Simplicity-What Your Agency New Business Strategy Is Missing

I read a post recently from Modus Associates titled Simplicity: The next competitive battleground and immediately saw some parallels to ad agency new business strategy.

Here’s a quote from that post:

The business value of simplicity has long been understood. Fewer choices, shorter paths and simpler messaging lead to higher conversion rates in study after study. Examples of simplicity’s triumph are all around us: mint.com in personal finance; Apple in software; Google in search. Yet simplicity has remained an elusive ideal for most organizations.

This relates to new business in several ways.

First, and I’ve covered this to an extent previously, too many times agencies try to accomplish their new business goals  by moving way too fast and they end up with a scatter shot effort that tries to cover too much ground (we have to create content daily, we’ve got to be on every major social platform, etc.)

Eventually they get frustrated and the process grinds to a halt.

 

Your positioning must embrace simplicity.

And rarely does it.

Okay,  that’s not being fair, there are a lot of agencies out there getting it right, but quite a few are not.

You can have your day-to-day new business process honed to perfection, but if the positioning and messaging you’re putting in front of prospects is a hot mess, you’re dead in the water.

Take a random agency site sample and 1 out of 5 times, you will not be able to tell what kind of agency they are without a lot of digging.

That’s not good.

You must make it extremely easy for your prospects to:

1)      Know what kind of agency you are

2)      Where your expertise lies

3)      How you can help them

Can you show your creative chops (if that applies) as you do this?

Absolutely, but don’t get sidetracked.

 

Marketers do not care about your philosophy.

Or your sweet building/space.

Or your office pets.

Eventually, they probably will-it’s part of your unique agency character and it is important.

But always put yourself in your prospect’s position-

The average tenure of a CMO has doubled over the last 6 years to 45 months. Nice!

It’s still only 45 months-they want to know how you can help take them off the endangered species list.

Embrace simplicity- in all facets of your new business messaging, to set yourself apart from your competition.