Move Beyond Cold Calling If You Want to Grow Your Business

Cold calling as a primary outbound marketing tool just doesn't work for ad agencies.  Never has, never will.  Yet I still run into agency principals who think that blanketing selected targets and industries with sales brochures and unsolicited telephone calls or emails is the best way to grow their business.

The latest edition of Marketing News from the American Marketing Association has an interesting case study on how a small Indiana service provider doubled their revenue last year through web-based marketing in lieu of cold calling.  Here's what they did, and what any b-to-b service provider can do to grow their business.

The first step was a redesign of their web site to move it from a brochure site touting their background and experience to an interactive experience that walks potential customers through the steps of deciding if they need their service to why they should choose their firm.  Along the way, they adopted several best practices to simplify the navigation and reduce copy to add more graphics.  They rewrote copy using direction from Google Adwords and adopted some other simple SEO principles to re-write title tags and add keywords to their code.

The next step was to launch a blog to feature their knowledge experts' insights on topics of interest to their key audiences.  They used SEO tactics to ensure that blog posts ranked high for searches related to their content matter, added a link to the blog to the company's web site and shared blog posts with LinkedIn groups.  According to their marketing director, tracking analysis found that LinkedIn was particularly effective in driving traffic to their blog which in turn led to more attention to the company's web site.

Although they did not use Twitter, I believe that tweeting with a link to the blog post is another way to effectively drive traffic to your blog and ultimately to your site.

They extended the company's thought leadership profile by expanding selected blog posts into magazine articles, white papers.and presentations that led to conference speaking engagements based on their demonstrated credibility and subject matter expertise.  They also began a concerted effort to establish strategic partnerships with complementary service providers.

The combination of web-based marketing efforts and new partnerships has led to a "snowball effect" according to their marketing director.   Traffic to their web site jumped from an average of 10 to 15 visits per week to 1,500 to 2,000 visits per week.

Prior to launching this intensive web marketing program, nearly 80% of their new business came from cold calls and traditional outbound selling.  This year, more than 80% of new business has come web driven initiatives and revenues have doubled.

These changes weren't rocket science.  And they weren't particularly expensive.   What they did is take advantage of an integrated marketing effort to allow prospects to move through a decision thought process before they even talked.  That led to a much more cost effective way to invest their time and efforts to grow their customer base.  Is it time to rethink your business development strategy?

A New Year's Resolution for New Business Development

Are you happy with your new business development program?  Is it working?  Could it be better/more effective/more efficient? This is the time of year when people reexamine their life choices, so it makes sense for agencies and other businesses that sell products and services to reexamine their business and especially their business development program. 

The old saying that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results is never truer than in new business development.  Even if your company has been successful with past bizdev efforts, the dramatic and continuing changes in consumer attitudes, media consumption, etc. dictate constant re-appraisal and refinement. 

A good new business program starts inside the agency, not outside.
Before you begin an outbound marketing effort, you should make sure that everything internally is as strong and effective as it can be.  It's no surprise that economic conditions and the digital marketplace have affected all businesses, so the first step is to re-examine how external conditions have affected your company.  You should be asking yourself and your management team questions in several key areas.

Are we positioned correctly to attract and retain clients?

• Does our agency positioning have a clear focus that differentiates us from our key competitors?
• Is our agency positioning right for the needs of today's clients and prospects?
• Do we have any proprietary processes that can be leveraged to give clients and prospects "permission to believe" we can do things better than other agencies?
• Do we have all of the services we need to support our agency positioning?
• Have we focused on what we do best?

Do we have the right people to support the agency positioning?

• Do we have the right skill sets to support our agency positioning and meet the needs of current and prospective clients?
• Does everyone inside the agency understand our brand positioning and their role in delivering on our brand promise?
• Do all employees know how to communicate our brand positioning and their role in new business development?
• Are we organized in a way that supports our positioning strategy?

Do we have the right criteria and tools for identifying and approaching prospects?

• How well do the needs of our prospects match our agency capabilities?
• Do our promotional materials reflect our agency position in a way that will attract and intrigue prospects?
• Do we have a defined promotion and publicity plan for the agency that consistently builds awareness and credibility of the agency brand?
• Are there new products and processes that we should be developing to better meet the future needs of clients and prospects?

There are many other questions you could, and should, be asking that relate to agency policies and processes that will affect your new business efforts.  But as we begin a new year, you need to start somewhere.  In my experience, these are some of the most critical. 

It's time to make a resolution to take a fresh look at your agency and your business development program.  Welcome to 2010.

Social Media As A Branding Tool - A Case Study

Many ad agencies continue to question the branding value of Social Media and remain reluctant to embrace it for their own branding efforts or to recommend social media tactics to their clients. This is not only short-sighted, it is simply not true according to Brad Nelson, Chief Tweeter at Starbucks. Brad recently shared his company's strategies and personal views on ways that Social Media enhances the brand value of Starbucks. His comments offer some interesting insights into how this market leader uses Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and mystarbucksidea.com to build their brand and how agencies should be viewing Social Media for branding.

According to Brad, Starbucks has embraced Social Media because of its growing popularity, but also because it works. He gave specific examples of how Starbucks uses Social Media as a key element in their branding strategy and also cited a recent Razorfish study in which 97% of Connected Consumers reported that a positive digital brand experience influenced their purchase behavior.

Starbucks uses Social Media five ways:

• As standard operating procedure for any new launch or corporate policy initiative.


• To monitor conversation and become aware of emerging issues that might positively or negatively impact the Starbucks brand or products.


• To provide contextual and complete information around issues or controversies (i.e. to make sure that all facts are available as well as to give their brand champions complete information).


• As a rapid response tool to issues or questions.


• To put a human face on the company by providing information in a personal and relevant manner.

As part of his presentation, Brad shared several examples of how Starbucks has used Social Media. As part of the new product launch for Via, Brad related how an unplanned leak 30 days prior to launch was generating initial skepticism about the quality and taste of an instant coffee from Starbucks. Starbucks used social media to engage their audience, provide taste test results and promote their sampling strategy. They credit social media with helping to change public perception from negative to positive and shortly after launch, Via was being touted by the blogosphere as "the start of a new category", "the right thing to do for Starbucks", and "a product that tastes as good as regular Starbucks".

Starbucks management is confident that social media, in conjunction with more traditional tools, has played a significant role in the success of the Via brand. Social media has also been used as the primary medium in successful promotions for Free Pastry Day and Red Cup Day.

Brad also related an interesting story of how Twitter and Facebook helped with an international crisis management issue. An update to the Starbucks website has referenced Taiwan as a Province of China. This is a very controversial issue, and the blogosphere began humming shortly after it was posted. The issue was discovered and acknowledged within 3 hours, and fixed within 24 hours, just as the traditional media outlets were discovering the story. Starbucks' fast response made further reporting a non-story and traditional media outlets moved on to other stories. This is a great example of how listening and responding quickly can work to the advantage of any brand.

As more case studies come to light on the value of Social Media as a branding tool, ad agencies must listen and respond. Social media is not a fad. It is a legitimate way to monitor and converse with your brand's audience, and agencies who continue to ignore its power and presence as well as its branding potential will regret it.