organization’s communities. Community commitment work to develop a company’s relationship with the local (and not-so-local) community. Companies trust in nurturing good rapport with the community.

A positive affiliation with the consumers has various benefits. Company benefits in times of crisis, bad publicity, or problems arising due to product failure or misconduct. Companies are involved in various community service programs. It donates for charitable trusts and helps in building of schools, parks, etc.

5. Public affairs

Public affairs, also known as lobbying, is all to keep government in confidence. Lobbyists usually have capability with the industry for which they are engaged to communicate and maintain relationships with legislators, press secretaries, and other governmental officials. They regularly deliver learning documents, policy analysis, and research to those in government on behalf of clients.

6. Corporate and social responsibility (CSR)

CSR is a widely implemented model for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. This area of PR can hugely affect an organization’s business practices. There is PR that advances the company’s reputation for ethics, environmental responsibility, and community and charity work.

Strategically donating funds or services and a corporate social responsibility effort are part of the public relations department’s efforts. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients; nurture and retain those the company already has; attract former clients to return; and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. This area of PR can hugely affect an organization’s business practices.

7. Social media relations

This role involves managing the brand’s campaign and vision on social media mediums. Their role is highly analytical as they must determine the correct mediums to place emphasis on and the right kind of content to create engagement. Many companies use social media campaigns as a form of marketing, but social media also has huge PR potential.

E. Significance of public relations in advertising and businesses

Introduction

Advertising and public relations are two very different industries, even though they’re commonly confused for one another. To understand the differences, consider ten different situations and how you might approach them differently through advertising or public relations.

1. Paid Space or Free Coverage

Advertising: The company pays for the ad space or airtime and knows exactly when the ad will air or be published.

Public relations: Your job is to get free publicity for the company. From news conferences to press releases, you’re focused on getting free media exposure for the company and its products or services.

2. Creative Control vs. No Control

Advertising: Because you’re paying for space, you have control over what goes into that ad and how it looks or sounds.

Public relations: You have no control over how the news media presents your information—if they decide to use your information at all. The news media is not obligated to cover your event or publish your press release just because you want them to do so.

3. Shelf Life

Advertising: Because you pay for space or airtime, you can run your ads over and over for as long as your budget allows. An ad generally has a longer shelf life than a single press release.

Public relations: You submit a press release about a new product, a newsworthy event, a news conference, or a trend story only once, and the PR exposure you receive is circulated only once. A journalist won’t publish the same information three or four times.

4. Wise Consumers

Advertising: Consumers know when they’re reading an advertisement that someone is trying to sell them something.

Public relations: When someone reads a news article written about your product or views coverage of your event on TV, they’re seeing something you didn’t pay for with ad dollars. The public views it differently than it would a paid advertisement because your information has third-party endorsement—it’s viewed by the news media to be of some value.

5. Creativity or a Nose for News

Advertising: You get to exercise your creativity in creating new ad campaigns and materials.

Public relations: In public relations, you have to have a nose for news and be able to generate buzz through various news outlets. You also exercise your creativity, but you do so by coming up with ideas and producing written materials the news media finds intriguing.

6. In-House or Out on the Town

Advertising: If you’re working at an ad agency, your main contacts are your co-workers and the agency’s clients. If you buy and plan ad space on behalf of the client, then you’ll also interact with media salespeople.

Public relations: You interact with the news media and develop relationships with editors, news directors, and reporters. You’re in constant touch with your contacts at print publications, broadcast media, and digital outlets.

7. Target Audience or Hooked Editor

Advertising: You’re looking for your target audience and advertising accordingly. You wouldn’t advertise a women’s health product in a men’s sports magazine.

Public relations: You must have an angle and hook to get editors or news directors to use your information for inclusion in an article or to cover your event. It has to be relevant and of the moment.

8. Limited or Unlimited Contact

Advertising: Some industry pros have contact with the clients. Others, like copywriters or graphic designers, may never meet with a client.

Public relations: In public relations, you are visible to the media. Also, PR pros aren’t always called on for the good news. If there was an accident at your company or impending litigation, you may have to give a statement or on-camera interview to journalists because you are the spokesperson for the company.

9. Special Events

Advertising: If your company sponsors an event, you wouldn’t want to take out an ad giving yourself a pat on the back for being such a great company. This is where your PR department steps in.

Public relations: If you’re sponsoring an event, you can send out a press release, and the news media might pick it up and give you positive press exposure.

10. Writing Style

Advertising: Buy this product! Act now! Call today! These are all things you can say in an advertisement. You want to use those action words to motivate people to buy your product.

Public relations: You’re strictly writing in a no-nonsense news format—who, what, where, when, and why. Any blatant commercial messages in your communications will be edited out by the media—or their presence may dissuade them from wanting to deal with it.

F. Advantages and disadvantages of public relations

Advantages of public relations

1. Trustworthy/Credibility: Consumers today are more careful when spending. That’s why having trustworthiness is very crucial to being a successful business. Consumers are more likely to believe messages that come from public relations rather than paid-for advertising messages. It is one of the more effective forms of promotion and a medium of convincing.
2. Cost-effective: The cost of public relations is very low. The cost to carry out the PR activity always occurs, but you can control the expense if you compare it to the other ways of advertising.
3. Reach: With PR, it’s much easier to aim and fire at that target market you are hoping to reach. Media sources can place the information that is right up the consumer’s alley and give them the essential information they need.
4. Build a positive image: PR is not just to endorse a product. PR takes the entire business and puts it in a positive light. This helps create a positive image of brand and company
5. Lead Generation: The media settlement that you obtain from PR is long-lasting. You’ll likely have early information on leads, and then as time wears on, you’ll notice that there is still the possibility of lead generation from just one good piece of media attention. These inquiries may give the firm some quality sales leads.

Disadvantages of public relations

1. Special skills needed: PR is a very difficult discipline to understand and conduct successfully. A strategy supported by the professional knowledge of the media will be needed if you want to get into the media, where you can get high responses to your promotions.
2. Evaluation: It may be difficult to evaluate the impact of the message, since the customers are not obliged to respond to it.
3. Response rate: The customer may make untimely buying arising from the picture created by the firm. While PR messages can break through the clutter of commercials, the receiver may not make the connection to the source.
4. The message may not be clearly understood: while public relations uses many of the same channels as advertising, such as newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, and the Internet, it differs significantly from advertising in that marketers do not have direct control over whether a message is delivered and where it is placed for delivery.
5. Higher cost: It is costly in terms of time and finance involved because sometimes it takes a year to build a positive image.
6. Long-term effect: Effects may take a long time before they are actually realized.

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Atish Singh

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