Why You Should Stop Selling Your Firm & Start Marketing It.

An effective agency marketing program makes a “sales” program unnecessary.

Principals, particularly in creative firms, continually wrestle with the question of whether they should personally tend to new business or whether they need to hire a new-business person. Very often their solution is to hire a “Business Development Director,” which is usually someone with sales savvy and/or management experience.

What’s really needed is a broader view of business development. It’s not just about warm or cold calling prospective clients, but promoting the firm in ways that actually attract new clients. A well-executed “pull” strategy is almost always superior to a “push” approach.

Notable creative firms almost always pursue a “pull” strategy

 In the early days of Fallon McElligott Rice, the agency new business strategy was to get as much publicity as possible for its exceptional creative work. The agency set aside a disproportionate amount of its operating budget for award show entries, and dedicated a person to make sure the agency was entered in as many high-profile shows as possible.

At Crispin Porter + Bogusky – an agency without an official public relations function – three full-time people are dedicated to generating publicity about the agency. A lot of agency professionals assume Crispin is just lucky, but the countless pages of publicity the agency receives in the trade and business press is the result of an unusual commitment to agency self-promotion.

Why companies need a Chief Marketing Officer

If you have a compelling story to tell (and that’s a big “if”), you should consider establishing the role of Chief Marketing Officer in your company. This means that in addition to an “outbound” new business effort that you also establish an “inbound” component as well.

The essential job of the Chief Marketing Officer is to apply the same kinds of strategies and techniques that ad agencies use to market their clients’ brands to marketing the firms brand. This involves treating the firm as a client, assembling a team to work on this client, and making sure that firm projects are treated with the same level of importance and urgency as client projects. 

Following is a role description for a Chief Marketing Officer.

Modify it to meet your own particular situation, and keep in mind that it’s not always necessary to have a fully dedicated person in this role. But regardless of the size of the firm, it’s essential that someone is looking after the essential elements of the job.

Role Description: Chief Marketing Officer

The Chief Marketing Officer of the reports to the company president. The primary areas of responsibility include new business development as well as firm brand development. With the support of internal resources and teams, this position manages both the agency’s new business process as well as the strategies and tactics involved in promoting the companies brand. 

New Business

1. Manages and directs the firm’s new business efforts to ensure that the goals of the annual new business plan and being met.

2. With input from the new business team, develops and maintains a list of new business prospects.

3. Establishes a system for proactively pursuing new business.

4. Serve as the initial point of contact for most new business leads.

5. Meets with new business prospects to determine marketing communication needs.

6. Establishes and maintains regular meetings with the new business team to provide updates to others in the firm.

Company Marketing

1. Building and maintaining a permission-based list of prospects and influencers and sends appropriate periodic e-mailings and mailings. Simply state: equity = database.

2. Insuring that the company web site is constantly refreshed and updated with information, examples, case studies, biographies, etc.

3. Constantly updating and maintaining both offline and online directory listings, including firm-specific directories, business directories, paid listing services, and those hosted by company search consultancies.

4. Regularly reading and posting to appropriate blogs and publications. Fostering relationships with relevant online publishers.

5. Identifying, buying and managing URLs for landing pages that can be used by the company.

6. Developing and maintaining firm profile pages on Facebook, Wikipedia, Linked In, and Twitter.

7. Overseeing an online search marketing program for the firm, including the identification and purchase of keywords and phrases.

8. Identifying and coordinating online advertising opportunities on appropriate websites, blogs, etc.

9. Maximizing the companies online presence by proactively posting content materials, videos, photos, podcasts, etc. on sites such as YouTube, iTunes, Flickr, SlideShare, Scribd, and Screencast.

10. Release philanthropic news releases on national wires such as PR Newswire, BusinessWire, and CISION.

11. Actively identifying opportunities to publicize the firm's intellectual capital by monitoring reporter queries using services like HARO. (HelpAReporter.com)

12. Creating a positive presence for the firm on websites and blogs that are influential in attracting and recruiting top talent, such as Talent Zoo.

13. Measuring and refining the firm’s online presence using analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Alexa, and Technolorati.

14. Monitoring the success of the firm's social media program through the use of third-party applications such as BuzzMetrics, and BuzzLogic

15. Develop an app. It's eay, cost-efficient and a great way to tantalize clients to viewing your web site; especially in mobile event marketing situations.