Ad Agency New Business: Love the One You're With
With a myriad of experts advising similar content strategies for attracting new business to your agency, we ask ourselves - what is the overarching takeaway? Simply put, narrow content, aimed at niche audiences, aligned with a strong and defendable positioning strategy. Then, why do many agencies continue to apply a generalist approach to the central component of their inbound campaign – The Agency Blog?
Research shows that, without focused content, your blog is less likely to be followed or read. Google’s announcement last month regarding its core-ranking algorithm (in terms of how it processes quality signals) further elevates the value of content quality.
Consider these two exercises when evaluating your firm’s blog:
Segment Audiences
“The majority of agency content (and social interaction) is with people who already know and support your firm. Stop looking at content creation solely as a customer acquisition vehicle and start looking at it (first and foremost) as a customer retention vehicle.” - Jay Baer/Convince & Convert
Ask yourself these questions:
Who are our best clients?
What industries do they represent?
Do these industries line up with our new client acquisition goals?
What service patterns do they follow?
Who is the most common point of contact/entry (e.g. Director-level or CMO)?
What specific characteristics do they exhibit? What business issues keep them up at night?
Prioritize your target audiences with clients and prospects that fold easily into existing business silos. Then, cater your content to speak (in a detailed manner) directly to them.
Further, we strongly recommend staying away from a preponderance of posts about YOU. We understand that you are proud of your awards, anniversaries, birthdays and office culture. However, unless you are closely connecting these topics to something that your clients and prospects value, it is counter-productive and may reinforce some of the negative stereotypes associated with our industry.
Segment Topics
Create expert blogs and, within them, personas showcasing your in-house talent. Empower these subject matter specialists to delve deeply into their specific areas of expertise with commentary and analysis to support your firm's unique market position. Brand your blog with the intent to engage and distribute it to both your client service and business development teams (along with clear instructions for usage).
Bottom line, highlyspecialized content (aimed at niche industry audiences) will help you both keep the clients you’ve got and entice the ones you want.