The official blog of Ignition Consulting Group
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-New Business-
Would a prospective client travel 1,000 miles to do business with your firm? That’s one of the litmus tests of a strong agency positioning strategy. Unless you’re satisfied attracting local business from the local market (and some agencies are), you should devote some thought to how you can become what I call a “destination agency” …
No activity within an advertising agency gets as much time, attention, and energy as the new business pitch. Countless times I’ve heard agency professionals confess that “We’re at our best when we’re developing new business presentations” and “Our best creative work is usually for new business prospects” …
“Does new business have to be this difficult?” It’s a question Ignition increasingly hears from agencies around the country and around the world. Business development is in fact much harder than it used tobe. And it’s not just the economic recession that’s causing the problem …
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As a professional services firm, the ultimate business strategy is to not just be a category leader, but to create a new category; to be a category of one. The most powerful positionings create a new market, in which you are the leading – and only – provider. The alternative is to produce the same thing most other agencies produce; the stuff that the client community increasingly regards as “commoditized” …
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“What is it they do again?” That’s the reaction of many prospective clients looking at the list of diverse services listed on most agency websites. The truth is that the agencies with the strongest new business development records are those that don’t try to provide every possible service for every possible kind of client …
As a agency brand, would you rather be moderately appealing to a large group of prospects, or intensely appealing to a select group of prospects? Most agency professionals would say the latter. But most often, their business strategy centers on the former …
Agencies, like most businesses in today’s economy, are going to great lengths to avoid risk. It’s easy to assume that the least risky path is to pull in your horns and keep plowing forward with your current business model. This is essentially the strategy of “just try harder.” But marketing communications firms are at the nexus of the Great Recession and the Great Upheaval of Mass Marketing. Continuing on the traditional agency path is by far the greatest risk you could possibly take …
