Referrals are often an agency’s best friend when it comes to driving new business, but here are 4 reasons why you need to look beyond referrals for new business:

1. Referrals aren’t necessarily the right type of client.

2. Referrals are not a consistent and scalable source of new business.

3. If you’re a small-mid sized agency, larger agencies are going after what they didn’t use to.

4. Agencies continue to get more aggressive when it comes to new business

4 Reasons To Look Beyond Referrals For New Business

1. Referrals aren’t necessarily the right type of client.

For several reasons this could be true (wrong fit, too small, no budget), and your team could end up spending time on the wrong types of work.

2. Referrals are not a consistent and scalable source of new business.

Just as your agency experiences certain lulls given the nature of your clients’ businesses, referrals function in the same way.

3. If you’re a small-mid sized agency, larger agencies are going after what they didn’t use to.

It’s a trend that’s gained momentum, which means those referrals you’re relying on have a better chance of slowing, or drying up altogether

4. Agencies continue to get more aggressive when it comes to new business

In our own survey reports, 86% of respondents say they’re getting more aggressive in their outbound and inbound activity.

(Whether or not they actually do-we’ll see.) :)

Referrals must be part of your new business strategy, but as we mentioned in the beginning of this post, they can’t be your only source of new business.

More here from our 3 Takeaways series:

We’re an outsourced ad agency business development firm that works specifically with ad agencies, marketing services firms, and PR firms to find better qualified new business opportunities and get you closer to close.

RSW/US is headquartered in Cincinnati, OH, with experts in lead generation, targeted prospect list building, and content creation driving our ad agency business development programs.

More about our advertising agency new business strategy and outsourced business development programs here.

Be sure to visit our YouTube channel and Agency New Business Blog for further insights.

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If you’re looking for a more effective business development strategy, email Lee McKnight Jr., VP of Sales at RSW/US at lee@rswus.com.

Learn more about our outsourced business development programs here.

Learn more about our process here.

One big business development challenge for ad agencies: Climbing the Prospect Follow-Up Hill

We’re an outsourced ad agency business development firm that works specifically with ad agencies, marketing services firms, and PR firms to find better qualified new business opportunities and get you closer to close.

RSW/US is headquartered in Cincinnati, OH, with experts in lead generation, targeted prospect list building, and content creation driving our ad agency business development programs.

More about our advertising agency new business strategy and outsourced business development programs here.

Be sure to visit our YouTube channel and Agency New Business Blog for further insights.

Download this one-pager at the bottom of this post.

We created an eBook called RSW Tune-ups, a visual guide to driving more new business in 2022.

We’ll ultimately release it in full, but we’re starting by releasing individual one-pagers, designed to cover different business development challenges advertising agencies are faced with.

Download the first, Building Awareness here, the second, Targeting The Right Prospects, here, the third, Executing An Ad Agency New Business Refresh, here, and the fourth, Pushing Through The Intro Email Dead End here.

Far too often, we see agencies build a solid connection for a productive first meeting, and then… nothing. Here’s some pointers on making sure you don’t get ghosted climbing the prospect follow-up hill.

01. Remind them why they took the first meeting with you

The prospects you are pursing are busy people. If they took even 30 minutes of their time to meet with you, they have a need or they saw some sort of value in talking to you. Your primary goal in that
first meeting should be to determine why they decided to take the meeting.

Maybe they are struggling to find a partner who understands their business. Perhaps their current agency is underperforming.

Or maybe they are interested in implementing a strategy that aligns with your specific strengths.

In any case, your follow-up should help to re-establish their motivation for speaking to you in the first place.

02. Provide insight on something discussed in the first meeting

Your introductory meetings should always serve as a way to learn about the prospect and his/her business.

After that first meeting, you should have some sense of the prospect’s pain-points and you should have some understanding of their past strategies.

As you prepare to follow-up with the prospect, find ways to offer valuable perspective around something you learned in that first meeting.

Find a 3rd party news item or blog post relevant to your initial discussion. Show the prospect that you understand what they told you and demonstrate your resourcefulness.

03. Share your experience solving problems like theirs

Your follow-up should include examples of work you’ve done for clients in the same (or similar) industry as the prospect’s.

This helps to alleviate any potential concerns the prospect may have about your ability to understand his/her business.

When possible, the work examples should demonstrate ways in which you’ve solved similar challenges the prospect is facing.

Your goal is to establish credibility, provide value, and show the prospect that you are eager to help achieve his/her goals.

—————————————————————————————————————————
If you’re looking for a more effective business development strategy, email Lee McKnight Jr., VP of Sales at RSW/US at lee@rswus.com.

Learn more about our outsourced business development programs here.

Learn more about our process here.

One of the biggest initial business development challenges for ad agencies: building awareness.

We’re an outsourced ad agency business development firm that works specifically with ad agencies, marketing services firms, and PR firms to find better qualified new business opportunities and get you closer to close.

RSW/US is headquartered in Cincinnati, OH, with experts in lead generation, targeted prospect list building, and content creation driving our ad agency business development programs.

More about our advertising agency new business strategy and outsourced business development programs here.

Be sure to visit our YouTube channel and Agency New Business Blog for further insights.

We consistently talk to ad agencies about the struggle to stand out in a sea of similar firms.

So two members of our RSW/US Marcom team, Steve Taggart and Bailey Kocent, created an ebook called RSW Tune-ups, a visual guide to driving more new business in 2022.

This Visual eBook is a bite-sized guide to some of our most impactful tips along the road to new business, and will give you an introductory roadmap for developing and
executing your plan to drum up new business opportunities.

From positioning, to content production, to outreach strategies, we cover a wide range of topics in an easily digestible format that will provide immediately actionable takeaways.

We’ll be releasing it in full soon, but we’re starting by releasing individual agency new business one-pagers, designed to cover different business development challenges advertising agencies are faced with.

This first one-pager covers one of the biggest initial business development challenges for ad agencies: building awareness, focusing on three business development building blocks that will boost your agency’s signal above the noise.

1. Ad Agency Positioning:

All marketing agencies do the same thing.

Unfair?

Maybe, but that’s exactly how a new prospect views your offering.

Brands are looking to fill a specific need, and they’re looking for an agency uniquely equipped to do it.

Maybe it’s industry expertise or a capability you specialize in.

Whatever your unique selling proposition is, lean into it and make it the central theme at the core of your messaging.

Here’s some further RSW content to help create or tighten up your ad agency positioning:

Don’t Lose Focus w/Horizontal Positioning

The Ad Agency Positioning Delusion?

Unique Positioning Without Supporting Content Is Wasted Positioning

2. Ad Agency Case Studies

Case studies demonstrating your previous work are an excellent first touchpoint – offering immediate credibility through the clients you’ve worked with, the challenges you’ve helped overcome, and the results you’ve driven.

The good news is this: you’ve likely already done the legwork on these by virtue of your work with clients.

The key now is to get credit for those success stories.

Here’s some further RSW content to help create or improve your ad agency case studies:

The Most Asked About Case Study Creation Challenge

A Guide To Help Agencies Drive New Business Through Better Case Studies

3. Business Development Outreach

The final piece in finding your way into the minds of prospects isn’t a complex one, but sometimes proves to be the most difficult: getting your positioning and case studies into the hands of your prospects.

Even the best positioning needs the essentials: effective communication, a recognition of the prospect’s challenges, and polite persistence to keep your agency top of mind for when the timing is right.

Here’s some further RSW content to help form a better business development outreach strategy:

One Forgotten Reason Competitors Hurt Your Chances For More Agency New Business

You Must Do This For Prospecting Success

The RSW/US Business Development Process

 

RSW eBook: Thought Leadership’s Role in New Business: Finding Your Voice, Telling Your Story

Continuing from our previous two eBooks, A Guide To Help Agencies Drive New Business Through Better Case Studies, and A Guide To Help Agencies Drive New Business Through Better Websites, we’ve created this guide on thought leadership to help agencies, PR firms and marketing services firms tackle what can often seem insurmountable: a consistent thought leadership creation process.

There are numerous facets to an agency new business program:

There’s your website itself, which serves as a digital handshake, taking your prospect on a tour of everything you have to offer.

There’s the case studies and showcases of previous work, which serves as the product demonstration, allowing the prospect to see themselves in the work you’ve done for others.

But of course, a handshake and a demonstration can only get you so far without a voice behind them.

That’s where thought leadership comes in: it defines who your agency is, and the lens through which you see the work you do.

Solving for Why: The Numbers Behind Blogging Success

First, a bit of self-validation: why create content?

You’ll quickly find, and probably already know,  that getting into the thought leadership groove is much easier said than done.

As much as we’d like to tell you that it’s a quick and easy way to make millions, the fact is that developing this kind of content requires consistency and persistence, and it’s easy to pack it in before you even put digital pen to paper.

And while we recommend a blog hosted within your agency “ecosystem,” if the hurdle you face is one of website design (or time) – LinkedIn and/or Medium, are powerful alternatives; all principles noted in this ebook will apply to these sites as well.

However, you’ll find that thought leadership is a shortcut for multiple facets of your new business process, which is reason enough to get over that proverbial hill.

This guide will help you think about how to improve, or realistically start, a thought leadership creation process.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through:

• How to promote Without Promoting
• Building A Better Blog Post
• Best sharing practices
• Building around tent-pole content
• Content Calendars (with an example)
• SEO

And more