We’re excited to release our RSW/US 2021 Marketing Technology & Agency New Business Tools report. 

We took a break last year and have completely revamped our report.  

CMO tenure slipped to just 40 months in 2020, the lowest average since 2009. 

And with 67% of marketers saying their company’s spending on analytics and marketing technology tools is increasing, and 88% of agencies recognizing that the need for these tools continues to grow, we didn’t think you needed to know that LinkedIn is the most-used social media platform for agency new business again. 

Instead, we surveyed marketers on a specific, brief set of questions around these tools and their potential challenges, for additional perspective, and then performed a more in-depth survey of agencies, to bring you a total of 19 tool categories: 12 on the tools you and your peers are using to support the marketing activities of your clients, and 7 on the tools you and your peers use to help drive agency new business. 

These categories include retargeting ad tools, audience analytics tools, cross-channel measurement & attribution tools, marketing automation tools, and target audience research tools, to name a few. 

While the bulk of our business is focused on operating as an outsourced sales and marketing group for marketing agencies looking to build a more productive agency new business program, our goal in gathering these insights is to help you build your agency business by staying on top of these tools and trends. 

Each category in this survey is reported separately, with all the technology tools shared by agencies included in the report.

If an agency noted that they were either “Very Satisfied” or “Dissatisfied/Very Dissatisfied”, we specifically called this out to help guide you in your evaluation of technology tools, and every platform is hot linked to their website’s URL in order to make it easy for you to learn
more about the platform.

Please note that this report is not intended to be a scientific study of technology tool performance.

The reporting of data reflects opinions of your agency peers and is delivered from a neutral stance by RSW/US, without endorsement of any specific platform.

We hope you enjoy the read and find this report to be helpful in moving your business to an even better level!

(Hover over the rectangle below to download.)

This is the RSW/US 2020 Agency New Business Report, Perspective On The Agency New Business Environment, 2020 and Beyond.

We’ve fielded it since 2010 and present comparable data that is available across all previous editions, providing insight on trends in key areas over the past ten years.

This report is typically heavily downloaded because the answers come from our survey of your agency peers.

This year’s survey and the resulting RSW/US 2020 Agency New Business Report are of course taking place in a time like no other, and while our survey wasn’t focused around the pandemic’s effects, it was impossible not to ask and answer our questions through that lens.

Over 5,000 Agency executives nationwide had the opportunity to participate, and in fielding the survey, we wanted to discern how the challenges and dynamics of agency new business efforts have evolved with the relentless pace of rapidly developing media channels and marketing technologies.

Our hope is the key findings and implications of the study presented in this report provide value to you as you develop your plans for the remainder of 2020 and into 2021.

If this is your first time here, RSW/US is an outsourced lead generation/business development firm that exclusively services marketing service firms (of all sizes and types).

We work with over 50 agencies across the U.S., operating as their outsourced sales and marketing team. and were founded in 2005.

In 2010, we started RSW/AgencySearch. To-date, RSW/AgencySearch has managed over 40 searches for marketers across a range of different categories, helping them find better agencies.

The RSW/AgencySearch model is unique to the industry.

The exposure to the agency and the marketer world has armed RSW/US with perspective unmatched in the industry. This perspective is woven throughout this, and every survey report.

We know there’s a large amount of content around COVID-19, but we hope our latest companion report, Agency/Marketer Response to COVID-19 Survey Report, will be of particular interest.    

Specifically, because we surveyed your peers, but also marketers, on their response to the situation.

5/15/20 Update

Prior to releasing the survey for this COVID-19 companion report, senior-level Marketers and Marketing Agency executives completed our first “Agency/Marketer Response to COVID-19 Survey” from March 20-24th, 2020.

As circumstances in the economy and our lives change so rapidly, we wanted to release this companion report, taking data from a follow-up survey completed by Senior-level Marketers and Marketing Agency executives from May 8-12th, to gain comparative, as well as new insights.

Our hope is the key findings and implications from this COVID-19 Companion Report are of value as both marketers and agencies attempt to navigate the unknown factors inherent to our current business landscape.

Agency/Marketer Response to COVID-19 Companion Report-May

 

Thanks to all of you at agencies and PR firms that have given us feedback on this report and our current videos.

We’ve created a series of these videos on a weekly basis, given how much everything changes day-to-day.

We really do hope these episodes help as you’re trying to figure out how to keep your new business efforts going. We continue to focus on maintaining, improving and getting creative with your new business efforts:

3 Takeaways Ep39 – Adjust, Don’t Stop Your Prospecting

3 Takeaways Ep40 – Prospecting Prep for Agencies – Now and in the Future

3 Takeaways Ep41 – New Business Ideas from an Agency in the Trenches

3 Takeaways Ep.42 – Don’t Make The Prospect Work For You in Agency New Business

3 Takeaways Ep 43 – One Easy Change Agencies Can Make To Drive New Business Now

3 Takeaways Ep44 – The Most Asked About Case Study Creation Challenge

3 Takeaways Ep45 – Beware The “If I Just Had This” New Business Director

3 Takeaways Ep.46 – Are You The Agency Eating Cake In The Corner?

 

Our report covers spending impact, changing marketing tactics, changing marketer needs, how agencies view new business now, and what kind of client requests agencies are getting currently.  

Certainly some tough realities in our results, but also reasons for optimism-agencies and marketers know they must stay the course.  

(Note that we’ve included an addendum with full responses from key questions-well worth the read.)  

Some initial background:

This study was commissioned by RSW/US.

RSW/US is an outsourced lead generation/business development firm that exclusively services marketing service firms (of all sizes and types).

RSW/US works with over 50 agencies across the U.S., operating as their outsourced sales and marketing team. RSW/US was founded in 2005.

Agency/Marketer Response to COVID-19 Survey Report Background

Senior-level Marketers and Marketing Agency executives completed the “Agency/Marketer Response to COVID-19 Survey” from March 20-24th, 2020.

The purpose of the survey was to glean insights relative to marketer and agency perspective during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Our hope is the key findings and implications from this study are of value as both marketers and agencies attempt to navigate the unknown factors inherent to our current business landscape.

The agency sample came from our RSW/AgencySearch database of over 5,000 marketing service companies in the U.S. and Canada ranging in size from under $5M in capitalized billings to over $100M.

The disciplines of each Agency included full-service advertising, digital, PR, and marketing consultancies, to name a few examples.

The marketer sample came from our RSW/US database of 50,000 marketing decision-maker contacts. Company size, location, and category varied.

If you would like to reproduce any of our findings in any format whatsoever, please give either Mark Sneider or Lee McKnight a call (513-559-3101/3111) or email us at mark@rswus.com / lee@rswus.com

Our 2019 RSWUS Agency New Business Report-Perspective on the Agency New Business Environment is available to download below.

We’ve fielded this survey bi-annually since 2010 and it presents comparable data available across all four surveys since then.

It’s interesting to see how some things have changed, and other things remain exactly the same.

Over 5,000 Agency executives nationwide had the opportunity to participate in this 2019 RSW/US Agency New Business survey.

We wanted to discern how agency new business efforts have evolved, especially given rapidly developing media channels and technologies.

Our hope is the key findings of our 2019 RSW/US Agency New Business Report provide value to you as you develop plans for 2020.

RSW/US commissioned this survey.

We’re an outsourced lead generation/agency new business firm, only working with marketing service firms (of various types/sizes), operating as their outsourced sales team.

We help our agency clients find qualified leads, set meetings, better position them in the market, and help them move prospects down the line to close.

RSW/US was founded in 2005. In 2010, RSW created RSW/AgencySearch.

To-date, RSW/Agency search has managed over 40 searches for brands across a variety of industries.

Exposure to both the agency and marketer worlds presents an unmatched perspective to RSW on the advertising and marketing industry.

Insights in this survey report are enriched by the benefits of this unique perspective.

We’re pleased to announce our 8th annual RSW/US Agency New Year Outlook Survey Report. The survey was completed by 158 senior level Marketers and 115 Marketing Agency executives during December, 2018.

The purpose of the survey was to glean insights relative to marketer and agency perspective as they each headed into 2019.

Topics explored include “biggest challenges facing marketing agencies” as seen through the eyes of marketers and agencies.

Also probed were topics related to spending and investment expectations, the growth of specialty agencies, the importance of measuring ROI (which marketers and agencies don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on), and the ever-increasing importance of data and analytics.

Our hope is the key findings and implications from this study are of value as you kick your marketing and sales planning into gear for 2019.

The agency sample came from our RSW/US database of over 5,000 marketing service companies in the U.S. and Canada, ranging in size from under $5M in capitalized billings to over $100M.

The disciplines of each Agency varied, and included full-service, digital, PR, and marketing consultancies, to name a few.

The marketer sample came from our RSW/AgencySearch database of 70,000 marketing decision maker contacts. Company size, location, and category varied.