This is the 2021 RSW/US New Year Outlook Report, our first ad agency new business report of the year.

Be sure to visit our YouTube channel and Agency New Business Blog for further insights and breakdowns on key stats throughout Q1.

And on the second page of our report, you’ll see information on our 2021 Agency New Business Virtual Conference. It’s our first-ever new business conference, focused on small-to-mid-size agencies.

This is the first conference that brings together combined frontline perspective from senior-level marketers, leading independent agency new business directors and principals, and the new business team at RSW.

It’s February 8th through the 11th, from 1 to 3:30 PM EST each day, and if you’re an agency principal or new business director, you won’t want to miss this.

About The 2021 RSW/US New Year Outlook Report

The 2021 RSW/US New Year Outlook survey was completed by senior level Marketers and Marketing Agency executives during December, 2020.

The purpose of the survey was to glean insights relative to marketer and agency perspective as they each headed into 2021.

Topics explored included “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 growth of in-house agencies, 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 2021.

The agency sample came from the 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 varied from full service advertising, to digital, to PR, to marketing consultancies.

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

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.

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.

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 was founded in 2005.

In 2010, RSW 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.

To learn more about RSW/US, visit www.rswus.com.

To learn more about RSW/AgencySearch, visit www.rswagencysearch.com.

We hope this COVID-19 Companion Report is helpful to you agency new business strategy.

Senior-level Marketers and Marketing Agency executives completed the 2020 RSW/US New Year Outlook survey during December, 2019.

The purpose of the survey was to glean insights relative to marketer and agency perspective as each headed into 2020.

Topics explored include “biggest challenges facing marketing agencies” as seen through the eyes of marketers and agencies, topics related to spending and investment expectations, the growth of specialty agencies, the growth of in-house agencies, 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 2020.

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.

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.

In lieu of our Agency New Business Tools survey, which we’ve released for the past 5+ years, we decided to focus instead on the exploding MarTech space, and are excited to release our RSW/US 2019 Marketing Technology Survey Report.

Our President, Mark Sneider, attended last year’s MarTech West conference in San Jose and was impressed with the energy, new ideas, and new platforms that permeated the conference.

Amazing that around 5-7 years ago there were 100 MarTech platforms, and today there are over 7,000!

With so much changing so quickly in the MarTech space we felt it ideal to focus our efforts there.  We asked Marketers and Agencies about their use of MarTech platforms, their attitudes towards MarTech platforms, and, how savvy each felt the other is in the space, among other topics.

We hope you can apply our findings from the RSW/US 2019 Marketing Technology Survey Report to your own new business development efforts.

This survey report is intended to inform marketers and agencies about a variety of issues related to the exploding Marketing Technology space.

This survey was conducted among RSW/US’ database of 10,000 marketing services agencies and RSW/AgencySearch’s database of 80,000 marketers for responses.

The survey was released in August 2019.

Issues related to the usage of MarTech tools, perception of marketers’ and agencies’ savviness in this space, and expectations of future spending in MarTech are among the topics explored.

A bit of background: This study was commissioned by RSW/US.

We’re 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 the outsourced sales and marketing team. RSW/US was founded in 2005.

In 2010, RSW started RSW/AgencySearch. To date, RSW/AgencySearch has managed over 30 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 survey report.

We’re pleased to release our fifth annual Agency New Business Thought Leader Survey Report, particularly because this year we changed our structure by asking individuals who drive new business at their respective agencies to provide questions for the survey.

We asked each of them to submit questions they believed would prove helpful to agencies across the country, and ideally, this change will translate into useful takeaways for your team.

The 2018 Agency New Business Thought Leader Survey was completed by 199 Agencies from across the United States during September 2018 and was commissioned by RSW/US.

Topics in the report cover the agency new business spectrum and include questions on pitching, prospecting tools, success metrics, and internal organization.

We’ll explore the results further in upcoming blog posts, video, and interviews with each of our thought leaders to present feedback on the responses you gave to their questions.

We would like to thank the following Thought Leaders for being a part of our survey:

Jason Parks-BARKLEY
Stephen Larkin-R/GA
Matt Weiss-HUGE
Kelly Kennedy-R2i
Jordan Wells-FCB/WEST