Related Posts
What's the average CTC of OSP State lead in Jio
Rising Star
Conversation Starter
Additional Posts in New Business. The good, the bad, the ugly.
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
For bigger shops, the best agency advertising is PR. Everyone knows Droga5 did that NYT work because it got received so well and so publicly. That’s great advertising
Being more proactive/direct make sense for new/smaller shops to advertise, but they’re also not going for giant clients straight off (generally). I doubt seeing an ad for a small shop would really sway a P&G brand manager to do anything ... but, I could be wrong about that.
As for that centralized database, as I mentioned, confidentiality for large clients would likely be too much of a problem. For smaller/midsize clients, it might be more feasible. If you want to create one, have at it 🙃
And I’ve worked for smaller shops, but their CEOs were in charge of getting new clients. The good old glad-handing method was the most popular I’ve seen
I am in biz dev for a small shop and I do outbound all day long. The biggest challenge is
Finding prospects who are open to a new agency or have a need. Obviously look for things like changes in the CMO etc. There are services that have government and public sector RFP listings but no private listings I know of. For us it is direct sales plus content marketing/ sharing insights to drive possible inbound. And networking.
Only the clients pay the consultants. And they’re definitely not worth your time if you are real estate-only.
And you’re welcome. Best of luck!
Winmo.com is your tool
How much do you pay for Winmo??
To make a very long and complicated story short, there are two kinds of leads: inbound and outbound (prospecting).
Inbound leads are when Agency X is invited by Company Y to respond to their RFP/pitch their business. In the legacy model and almost all large agencies, this is the majority of business development activity.
Outbound leads are leads that the Agency has proactively pursued without the presence of a direct invitation. This includes all leads generated from proactive agency marketing (e.g., getting a response to an email you’ve sent touting your new work/capability).
There is no centralized database of open RFI/RFPs - though that’s not a bad idea. The problem is confidentiality. Even with NDAs, if you put your business in a central repository then lots of people may find out and that can be bad for a lot of reasons.
And you know when someone wants to be pitched when they say so by inviting you to do that. Otherwise you never know. Doesn’t mean we don’t try from time to time.
That’s pretty ironic - I remember a long time ago I read a book called the fall of advertising and the rise of PR 😀. I agree PR makes sense - honestly a lot of times when a shop does good work, when it gets good PR and picked up media, that’s when there’s a huge conversation and an inflection point where there’s a buzz.
I thought about the database thing and like you said there are issues with that. So apparently there are agency search consultants that help brands find agencies to work with as well. Have you encountered that before ?
https://www.thelistinc.com/blog/reach-top-ad-agency-search-consultants/
Yes, they are a necessary evil. They often work with large brands because of their owns fees, so unless you’re a small shop with a buzzy CEO/CCO, they will probably not be super helpful to you
Gotcha that makes sense - do agencies have to pay them or does only the client pay them ? I’m in a niche in real estate marketing so i thought I’d reach out but thought I’d see if there were anything to be aware of. Thanks for all your insights!
Thanks for the write up!
Inbound makes sense for established agencies who’ve been around for a while.
I’m more interested in the outbound - aside from just emailing and cold calling, I’m curious if agencies ever use...advertising? I have a feeling they don’t and because the work never shows the agencies work, no one will know first hand who did it (unless you research it).
At agencies I’ve also never seen sales people in the traditional sense of cold calling/emailing prospects- seemed to me like what you said - the senior staff just receives inbound leads and follows up with it. That or they have some relationships with CMOs at different places.
I think a centralized database would be useful so that agencies would know what’s available to pitch and submit themselves at a time when they could be needed instead of guessing basically.
Have you ever worked at a small agency that was starting out and growing its clientele ? They wouldn’t be able to grow with just inbound leads since they don’t have enough recognition for brands to contact them
Why are you all telling this person who's job title is FREELANCE