We are currently in the middle of a huge evolution in the way that clients work with their creative partners and agencies. The biggest challenge of all? Engagement. How do you engage people (e.g. your clients, current and new) in this hybrid business environment? In a world where they, seemingly, have much of the power and control?

Agency new business has always been the thing that separates the good from the great. Great agencies understand that new business comes before all else, and that without it, there is no agency or indeed creativity. The merely good agencies, often pay lip service to new business and it usually plays a secondary role. Today, amidst this evolutionary period, things are no different. The great creative agencies are finding smarter, new ways to adapt in the digital, post pandemic realm.

What are the best ways you can thrive and develop meaningful relationships with new clients, that quickly convert and lead to direct business, for your agency?

Relevance: Before you even think about approaching clients (new or current) have you considered whether you are truly relevant to them? Everything you write, or deliver in any meeting, should be aligned with their needs. That takes time to consider, craft and prepare. Client meetings are immensely difficult to secure and yet many agencies always under prepare for them. Spend time thinking about your clients businesses and their needs. When you genuinely align them in the right way you will soon be pushing on an open door.

Cut through: Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of all right now. Many clients are not in the office, e.g. no phones, and therefore contacting them, getting access or any kind of ‘facetime’ (these days, digital facetime) is harder than ever. That tips the balance massively in their favour, not the agency. The Client Key are using new technology to get you access to clients and land those highly relevant messages that start the all-important first conversations. Find a way to cut through the noise and get in front of clients. If this is a challenge, ask us to help you!

A structured process: Don’t get stressed, get a plan! New business & sales really doesn’t need to be hugely difficult or challenging. Most agencies are standing on a mountain of value – they just need someone to help them unlock it. In order to do this effectively devise a clear strategy and campaign plan for growth. We can help unlock your assets and value so that clients are quickly ready to buy from you.

Client Clarity: Ask any agency who they want to work with and the answer will usually be one of the ‘FAANG’ companies. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix or Google. Sound familiar? Clearly we’d all like to be working with these companies, perhaps you already are? But how about going after the ones under the radar? The global behemoths that most people have never heard of. These are the kinds of clients that we love – and there are lots of them out there! Know who you want to work with and, more importantly, why. If you start with a direct relevance to the client from the outset your first engagements will be far more effective.

Rainmakers – To bring all of this together you need people who intuitively know how to do all of this! The points we’ve shared are second nature to them and this is how they operate all day long. If you don’t have natural born rainmakers in your team, find some externally!

The old agency model for growth has changed. Previously, companies looked to the Sales Director or Client Services Director and largely, left them to it. That is a risky and ineffective plan for agencies not to grow. Why try to deliver such a critical function in-house when you don’t have the skills or team to do it?

There is a new way, for new business. A service that brings in expert specialist knowledge with the proven skills to grow your agency. The game has changed and it’s now time to embrace new and innovative ways of growing your creative business.

If you have any questions or want to discuss any of the points covered, get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

Rob King, Founder

The Client Key – A new way, for new business.

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A lot has changed in the last decade and agencies are struggling to find the leads they need. GDPR has complicated data leads. While in-bound marketing has become a behemoth task now including social, emails, podcasts, youtube and influencer content strategies.

There are many options for those who haven’t got time, or contacts, to run email campaigns nor the budget to hire a full time marketing lead. To help you out, here are some (but not all!) of the ways we carry out lead gen for our clients.

Traditional formats still work – well!

At The Client Key we undertake lead gen holistically. Creating pipelines for your business which are managed in our CRM, tailoring activity to leads. Before that, you have to feed the pipeline. You need to find and harvest the data of your dream clients and do this in the thousands, not the hundreds.

You then have to call and email every single one. This is often outsourced (we can do it for you) because it’s so labour intensive and the hit rate is low, but trust us, it works. A recent client had 1,500 emails sent to new leads which resulted in 80 responses, 10 enquiries and 6 jobs. Calculate that by an average project value of £10k and it starts to make sense. We are fee earners for you!

Utilise software and tools

We utilise the best marketing and lead gen tools. There are plenty out there, it’s just the case of choosing the right one for you. Our tools find the data, create campaigns, personalise contact and feed our CRM. If you’re starting from scratch think about mail merge, CRM software or monitoring software like lead forensics.

Get your shop window looking its best

If you’re driving outbound traffic to your platform without a great website, clear messaging and fantastic case studies then you’re wasting your time. Your leads will always look to validate your credentials. At the very least update your website, but look at the big players in the market, they have curated IG feeds, live streams, email campaigns and passion projects. It’s all about content – content validates credentials!

Pay for ads

Simple. Get yourself to the top of google by paying for it. Rightly or wrongly, these days… you are, what google says you are.

Lead with lapsed clients

This is something we are always repeating. It’s easier to go back to old leads than to create new ones. Have you had someone you’ve been courting for 12/24/36 months? Are there clients who worked with you but have gone off the radar? These are your low hanging fruit. Get back in touch, send them some of your new content and keep pushing.

There are many other ways we develop and nurture leads. If you’d like to hear more about how we can manage your new business pipeline, then please do get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

Rob & Amy – The Client Key

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Are you now too busy working ‘in the business’, instead of ‘on the business’ to fix it?

Would your agency benefit from our new business development audit and bespoke action plan? We’re looking for three creative businesses to trial this new programme at a one-off-cost of £950+ VAT.

Our audit and action plan will help you if your agency has slow and sluggish growth. If the pandemic has affected your sales pipeline or you feel you have an unclear vision of what you want to build or focussed strategy for new business, then this programme is for you.

How it works

We conduct a workshop with up to three of you organisation’s leaders. We will analyse your current performance, your goals, pain points and different ways of engaging your client base. Lead by Rob King, our founder and director with 20+ years new business experience and Amy, our project director with 10 years in marketing and agencies.

After the workshop, we’ll deliver you a customised easy to action plan and strategy, with a follow-up session for discussion to help ensure the programme is successful.

The sessions will be conducted in May and June and will be awarded on a first come, first served basis. We will be running a waiting list beyond the initial three agencies who successfully apply.

If you’re interested in finding out more or would like to sign up to a session, please send us your details here

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I attended the event this week which brought together entrepreneurs, intraprenuers, technology experts and creative leaders to discuss and share their vision in the Createtech space. But first things first, what is Createtech?

Createtech is the umbrella term used to cover the emerging genre of activities in which technology enables creativity to produce new value-added products, services or experiences – and vice versa. Developing Createch fields include augmented reality, VR, programmatic branding, creative robotics, AI, immersive technologies and the application to performance and experiential markets. Createch is a wide-ranging term that describes an eclectic array of projects combining technology and creativity. Musicians and artists using blockchain to protect and exploit their IP. Brands creating blending virtual reality and live experience to launch new products. Craftspeople teaching new techniques to surgeons and scientists.

The UK is already leading the way and one conference speaker Russ Shaw, founder of Tech London Advocates, who acclaimed London “the Createtech capital of the world.” A combination of the world’s leading creative industry and a tech sector which is growing exponentially have already cemented the UK’s authority as the leading global Createch economy. There were numerous themes on the blurring of technology into every part of our lives presents to global companies and gain insights into how the sector can help shape our collective future.

There were examples throughout the day of how technology was being used in the creative sector to solve business challenges, specifically sales challenges. I was particularly interested in TRX a new platform aimed at the international TV distribution market. Founder and CEO Matthew Frank described the challenges of slow and inefficient deals which can often take more than 9months for a single rights acquisition deal. The TRX platform is a digital marketplace – a kind of stock market for the TV industry – that aims to bring streamlined deal making and far more efficiency to an area ripe for disruption. They have secured investment and VC from Channel 4 and Sky TV.

The potential for change is huge and the UK is leading the way. How can creative agencies and technologists innovate to drive growth and revenues? The answer according to Iain Tait, Executive Creative Director at Wieden & Kennedy, is to “invite everyone in”. Many big clients are “programmed to protect” and inherently stick to traditional methods of campaign management and delivery. The ones that thrive are the clients who are not afraid to embrace such rapid change, for everyone, across the board. Easier said than done for global behemoths! Invite everyone in – embrace change. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

http://www.createch2018.com – http://www.thecreativeindustries.co.uk

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