From figuring out this whole AI thing, keeping up with the ever-growing demand for integrated tools and strategies, and the big one, consistently adding value to our client relationships– there are a variety of areas sellers need to navigate in the new year to remain competitive.  

That’s where this blog comes in – think of it as your friendly guide to help you prepare to navigate what’s on the horizon in 2024. We’ll dive into the trends that are reshaping our industry, like understanding why brands might be breaking up with agencies more often, and how the rise of AI in marketing is changing the game. 

What to Expect from Brand Marketers in 2024

1. Brands Will Be Replacing More Agency Partners 

A new marketing relationship survey indicates that a rising number of brands are unsatisfied with their existing agency partners.The report indicates that 55% of brand marketers who responded are considering a change of agency within the next six months. Why? According the the survey, top reasons including:

• Dissatisfaction with value: Brands are increasingly dissatisfied with the value provided by their current agencies. This dissatisfaction is a primary factor driving brands to consider changing their agency partners.
  
• Issues with delivery: Brands are also unhappy with the delivery of services by their agencies. This includes aspects like the timeliness, quality, and effectiveness of the services provided.

• Agency-client disparities: There is a significant disparity between the perceptions of brands and agencies regarding the reasons for ending agency-client relationships. While brands cite dissatisfaction with value and delivery as top reasons, agencies underestimate these factors.

• Changes in strategic needs: While agencies are recognized for bringing strong strategies, they are perceived as overcharging for their services. Brands are seeking partners who can offer both strategic excellence and cost-effectiveness.

• Chemistry and professionalism: For brands looking to select a new agency partner, chemistry and professionalism have emerged as important aspects. This indicates a need for agencies to align more closely with the culture and values of their clients.

• Demand for specific services: There is an increased demand for specific services like content creation and video production, suggesting that brands are looking for agencies with particular capabilities in these areas.

2. Acquisitions and Consolidation Will Increase Pressure

Boutique and niche service offerings might run into a bit of more competition going into the new year as agency holding companies continue their acquisition spending sprees. This gobbling up of the market share has been inspired by a multitude of factors, including:

• Client demand for integrated services: The consolidation trend is largely driven by client demands for integrated, simplified service offerings. Agencies are responding by creating larger, more comprehensive entities that can offer a range of services under one roof, making them more attractive and efficient partners for brands.

• AI and tech integration: Agencies are heavily investing in AI and technology, focusing on measurement and insights. This trend is driven by advertisers’ demands for more robust analytics and validation of their campaigns’ effectiveness. Major acquisitions, such as Omnicom’s purchase of Flywheel and Stagwell’s acquisition of Left Field Labs, emphasize the growing importance of digital commerce solutions and AI in marketing.

• Influencer and social marketing emphasis: There’s a notable shift towards integrating influencer and social marketing capabilities. With the influencer market and social media spending growing rapidly, major holding companies are acquiring specialized agencies in this area. These acquisitions, such as WPP’s purchase of Goat and Stagwell’s acquisition of Movers+Shakers, show that a strong social and influencer presence is essential for modern advertising campaigns.

• Streamlined financials and full-service models: Brands are demanding more streamlined, integrated agency models. This has led to mergers aimed at simplifying structures and offering comprehensive services. Examples include WPP combining VML, Y&R, and Wunderman Thompson into VML, and M&C Saatchi’s restructure to combine multiple subsidiaries. This consolidation aims to make agencies more appealing and easier to work with for large clients.

• Increased focus on detailed reporting and campaign measurement: Recent acquisitions indicate a future trend where advertisers will demand more detailed reporting and precise campaign measurement. The emphasis is shifting from creative novelty to data-driven insights and analytics.

• Adaptation to the creator economy: The integration of influencer and social marketing arms within agencies reflects an adaptation to the creator economy. This approach allows brands to engage with audiences in more authentic and creative ways, leveraging the influence of social media personalities and platforms.
  

3. More Project Work, Less Traditional Pitches 

In 2024, we anticipate that more and more brands will be leaning toward more project-based work and run fewer traditional agency searches. We have several reasons for this prediction:

• The cost of a pitch is upwards of $1M with brands footing most of the bill 
• In 2023, agency pitches brought in 35% less revenue Y/Y
• Continued economic uncertainty 

Going into 2024, brand marketers are being asked to do more with less spend. These stats coupled with the increasing amount of resources like Wripple, that make it easy for them to get matched with agencies who can quickly start executing on projects, makes us believe that in the new year, many brands will ditch the traditional pitch and look for faster means of completing project-based initiatives. 

4. The AI Revolution Will Continue to Grow

Marketers will continue to focus on leveraging AI in 2024 due to its transformative impact on various aspects of marketing. Primary areas of focus will include hyper-personalization, content creation, and predictive analytics. This will enable marketers to create highly targeted and personalized campaigns by analyzing vast amounts of data, thus offering customer experiences at an unprecedented scale.

The challenge will be balancing this personalization with consumer privacy concerns. AI’s integration into marketing and technology software will impact all facets of marketing, offering both opportunities and challenges. Marketers will search for solutions that help them maintain content authenticity and originality. 

AI’s role in predictive analytics will also be significant, aiding marketers in foreseeing market trends and consumer behavior. Overall, the integration of AI is expected to drive marketing towards more efficient, responsive, and customer-centric approaches.

What These Trends Mean For Sellers in 2024

With these expected trends, ad tech sellers, sponsorship sellers, and ad agencies need to focus on aligning closely with client needs, specializing in high-demand services, adapting to market consolidation, leveraging AI and technology, and being flexible and responsive to project-based work demands. This presents several areas for new business leaders to focus on in the new year:

1. Consistently Add Maximum Value

Acquiring a new client costs 5x more than retaining an existing one. To ensure you’re not one of the agencies on the chopping block, take a look at your existing accounts to ensure your team is offering as much value as possible to secure the relationship for the long-haul. A few ways to do this include:

• Develop customized solutions: Move beyond generic service offerings. Tailor your strategies and solutions specifically to each client’s unique needs and business goals. Show that you understand their specific market challenges and opportunities.

• Have a results-driven approach: Focus on delivering measurable results. Utilize data analytics to track campaign performance and make data-driven decisions. This approach will demonstrate your commitment to achieving tangible outcomes for your clients.

• Have regular communication and transparency: Establish a clear and consistent line of communication. Regularly update clients on progress, challenges, and successes. Transparency in your operations builds trust and shows your commitment to their success.

• Always educate and inform: Build a culture that prides themselves on going the extra mile. Always strive to provide clients with insights and knowledge about the latest marketing trends and how they can be leveraged for their benefit.

• Strategic partnerships and network utilization: Always remember that there’s enough success for everyone to go around. As agency conglomerates continue to expand, boutique shops need to find creative ways to offer omnichannel solutions that drive results. If you can’t execute a capability, leverage your network to offer clients additional value through strategic partnerships, expanding their reach and resources.

2. Now’s the Time to Start Proactively Reaching Out to Marketers: 

With this many brands suggesting they are looking for new partners, now is a great time to start building relationships with brand marketers. Getting started can be challenging if you don’t already have an outreach strategy. But here’s our best tips to get going:

• Research and identify prospects: Success always starts with your list. You have to be contacting the right people. Conduct thorough research to identify brands that are the best fit for your agency’s expertise. Look for brands that may be experiencing challenges your agency is uniquely qualified to solve. Not sure what kind of brands to go after? Start by looking at your agency roster and identify right to win clients.

• Personalized communication: No, we don’t mean adding their first name to a mass email. After conducting thorough research, reach out with personalized messages that demonstrate your knowledge of their brand and industry. Avoid generic sales pitches. Instead, focus on how your agency can address their specific challenges or goals.

• Develop a must-try offer: Whether you’re providing a service or a software, provide something complimentary to get your foot in the door. This could be a free trial or a free brand audits or consultation. This can be an effective way to demonstrate the value you can bring to their business while also building trust with the potential client.

• Get comfortable with following up: Email cadences are your friend. If you think you’re being annoying by sending 7 emails over a few months– you’re not. It takes an average of 8 touches to get an initial meeting with a decision maker. So strap in… and get comfortable with following up regularly until they book the call or tell you to go away.

3. AI Won’t Replace You. But It Can Help You Sell More & Should Be Used Correctly.

AI isn’t going to steal anyone’s job in 2024. It is still very much in its beginning stages and is merely a tool that needs to be utilized in your toolkit. But it’s an incredibly powerful tool that should be leveraged both as a selling proposition, and internally to improve your sales processes. 

Using AI as a unique selling point:

Brands are going to continue looking for partners who can use AI to reduce costs and streamline processes and help solve problems quickly. AI innovation will be a unique selling point in 2024 and something partners will get public recognition for. For example, this year Adweek announced the first-ever AI award to MediaMonks for their use of AI in both internal operations and client work. There will be an increased focus on how partners can use AI in meaningful and creative ways for clients.

A few ways you can utilize AI as a unique selling proposition to brand marketers include:

• Predictive analytics for targeted campaigns
• Personalized customer experiences
• Automated content creation and optimization
• Streamlined production 
• Enhanced ROI measurement and analytics
• Combating social injustices and stereotypes through brand messaging 
• Voice and visual search optimization 
• Programmatic advertising
• Interactive and immersive experiences
• Inclusive and purpose driven advertising

AI is still a new territory– and in many cases, it isn’t quite living up to where marketers are hoping it can be.  So it’s important that whatever you are providing brands delivers on the promise you sold. 

Using AI to enhance your internal sales process

At Catapult, AI has been a major topic among our clients and how they can leverage it to enhance their internal sales processes.

Dixie Gilbert, Director of Partnerships at Catapult  commented, “I was just having a discussion about AI prompts and how AI is messing up good content because everybody’s using the same AI cadence.” She goes on to explain that the most important thing to know about AI is that you really have to learn how to prompt AI and then craft your messages around it. It should be a creative assistant. Prompting really holds a key for creative collaboration.” 

Remember, AI is a tool, not a replacement. So when crafting scripts, decks, email cadences using it– remember to proofread and add a human element to everything it produces. 

Conclusion: Close More Deals in 2024

One thing brands, agencies, sponsorship sellers and adtech providers alike share– the economic state of 2024 is unpredictable, yet we are being asked to hit higher and higher quotas.

Right now, expanding your sales budget for tools and adding to overhead may not be an option. But you need senior level sellers out there getting your products and services in front of brand marketers.

If this resonates with you, outsourcing your sales operations may be a great solution. 

Catapult is the industry’s leading fractional new business development firm for agencies, sponsorship sellers and adtech providers. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you close more deals in 2024 and beyond.

Check out our latest workshop where we delve into the key to agency success:

Unlocking the Potential of Mergers and Acquisitions

This workshop provides insightful guidance and actionable resources to inform your pre-letter-of-intent and due diligence considerations to set the stage for successful post-merger integration. So join us and avoid the costly mistake of merging with the wrong firm. If you decide not to pursue a merger, you’ll still find these insights valuable for strengthening your own agency.

 

Many times when a brand releases a Request For Proposal (RFP) to the public, they already know who will win their business. Brands come up with an RFP after conversations are already started around problems they’re experiencing internally, and have talked to agencies about that problem. These initial conversations are much less formal than a pitch but can lead to the RFP process. So how can you get on the brand’s shortlist before an RFP is released?

It takes months of build-up to get in front of the RFP process, but with a proactive and consistent approach, you can save resources and turn out a higher win rate for your RFPs.

In this webinar, Catapult and Winmo share strategies and tactics to beat the RFP process.
The following questions are discussed:

Which RFPs do I have a right to win?
What can I do to get in front of brands before the RFP goes to bid?
Is there a way to win the bid before the RFP is out?

These questions are answered during the recording, but you can submit your questions through the chat and the Catapult team will be able to respond in real-time.

 

A discovery call is the first of many conversations and can be defined as a time to uncover where they are in their buying journey. Before guiding the conversation toward services or capabilities, you need to first meet them where they are.

On a successful discovery call, the prospect asks 8-10 questions on average. With about 30 minutes scheduled, what do you do with the rest of the time to make sure the call is successful?

A great discovery call will allow the prospect to do most of the talking, provide you with insights needed to navigate the deal further down your pipeline, and open the conversation up for those opportunities. In the end, you want the prospect to ask for a follow-up conversation. 

In this webinar, Catapult shares best practices on not just knowing when the call was successful for you and the prospect, but how to keep the conversation going long after the call has ended.

 

Join this webinar to learn:

What is the difference between meetings with inbound vs outbound leads?
How do I prepare the team before meeting with a prospect?
How can I use Winmo to prepare for these calls?

These questions are answered during the recording, but you can submit your questions through the chat and the Catapult team will be able to respond in real-time.

 

Is your agency completely overwhelmed with an insanely busy month? One where your team has two pitches coming up, and the agency’s biggest client wants a new campaign in 4 weeks? Not to mention the 6-year client that’s seen steady growth, but the account is in review, and the brand lead is your sister-in-law’s mother. You think the review is a slam dunk, but you are still a little nervous about it. Then the biz dev team walks in and has a request. He needs assets, case studies, landing pages, and revisions to the website that were created when the agency was looking to be acquired which is now most certainly not geared for business development.  That’s a frustrating ask from Biz Dev when you’re this busy, but please…

But don’t be mad at your biz dev team.

It’s easy to shove business development needs to the back burner with everything else on your plate. You think, “Why can’t they continue to use the case studies they have? Sure they’re a little “dated”, but they’re in the category.” Instead of looking at it from their angle, or from your own concern over more work, think through the lens of a prospect… 

A prospect has 40 agencies a week all claiming to be experts in their space and can help grow their business. And all of them say they understand the prospect’s audience and are passionate (or nimble, collaborative, creative, agile, innovative – whatever the overused word might be). The 2-year-old case study you sent them shows big numbers, but 2 years is ancient history in their business. This has also never been more true than now in the time of COVID. A prospect’s problem looks different today than it did two years ago. Does your team understand it? Has your agency solved it before? Prove it. Because they have 39 other business development people claiming their agency is the perfect one for them.  

So how do you handle an insanely busy month?

We know reviews are stressful. They take time and energy, which means that creating more new biz tools for your team can seem like an extra burden. Remember though, as you are defending your agency against a shortlist of other agencies with a client who has experienced successful growth with you over the last 6 years, your business development team is tasked with getting your agency an introduction into a brand that doesn’t know you at all and is up against 40 other agencies who are all “perfect” for their business. Both are unique challenges, but in order to continue to get into pitch situations, that new biz team of yours needs to continuously beat 39 other competitors, day in and day out.  They can’t go into battle with old weapons, or in their case, old case studies.  No matter how busy you get, it’s important to always allocate the right resources to continued growth for your agency, even when you feel overwhelmed with current clients.

So, don’t get mad at business development when they tell you they need that updated case study (or a landing page, or a GIF…), because they are doing the job that very few want. Think of them through the words of Jack Nicholson from “A Few Good Men”:

“You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. My existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.” 

And as you get busy with those assets, it might also be a good idea to be extra nice to your sister-in-law.

 

 

 

 

The conversation around email is different than what it would have been just three weeks ago, and certainly before that. So let’s talk about what’s working, what’s not, and what makes a great email. Obviously, with the pretty radical changes over the last few weeks, everyone’s been adjusting to this new normal, and what worked yesterday, doesn’t necessarily work today. But let’s be clear in saying, there’s no perfect email and there’s no perfect approach, especially now that we’re all going through something nobody has ever gone through before. It’s really new ground for all of us. This is the time to take an extra minute in any outreach that you’re doing. Be thoughtful, empathetic, and intelligent about how you’re going to be approaching any new conversations with brands or prospects that you want to work with.

The truth is, we’ve already seen commerce will continue. Once we get through the initial shock of everyone saying, “Hang on, freeze, let’s figure out what the heck is going on here,” everyone is still going to have to find ways to go about their day. Brands are going to continue to have to market to their consumers. They’re just going to have to find new ways to do so. And budgets will be moving from one area to the next. With that being said, our priority at Catapult is to ensure our agency partners are the ones actually guiding brands while they’re examining this new marketplace.

There are two very different approaches with regard to emails. 

These approaches are the mass email approach and the account-based marketing approach. From our perspective, the ABM approach is where we typically find ourselves seeing the most value in our prospect interactions. Certainly, within the current climate, we would see all of our agencies needing to double down in the ABM approach even further. 

What is a custom one-to-one ABM approach?

The ABM approach focuses on getting the message of your value proposition and what you’re trying to sell in a very customized way using things you know about the brand and the prospect and incorporating that throughout your messaging. An example of that, in a normal world, would be doing specific research on an individual or company. You can look at earnings reports and try to anticipate what they’re looking for, or if they’re shifting dollars into eCommerce you should write a message about that. You could include language like, “I read recently that you’re shifting dollars into eCommerce, and you want to grow your eCommerce efforts 9%.” 

And then, the account-based portion of that, you would write a different message to different stakeholders within that company. Each level of seniority is looking at things through a different lens, so use that same value prop with your stakeholder in mind as well. As far as quantities of email, I think there’s a lot of teams that are out there plugging into something like a HubSpot or an Act-On and saying, “Here are 1000 people we’re going to send out our new business emails, and get those out and about.”

So what should be the quantity goal when you’re creating these more highly customized emails? You’ll want to keep in mind when you are creating a highly customized piece that’s going to be focused on an individual stakeholder, or group of stakeholders within the organization, it’s going to be small because it’s a lot more time consuming to dive into the research. In terms of the number of people in a cadence, it could be anywhere from 5 – 15, depending on what types of similar themes you might be able to weave through each of the individual stakeholder groups. So, it’s certainly much smaller in scale than would be a broader-based approach.

Within those groups, if you’re sending a lower quantity and you have 15 really highly targeted messages that are going out then your response rates are obviously much higher. We know this greatly changes depending on the category, vertical, title, etc., but you’re typically looking at an average of 10 – 20 percent higher open and/or reply rates. 

Our Group Directors and Business Development Directors say the same is true for them when working on behalf of our agency partners. The open rates for highly customized messages are incredibly higher, and the reply rates are sometimes as high as 5%, which is substantial if you’re reaching out to enterprise businesses as it’s far above the industry average. Our way of going about this at scale for our agency partners is by utilizing SalesLoft, which is different from a marketing automation tool like a HubSpot, or Pardot because it allows our team to take those really targeted groups and customize each one of those emails without entirely recreating the wheel. 

How do you still take an ABM approach if you’re customizing 50% of the email? This is definitely possible if you are filtering vertical information, especially, because there is a common theme people will recognize and that will resonate with a particular audience with a certain industry. Just balance your messaging with a little less personalization based on an individual or what you might know with a higher focus on their industry or vertical. 

Here are three key elements of a successful email in today’s climate:

There are three parts to successful emails in today’s climate which are research and insights, focus, and ensuring we’re being human in our tone and in our actions within these emails. 

Research and Insights

Here’s the kind of research our team is doing on a person, and then on a company before deploying any outreach. We’ll break this up into two parts – pre-pandemic, and then post.

We research any senior-level stakeholders, C level and above, and even a step underneath that. Those people typically have been interviewed by multiple different organizations, where you can go find them talking in their own words to see what they’re saying about their business. For those people, it is absolutely best to communicate on a personal level, because you’re usually getting a personal point of view during those interviews, directly, on their business. So regurgitating that back to them, answering some of the things that they’ve said is their focus. Multiple times they’ll say, “We’re going to shift everything to creative this year. We’re going to shift everything to this. We’re trying to do this.” They’ll tell you what their attempts for the year are in those types of interviews. And the interviews are everywhere. Just Google their name and you’ll be able to find them.

Whenever you get lower into brand managers and senior-level marketers, you’re not going to find a personal point of view, so it’s best to do your research on the company. Find what’s going on in the organization, especially if you get down into what their typical responsibilities are, and speak directly to that. A lot of times they will want to introduce you to someone more senior than them if you can nail down what is going on in their world. So essentially, do your research for messaging to lower titles on a company level and for higher-ranked titles, get really personal. You can also reference earning reports and use direct quotes from almost the entire C suite. Those are extremely helpful as well.

Now, in our current pandemic climate, it’s harder to do that, because things that C suite executives said last month are no longer relevant in most cases. Their focus before the pandemic was completely different than what their focus is right now.

So now that we are here, in the middle of this pandemic, it is still important to connect with individuals on a personal basis, but really focusing on what is going on in their industry and how they are affected by this new normal. If you are reaching out to CPG brands, for instance, hone in on the brand and category level, and understand the challenges they’re facing in today’s world. Position the agency in a way that the brand knows you understand the challenges they are facing. This is your opportunity to connect the dots between what your value proposition is, and the strengths and expertise that your agency has. 

Keep in mind, you never want to reach the point where you have over-researched and over-customized. Our goal should not be to write a 100-page white paper on every single one of the companies and individuals you are reaching out to, so how long should your emails be and what is the right amount of research to include? 

The email size can depend on the touchpoint that you’re on. If it’s your first one, try a few paragraphs of customization, or a few paragraphs in total. As far as customization, if your email is customized over 62%, then at that point there is the potential that you lose everything to say and you just end up sounding more like a stalker. We recommend customizing about 50% of your email which is a true ABM approach without overdoing, and sometimes even just 25% can still be a super powerful email. If you’re just talking to beverages and non-alcoholic beverages, or even if you go into just functional beverages, it sounds very targeted, very customized, but you’re only probably customizing the first 25%. 

In terms of how much time you should spend researching, Google makes it easy. You can spend 5 – 10 minutes finding most of the information you need for multiple stakeholders. Occasionally, it may take you longer, but for the most part, it doesn’t take hours to find what you need with the resources available to you these days. And a really good piece of insight can be used against different people. We’ve had much success at Catapult with our agency partners when we have done so. You can repackage your data and your narrative in outreach that you’re doing for multiple companies within the same category to save a lot of time.

When customizing emails right now, use a lot of caution in what you’re saying. If you’re trying to anticipate what the brand is planning or referring to anything that’s dated longer than yesterday, you might be better off keeping your messaging shorter, simpler, and to the point, just because there are landmines everywhere within every bit of the economy right now. Assuming you know everything that’s going on within a brand will be challenging to do right now. 

A lot of times, what we see from agencies when they first come on board with Catapult is a lot of over-research when we discuss what they’ve done in the past. They want to put together a huge insights piece that requires significant time from their research team before they ever send out the first email to whatever brand it is that they’re aiming at. They usually aren’t thinking about the fact that it will take three weeks to get the first email out once it’s built. The goal of your first email is to secure a conversation and not to sell anything, but just to provide value in what your agency can do for a brand. That kind of email can be achieved through a very short message, that maybe pulls out one little piece of an insight that maybe they already know, but it’s just showing you understand their business and then you can carry on to the next step. You don’t have to blow their mind with a single great insight and piece of research but to assume you know more about the beverage industry than the person that’s sitting in the beverage industry all day is slightly offensive. It’s all about balancing your understanding and expertise and how you can help a brand solve a problem and doing it in a very empathetic way.  

One of the best places we go for research is Winmo. We use Winmo alerts for our agency partnerships to bring information to us on a particular category, person, or company as it changes. The alerts allow us to through the right communication and messaging to put out in front of clients or potential prospects. Also, the search engine universe gives you B2B publications that focus on a particular category. 

Focus

When we talk about concentrating on a particular category, it also translates into our second point around your focus. The idea of focus is about understanding the position of your agency’s core promise which is what you do best and where you bring the absolute most value to any of our prospects. 

Why is the focus around your agency’s promise so important for your messaging given everything that is going on in the world today? 

Especially right now, people are busy. They don’t have the time to connect dots between if you’re referencing a bunch of different case studies and past work. They need to know exactly what you can do, what your core capabilities are, how you can help them at this moment. Anything other than that in your messaging will be ignored right now. It’s important to be crystal clear. If your email answers the questions: What does your agency do? What do you excel at? And How do you help? You are on the right track. It’s more important than ever to just remove the fluff and quickly get to the point. That way, if a brand is having the same problem that you can solve, then you are at the forefront of their minds when looking for a partner. 

If you’re looking for a way to quickly talk about yourselves in any of your outbound emails or LinkedIn/social messaging, we recommend thinking about it as a sentence which answers these four questions: 

Who are you?
Who do you actually serve?
What is the problem that you’re actually going to solve?
Why are you different? 

If you can answer those four things in one sentence, then you are giving a clear view of exactly where your focus is, what your promise to a brand is, and then pushing into that area of what’s going on with them. Keeping all of this in mind while being really empathetic in the beginning shows that we’re all human and we’re all going through a whole new reality. After you have shown your empathy, we recommend including the messaging around your focus. But always remember to lead with empathy and ensure that your message doesn’t sound fake.  

Tone

Let’s talk about how your tone changes now that a brand’s focus is very different.

In terms of where we are today, one of the most important things to be is really empathetic to what everyone’s going through, and having an understanding tone. That means acknowledging what’s happening in the world, but also acknowledging the fact that you’re in business, they’re in business, and there’s still business to be done. You can do this in a very tactful way by always offering up assistance in areas where they might need help. This is crucial for emphasizing the value proposition and strengths of your agency and communicating it in an effective, tasteful way. 

From there, it is important to keep in mind that you’re not so much trying to do a hard close, even though that’s what you want in a perfect world, but rather end up with a conversation that moves the relationship along. Understand that people are a lot more sensitive now with everything that’s going on in the world, so a softer close may sound like; “If now’s not the right time, perhaps sometime when it feels right based on where you are with your business.” That sort of an approach represents the fact that “Hey, this is my job to reach out to companies and create and nurture relationships. And I know you have a job too, so let’s talk when the time is right, based on whatever is happening in your world right now.”

Your tone should never lead with fear or sound fake.

We all know that it’s going to be a tough couple of months. You don’t have to remind your prospects of what is going on or scare them into working with you. Never lead with fear, instead be as positive and optimistic as possible, while still being realistic. 

The other part to mention about tone is sounding fake. I’ve gotten a ton of emails from just all sorts of different providers offering help. And just the term “help”, comes off very fake. In that instance, I don’t know who you are, we’re not connected on LinkedIn, we’ve never had a conversation, and you just offered your help, but you’re an email testing software that has nothing to do with what it is that we’re doing, or what we’re going through right now. So the idea of just that word “help” feels very manufactured to me. 

We encourage you to position your messaging regarding help around something very specific. You could say something like, “Hey, we know that those dollars from conferences and events are going to be moving to digital, and we specialize in digital services.” Offering to help guide someone through those kinds of shifts, and where you should be prioritizing or getting the most out of those dollars, it’s a very different conversation than, “We’re here to help with anything you guys need.” It just feels very fake and cold. 

We know this is going to look different for every agency. If you do have information to leverage that’s of value, like published reports or relevant content, use it. That’s certainly a way to help without saying you’re helping, you’re providing a service. And if you don’t have those resources, it’s about using empathy and understanding to show you can solve a unique problem.  

Keep in mind, just because your agency may not have the global reach, data, and analytics as others doesn’t mean that you don’t have something of value to offer for free, which is nothing more than your own expertise, and your own ability to help provide analysis on something very specific. That’s key when we’re talking about offering to help in any of these different areas. We’re offering our help or our expertise on something that we believe they are thinking about and that’s keeping them up at night. Offering something for free can be as simple as just a conversation. Maybe that’s all they need, is just to be able to sit down and say, “Holy crap, we have no idea what we’re going to be doing with our budget over the next few months, and we’re sitting right here.” And you can say, “You know what? I actually work with three other companies just like yours, and they’re in the exact same boat. Does it make sense for us to sit down and talk this through? Would it be helpful for me to be a sounding board for you?” It’s not a crazy ask, and it sounds very personal and human and empathetic.

There’s not a brand out there that will say, “We’ve got this, we know exactly what to do.” They’re exactly like everyone else in this situation. No one has a coronavirus playbook or a pandemic playbook, it wasn’t on anyone’s radar to do this homework, and everyone’s kind of figuring it out as they go. So people do appreciate it if you do have any sort of advice that’s actually helpful. If you do have something for free, we’re seeing some success with webinars right now, whether it’s a one to one webinar, or hosting a group of like-minded people. 

In Conclusion 

It’s okay to be human and tell people, “No, I don’t know what’s going to happen two or three months from now, and no, I’m not an expert on pandemics and the way brands are going to react to every single pandemic. But what I am is an expert in is crisis communications, or SEO/SEM, or video production. And I can give you an expert’s viewpoint on those things, what may or may not happen, but more importantly, how we can potentially help you put your dollars, your budgets, your time, and everything in the right places as you go about trying to make the best decisions for your brand.”

The most important thing for agencies right now is to be consistent, be on point, and be smart about what you’re doing and how you’re saying it because, at the end of the day, this world pandemic is going to be in the rearview mirror. And if you’re being thoughtful about your outreach and communicating in a meaningful way, brands are going to be interested in you even if they’re not raising their hand right now. 

A positive free conversation right now, that means absolutely zero revenue to your agency, may absolutely turn into real revenue a year from now. All because you were the trusted, decent person who had a good conversation with them while all this was going on.

Can you believe we’re approaching an entirely new decade? As you begin planning for 2020 new business, remember to plan the resources required to support that growth in the new year. While those resources will be unique to your agency’s specific growth plan, it never hurts to follow a proven formula to calculate what you need. To help with this forecasting, we’ve built an Agency Growth Calculator which evaluates your objectives and realistic requirements from each of the following steps of the agency growth funnel.

Understand Your Growth Requirements

Your KPIs are a direct reflection of your overall growth requirements. While this may seem obvious, some agencies find it extremely difficult to clearly identify their metrics for success. Here are some questions to answer during your initial planning meetings to ensure you set the right metrics:

What’s your overall revenue goal?
While there are many approaches for setting your revenue goal for the year, make sure it’s nailed down and clearly communicated prior to the new year so all parties can set operational KPIs off of that plan.

How much have you grown organically?
This gives you a good idea of the outbound effort you need after organic growth.

What’s your typical churn rate (loss of clients)?
You can only put so much on top of the funnel if you’re losing all of it at the bottom. This is why it’s important to understand how much revenue is falling off each month.

How big is this goal in comparison to new business amounts you’ve produced in years past?
Knowing how much you’re planning to grow new business Y/Y is important, particularly so you can understand the resources required to achieve that growth.

What’s your overall pitch win percentage and what’s the win percentage when they are inbound warm leads vs. cold opportunities you have generated?
Be honest when answering this question; the higher pitch win percentage you have, the less outbound effort will be required. Keep in mind that warm opportunities close at a higher rate than cold opportunities.

Have you ever generated a cold pitch opportunity before?
Many agencies rely on referrals for 100% of their pitch opportunities. While those are warm and close at a higher rate, they are not reliable or sustainable. Evaluating this gives you a better understanding for how long it can take to produce cold opportunities in the future.

Define Warm New Business Opportunities

It’s important to understand the amount of new business opportunities your agency brings in. These opportunities typically come from referrals, networking, and word of mouth. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t love these lead sources? They are seen by most agency principals as the most attractive type of lead as it’s free business that came directly to you.

To help generate more of these we recommend activating your core 100 network. We define this as the core network of decision-makers with budget or marketing decision power that you have a 1st-degree relationship with. By connecting with this group at least once per month, whether a simple hello or providing them with relevant thought leadership, the likelihood of getting more referral leads increases significantly.

Lastly, while warm opportunities are nice it’s important you aren’t solely relying on them. Here’s why:

1. They are unpredictable and you never know when your next project will be coming in.
2. You have no control of how your portfolio expands.
3. Losing one major client could drastically impact your revenue.

Now let’s talk about how you can warm opportunities with cold prospecting for ultimate success!

Add Proactive Prospecting For New Opportunities

Since you can’t solely rely on your referral network, you must find a way to incorporate cold prospecting into your mix. Often new business directors will wonder how much outreach is enough? How many phone calls and emails will result in a qualified meeting? We recommend tracking your success rate at each touchpoint. This allows you to know if you are consistently reaching out to enough prospects in your outreach cadence. Proper measurements typically include:

• How many people typically reply to a cold email or call?
• Of those replies, how many of them turn into a discovery meeting/call?
• What number of discovery meetings turn into qualified leads?
• How many qualified leads convert to RFI/RFP opportunities? 
• What’s the win percentage of RFI/RFPs for your agency?

If you’ve never kept track of these numbers before, you can use benchmarks.

Our clients typically see conversion rates of:

• 12% – 15% opens to cold emails (above industry average of 5% – 7%).
• 7% – 10% conversion on call volume to live conversations.
• Approximately 25% of leads moving to discovery and qualifying.
• And 60% or more qualified leads moving to an RFI or RFP.   

Agencies that are just getting started on proactive outreach can see numbers a bit lower than these. Keep in mind many agencies underestimate how many prospects they actually need in their pool and keeping steady pipeline is a full-time job in itself. Make sure you have the resources and bandwidth necessary to fuel the fire.

Estimate The Investment: Time and Money

If you’re an agency executive responsible for driving new business and running the entire agency, be aware of what that double duty is costing you.

If you’re juggling too many tasks, it’s likely you are completing projects, but not doing them exceptionally well. As an agency executive, your time is best served strategically looking at ways to grow the overall business, not just through the lens of new business. If you’re worried about the time and investment it would take to hire someone in-house, we can manage this function for you at Catapult. There’s huge potential in having someone solely focused on bringing in both cold and warm opportunities for your agency.  

 

Now that you have a better understanding the agency growth funnel, what goes into forecasting your new business goals, and the resources required to hit them, check out our Agency Growth Calculator to see how the numbers line up for your business!

As the business development lead at your agency, you may already have a solid understanding that the CMO has more turnover than any other c-level position. What you may not know, however, is why and how it directly affects your prospecting efforts.

In December 2018, our sister company, Winmo, released the annual CMO Lifecycle Tenure Analysis report and it’s full of new business opportunities that you can bank on. The report analyzed over 2,400 CMO tenures across a variety of industries and also by gender.

So before you kick off the new year by pounding the phone with cold calls and shooting out emails to every CMO in the US, here are a few items that will help you build a strategic plan and reach CMOs more efficiently:

Who’s Coming In, Who’s On Their Way Out

When a CEO hires a CMO, they expect a complete brand transformation…and fast. We’ve found that CMOs typically rotate up or out of their positions around the 43 month mark. Six to 18 months later is usually when the new CMO will shake up their AOR. What does this mean for you? Start paying attention to this ‘new biz sweetspot.’ Not only do you have a possible win with the incoming CMO, but potentially with the outgoing CMO…if you know where he/she lands.

Not Every Industry Is Created Equal

According to Winmo’s report, more traditional industries such as financial services, education, associations, and travel average longer tenures. Other sectors such as consumer goods, digital business providers, restaurants and retail, however, show higher turnover rates. When prospecting, prioritize those top turnover categories to fuel your prospecting lists with new potential opportunities.

Prioritize Your Right To Win Categories

After analyzing the tenure report take a look and see if there are particular industries in which you specialize. These right to win clients will be low hanging fruit for prospecting. If you are experts in retail and consumer goods, prioritize your prospecting and spend time crafting your messaging to appeal to the CMOs and decision makers in those spaces. Your credible portfolio in these spaces will make them much more inclined to have the initial conversation.

Unfortunately, no crystal ball can tell you exactly when to contact a CMO, but this Winmo report is pretty close!  Keep an eye on those brands you’ve been hoping to work with and use this resource to your full advantage! If it’s creeping up on their 3 year anniversary, get your messaging ready. Tailor your outreach strategy by prioritizing your right to win categories. Now you’re ready to go out there and win over those dream clients! Happy prospecting!

On average, it takes 7-11 proactive touchpoints to schedule a first meeting with a prospect. In the world of agency new business, relevant persistence is key, and having a solid content distribution strategy to back it up is a requirement. Our last webinar discussed the types of content successful new business teams use in their sales outreach. In this webinar, we’ll specifically show you how to leverage certain pieces of content through targeted channels to increase engagement with top prospects and speed up sales cycles. Simply producing content will not drive results. You need to put it into action.

Watch now to learn the difference between sales and marketing content, what channels are best for amplification, and how often you should be publishing your content for new business success. Other questions we will answer throughout this webinar include:

• Should I segment my prospects to receive different types of content? 
• What types of content are best for new business prospecting?
• How do I distribute content for sales vs marketing approaches?

 

How to Amplify Your New Business Strategy with Content Distribution from AgencySquared on Vimeo.

We’ve seen more than a few agencies who aren’t seeing the results they were looking for with their current new business strategy. Many new business teams are stuck with an old mindset that proactive email marketing is just spam and not worth their time. When done right, email marketing can be a terrific way to maximize your ROI of time and money for new business growth.

So why is email such an important piece of your new business strategy? Email as an outreach approach has fewer barriers to implementation and is a relatively inexpensive process to begin. It’s also a great way to deliver the tangible results you’re looking for, because you can track everything and easily attribute leads to different campaigns. There is no mystery where leads come from.

The biggest obstacle to adopting a marketing automation strategy is “not having a strategy at all,” according to Marketing Automation Trends Survey.

Email marketing—specifically email automation campaigns—offers an inexpensive approach that will not only drive growth, but build your agency a sustainable prospect database from which you can always mine new opportunities. It’s the most effective way to grow your business, relative to the amount of money you spend. In fact, your ROI should skyrocket by implementing an email automation campaign. Consider these statistics:

• B2B marketers see an average 20% increase in sales opportunities from nurtured leads compared to non-nurtured leads after deploying a lead nurturing program.
• B2B marketers who install marketing automation increase their sales to pipeline contribution by 10%.
• 54% of companies using marketing automation capture intelligence for the sales team. This compares to only 25% of companies without marketing automation.

It all boils down to one simple fact: Agencies that adopt an email marketing and marketing automation strategy outperform those companies that do not.

Resist the stories about emails and email marketing. Not all email is spam you need to filter. If used properly, email can be your least expensive means to grow organically and gain new business.

Agencies that focus on nurtured lead programs with great content via email, will find themselves starting any new relationship with a client at a much warmer spot. Rather than viewing each other as “seller vs buyer,” good email nurture programs allows for a “teacher and student” relationship. We trust our teachers while we don’t necessarily trust someone selling something.

Our most successful agencies keep this in mind. They build a marketing automation program, implement a CRM and combine it all with a business intelligence platform such as Winmo. As you build out your new business strategy, don’t discount email’s importance, just because it’s a discounted rate to get it started.