Finding focus for your agency

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Hello, everybody, this is Chip Griffin, and I’ll be getting started here shortly, but I’m going to give folks a minute or two to continue gathering because I can see people still coming online. So bear with me for just a moment and we’ll get started shortly.

Okay. Well, I want to be respectful of everybody’s time here. So we’ll continue to let people funnel on through, but we’re going to jump in and get started. Of course, a replay of this webinar will be available and you’ll get an email about that. So plenty of opportunity to rewatch if you miss something or just want to listen to my voice again.

Again, I’m Chip Griffin with Agency Leadership Advisors, and I’ll share a bit more about myself in just a moment. But 1st, I wanted to talk a little bit about. the things that we’ll be covering on today’s webinar. And that is finding focus for your agency. So if you’re joining us today, chances are you are either an agency owner or executive, and you’re interested in figuring out how to have the best focus for your agency.

And of course, the question is, why does that focus even matter? Why do we care about focus? Why am I doing this webinar? And The answer is relatively straightforward, and that’s because without focus, you don’t really know what it is that you’re doing, and so if you look at this particular slide, maybe you can figure out what it says, maybe you can’t, but once you put it into focus, you can see that it’s the blueprint for success, and that really is what focus is all about for your agency.

It’s about telling a story so that you’re able to communicate both internally and externally what it is that your agency is about, who it is that you’re serving, and what you want to accomplish. Now, some of that is something that you’ll be focused on yourself, some of it is things that you’ll work on with your team.

Throughout the course of this webinar, what we’re going to talk about is taking a journalistic approach to finding focus. And no, that doesn’t mean that you need to be Woodward and Bernstein and digging up all sorts of deep, dark secrets. Though in the process of coming up with your focus, chances are you will have to dig around a little bit in what it is that you personally want, what it is that you can accomplish.

And then, take a look at the key elements of your business. And to do that, when I say being a journalist, if it’s not Woodward and Bernstein, it’s the basics. It’s who, what, where, when, how, and why. And if you’re able to take a look and analyze those things and think them through. You’ll be in a much better position to have that focus, to tell your story and to be successful.

So before we dive into the depths of this issue, let me just share a little bit about myself. So you understand why it is that you should be here and listening to me. And the answer is pretty simple. I’ve spent the last 20 years or so, with businesses in the agency world, in the communications field. And I’ve had a lot of different roles.

I started out actually 30 years ago as a junior account executive for a PR agency. Most recently, I was chief operating officer for a 500 person global communications media intelligence shop. So I’ve, I’ve got the experience to do this, but more importantly, what I’ve managed to do over the last couple of decades is to generate some successes and some failures.

And I want to share both of those with you, because if I’m able to share the wisdom of my successes and the lessons of my failures, hopefully that means that you’ll be able to repeat the things that I’ve done correctly, or at least take some lessons from them. But more importantly, you’ll be able to, to not repeat the same mistakes that I’ve made over the years.

And so, as we think about that, we jump into the topic itself, and we start with the very first question in that list, and that is, who? And it’s not who you are, because that’s part of it, that, you know, helps drive some of what your story is, some of what your focus is, but it’s who do you serve? In other words, who is your target audience?

And so, a lot of agency owners would tell you, well, it’s whoever’s got money to pay me. And that’s not a particularly good answer. It, you know, it certainly is important that they be able to afford you, but really what it is, is that you want to think about how it is that you’re going to drive your focus to serve a particular market.

If you think that you serve everybody, then really you serve nobody. So think about who is your ideal client? What industry are they in? What size are they? How much revenue do they have? How many employees? What are the challenges that they have? What are their pain points? How is it that you can help them achieve success?

Those are the kinds of clients that you want to look for. But more importantly, when you’re doing business development, you’re talking to individual people. So when I say who, it’s not just about the business itself that you’re targeting, it’s the individual within that business. And we’d all like to say, well, you know, we, we only talk to the C suite or the, you know, the CEO or the owner.

And in some cases, that may be true, particularly if you’re targeting a smaller business or a medium sized business. But when you start talking about larger enterprises, which many folks want to reach. You need to think about who in that company is the person that you’re going to talk to. It may not be the CCO or the CMO.

It may be the director of media relations, or it may be the head of pay per click advertising in that group, whoever it is, you want to make sure that you have a good sense as to what their role is. What their titles are, that’ll help you find them as you’re building your target lists. But you also want to think about, you know, what size teams do you work best with?

In other words, are you working with a PR or marketing shop that’s a one person entity? Maybe it’s just a part of somebody, particularly again, if you’re dealing with the SME marketplace, is it something where you’ve got You know, someone who’s wearing a PR or marketing hat as one of the many things that they do, or are you working with somebody who’s got a well developed organization?

Knowing what it is that, that you do best as an agency, who you work best with at that direct client level is important. You also want to think about the personalities, you know, do you work best with creative types? Do you work best with people who are logical, business focused, data driven? You know, think about the kinds of people that you like to work with, because after all, we are in a people business.

It’s all about relationships. And we want to make sure that we’re enjoying what we’re doing on a day to day basis. And part of that is figuring out who it is that you’re working with in those organizations, in those clients. And then finally, when you think about who you serve, you also need to think about, do you play nice with other agencies?

And that helps shape a little bit of your market as well, because there are some agencies who frankly, they work best when they are the top dog and, you know, maybe there’s a couple other small players, but you know, they are clearly the honcho. There are other agencies that have a more narrow lane and work well with others.

They partner up well, and that will help shape things because you want to know when you’re in conversations with a prospective client, what do they have for other agencies in there? Are they the kinds of people that you can work with? Are they people you’ve worked with before? Those are all questions that you want to consider and think about as you’re thinking about who it is that you serve. And for each of these questions that I’m going through today, I encourage you, think about these questions, ask other ones, and come up with a really well defined who you serve, or what you offer, those kinds of things. Put it down in writing, because if you’ve got it in writing, and you’ve got something to check yourself against, you’ll be in better shape.

And you don’t need to worry about it, because this is not something where it’s etched in stone. This is not a tablet that, you know, will be handed down for generations. It’s a planning document. It is something that helps define your focus as it is today. And it may evolve over time. Certainly the market will evolve, and you need to adjust with it.

You need to be thinking about how to make those adaptations over time. And if you test things and they don’t work, by all means, set it aside and try something different. Don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So start putting it to paper with the who. The next step that we want to look at is the what.

And so what are the services that you offer? And again, this is one of those things where a typical answer is something along the lines of whatever somebody will pay me to do. And this is a trap that a lot of agencies fall into, particularly in the early days, when you’re trying to figure out how are you going to make ends meet?

How are you going to generate enough revenue to get your agency up off the ground? And so a lot of agencies in those early days will in fact do just about anything. In fact, the very first agency that I had did a combination of really weird combination of things. We did digital marketing. We did political opposition research, and we did ghostwriting.

So three things that, you know, are somewhat related, but, you know, they’re not really as well tied together, as well thought out, as good a story as you would like to have. So, while the money’s important, it shouldn’t be driving your decision. You should be thinking about what it is that you are good at, what it is that you can make a difference at, what it is that you can offer profitably.

So, think about those things. Think about, you know, what are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? Again, I go back to how important it is to build an agency that is enjoyable for you to work for, for your employees to work in. Because if it’s not, you will not be successful. And even if you have financial success, you may end up being miserable.

So don’t do that. Think about the kinds of things that you want to be offering, and just as important, think about those things that you just don’t want to touch. Right? We’ve all got things that we don’t want to do. Now, some of those things are necessary evils, right? Some of those things are things that we have to deal with just because.

But if we can find a way to shape the services that we’re offering so that it serves our target audience well, and it’s the kind of work that we enjoy doing, we’ll be in much better shape. The other thing to consider here is what your agency is offering doesn’t necessarily have to be just things that you can do that your immediate team can do.

You can also partner with other agencies. So, let’s say that you’ve got a content marketing business, but you don’t have the writing chops in house, right? So you’re more the, the strategy side, the promotion side, those sorts of things. You can partner with someone who does ghostwriting or those sorts of things.

Similarly, if you a traditional PR agency, you may not be as strong on the digital side or the paid, advertising side, search advertising, those kinds of things, social advertising. You may want to find a good partner to work with. Or, There are so many good freelancers out there. You may want to partner up with individuals like that out there who can supplement your in house skills.

That way you can put together a real story around the services that you’re offering, because you want to make sure that what it is that you’re providing as an agency to your clients is what they’re looking for. It’s what they want to go out and purchase. It’s something that can make a difference to their bottom line.

And if you don’t have the right package of services, you’re going to be in trouble. Now, you also want to be thinking about targeting these services well, so that, again, it’s part of that story that you’re telling. If you go too wide and say, Hey, I can do, I can do PR, and I can do advertising, and I can do content marketing, and I can do pay per click, and I can do SEO, and all these things.

If you’re a really small shop, chances are you can’t do all those things well. And even if you’re a big shop, a lot of those tend to function within silos, and so it’s more like getting multiple agencies working together, because all of those silos may have their own P& Ls, they may have their own leaders, their internal tensions, so just because you can say you do everything doesn’t mean you should, and most of you can’t even say it with a straight face, so don’t, and instead think about how it is that the way that you package your services is different.

And when you marry together the who you serve and what services you provide to them, that’s where you really start to differentiate yourself. That’s where you’re not just a generic, a commoditized agency, someone who is interchangeable with any other agency out there. You want to make sure that as you’re going through this, who, what, when, where, how, why process that you are defining yourself in a way that you are unique enough that head to head, you will beat someone out because of the way that you have specialized because of the skills that you bring to the table, because of the way that you’re targeting them, the clients, because of the way that you’re packaging it all together. That’s really what you need to do and what you need to look for.

So the next piece is where are your clients? And we certainly know that we live in a global economy, right? And we’ve got folks who will say, well, you know, with the internet, I can work from anywhere and my clients can be anywhere. And that is theoretically true. Okay. It is absolutely theoretically possible to work with someone on the other side of the globe.

It’s not entirely practical to say that though, unless you are prepared for everything that means. So think about how it is that you are geographically targeting your clients. Are you a local firm, a national firm, or a global firm? And so we’ll start there. And I probably should have put regional in here as well, because you know, there are, you know, for example, a lot of times with some of my businesses, I’ve, I’ve sort of said they’re largely Northeast corridor focused because that’s where in the U S that I live.

And so there tends to be some commonality there. But the things that you want to be thinking about here are if you have clients who are far flung all over the world, are you going to travel regularly to see them? Now, in the current global environment, we don’t necessarily need to see all of our clients regularly.

But it is still helpful, and there is no replacement for those in person meetings to generate the kinds of solid business relationships that stand the test of time, that withstand the challenges that come up. So, realistically, you want to be prepared to travel if you have clients that are outside of your local geography.

You need to think about that both in terms of what you and the other senior members of your team are willing and able to do, you also need to think about it from a cost perspective, right? Because if you’ve got clients, say, in on another continent, that’s fantastic. But if you’re going to go visit them, that’s going to be a much higher expense than hopping in the car and seeing a client across town or even catching a short flight.

You know, an hour or two somewhere, not too far away. Maybe you can make that trip in a day and you don’t have to have overnight stays and that sort of thing. If you’re looking at traveling across the world or those kinds of things, you’re going to be talking about thousands of dollars per visit, which means that the services that you’re offering and that the pricing that you have has to take that into account.

So, you can then think about, okay, you know, do I, and I’m one of those people who is best served by being face to face with my clients, is that, you know, there are some businesses where either because of the personalities involved or because of the services being offered, it’s really difficult not to be sitting there side by side, maybe looking at some creative, sketching things out, that sort of thing, and as, you know, lovely and as useful as video conferences are, it sometimes is not a replacement.

But you want to think that through because, again, if you’ve got folks who are locally based, you can be in front of them much more regularly than if they are around the world, even across the other side of the country. And then you have to think about, I think, the most important thing, and it’s, it’s less about distance and it’s more about time zone.

So, the challenge of dealing with folks who are far flung is how do you manage the time zone differences? And there are some times where you can use time zone to your advantage. So, you know, if you’re based in Hawaii and you are generating reports for clients, you know, you may be able to generate them in the late evening your time, if that’s your work rhythm, and get it to someone so that you know they’re seeing it first thing in the morning their time so you can sometimes take advantage of that staggering to be helpful as far as producing deliverables. At the same time it’s going to make it much more challenging to have conversations with those folks, even if they’re just conversations online, setting aside the in person aspect.

And as someone who was the chief operating officer for a global business with offices all around the world, I can tell you that I was up regularly at 4, 4 30 in the morning doing conference calls. And for me, that was okay. I happened to be an early morning person. And so I didn’t mind it, but. It’s still challenging, and it does create an awkward rhythm to the day, and more importantly, you may not be able to find employees or freelancers who are willing to meet those same requirements.

So you need to think about, when you’re talking about the geographic targeting of your clients, how to take advantage of the time zones and also what risks they may put in there and how you want to leverage that to target yourself effectively. Then of course there are both language and regulatory issues that you need to think about.

The language one’s pretty straightforward. If you don’t communicate in the same language it’s going to be really challenging to work together. But since we’re in the communication space, the language can also be important for the content that we’re creating, whether that’s multimedia content or written content.

If we can’t read the language, it becomes very difficult to proof it or even edit it. I’ve done some work in the past on some foreign language websites that I didn’t speak the language. Really, really challenging just to make simple basic edits, and it’s things you wouldn’t think of because you’re essentially doing pattern matching rather than reading and saying, okay, this, you know, I need to swap this character out in this particular place.

So, language can be a huge barrier, and regulatory issues are becoming increasingly important, particularly as we see things like GDPR taking hold in Europe. The whole Brexit mess is something that everybody has to consider, and how that impacts everything, and how it may impact things over time. And so, you have to understand, you know, what are the differences, and even in the U. S. we have some of these issues, right? So, if you’re doing work in California, a lot of their laws that may impact agencies are very different. Particularly things related to independent contractors are much tougher to deal with in California than they are elsewhere. So you need to think about, when you’re coming up with that geographic targeting for your agency, how does that all impact?

How does that make a difference to how you want to say it? So don’t just say that you can serve everybody because of all the technology that’s out there today. You really still want to have some sort of a geographic focus to your business.

So, we’ve dealt with the who, the what, and the where. So now we’re on the when.

And, when do you provide your services? So, this is not, you know, specifically when during the week do you provide things. You know, it’s not putting together a nice little Gantt chart and figuring those things out. Although, we may want to have those. It’s really more talking about the nature of the work that you do.

Is it ongoing? In other words, are you working with retainers that you’re taking on and doing work on a monthly basis for the client, building that long term relationship, meeting their needs on a variety of different things? Or, as is increasingly the case for many agencies, is it more project based? And so knowing the way that you want to service your clients, understanding what their needs are.

That all goes into the when. It goes into figuring out, are you positioning yourself where you want retainers as the majority of your business? And I’ll tell you, we all say we do, right? It’s, retainers are, are great. It’s, it’s a much easier way of doing business because you have more predictability of revenue.

But if the market’s shifting and if the work that you’re providing isn’t as focused on that, you may need to either have mostly project based work, or a mix. And so let’s take a, I don’t know, let’s take a website business, for example. So historically, website businesses, digital marketing firms, those sorts of things have been highly project based because they are building something initially for the client.

And this was particularly true 20 years ago when I first got involved with it. Now, of course, with content marketing taking root and those sorts of things, those are the kinds of things that allow you to build in more retainers. But you need to be thinking about all of this when you’re coming up with the focus for your agency. What is it that you are driving into the marketplace? When someone says to you, give me an example of the kinds of projects you work on?

Are you going to talk about it purely in project terms? Or are you going to frame it as being more about retainers and building the relationship and being a strategic partner? And. Look, a lot of these terms are completely overused. They are the kinds of things that, you know, will allow you to play buzzword bingo, but you know, aren’t going to win you a lot of fans amongst your peers, even though they’re probably using the same terms, even though they may ridicule you. But think about

how it is that you want to frame these things to define for the market the kinds of work that you do from the when perspective. And when can also be when in the life cycle of a business do you meet them. And so part of that is in the who you serve, but you know, are you coming in to someone who is just had a staff change, for example, you know, there are some agencies that do really, really well coming in and helping build up a new shop for a new CMO or a CCO.

There are folks who specialize in crises, crises. So they’ll jump in and help out if there is an ongoing crisis for a particular client. And they’re very good at it, right? But they know that largely what they’re doing is parachuting in for that. But when you think about the when, you then also want to think about, let’s say I’m a crisis firm.

How do I do something that can make this more of a long term relationship potentially on a retainer basis? How can I frame things so that it’s not maybe just during the crisis, but I can help with crisis planning? So, you want to think about all of these things when you’re shaping your product to think about the way that you’re delivering service. Because the other thing that you need to think about in the when is it has a real impact on how you staff your agency.

If you were doing everything project based, you’re much more likely to have revenue fluctuations, so you need to be much more careful about having big cash reserves, or at least, significant cash reserves. You need to have perhaps a larger portion of your workforce as freelancers who are project based on their, on their own.

So that if a project goes away, you can reduce your costs. So you need to think about all of these things because it really does drive, not just how you focus from a business development perspective, but how you focus operationally. And then finally, I would say that you need to think about, yourself and how is it that you work best.

There are some folks who are, you know, effectively, professionally ADHD, and so they love bouncing from one client to another, trying different things, seeing different experiences, learning more and more. There are others who just prefer to burrow in with a smaller number of clients that they’re really building a strong relationship with, where they become almost an extension of their own team, and it becomes that symbiotic relationship and a true partnership. Those are things that you need to think about as well, because again, and I know I keep coming back to this, but it is so important that you find ways to make yourself happy with your agency. And so that means driving everything you do in this focus around that.

What is going to make you successful, what is going to make you happy.

Now, so the next. piece of the, the journalistic puzzle, if you will, is how does your process work? And again, I’m not talking about a fancy flow chart with arrows and a chalkboard. And gosh, if you have a chalkboard in your agency, that would be quite a thing I would imagine, but you might have a whiteboard, but that’s not really what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about in the how is what is it that you are delivering to the table? Do you have a standard methodology? And I’ll, I’ll let you know, first of all, that I am, I am not a fan of people who claim to have, you know, the magic process, the secret sauce, all that kind of stuff, you know, but there can be standard methodologies.

You can have a standard approach that you take to things that you then tweak and tailor for each individual client. And why is that important? Well, it has a real impact on you operationally, right? It does, if you’ve been able to come up with a standard process, a standard methodology, it means that what you do is more repeatable.

It means that you can do a better job of generating hopefully healthy margins. But from a client perspective, what it also means is that you can very clearly articulate to them during the business development process, what it is that you you’re going to provide to them. And that’s the same whether you’re building a website for them or providing some high level strategy or resolving a crisis. If you can have that standard methodology and explain how your process works to them, you will be much better off.

At the same time, there are some agencies out there that don’t work from any kind of a formal script at all. Instead, they’re producing almost completely bespoke solutions for each individual client. Of course, just like a bespoke tailor in London, they’re not necessarily doing it entirely from scratch, right?

It’s based on their experience and there are certain, you know, habits and things that they certainly fall into. But, you know, there are agencies out there that really do sort of say, look, we’re just going to take a fresh, clean look, slate clean. And, and come up with something that is completely unique to you.

And so that is certainly an approach. It is a much more challenging approach. It’s more difficult to scale it. It is more difficult to make it profitable, but there are agencies that do it. Now, when you’re thinking about scale, the other thing that you can do is you can productize your work. And one of the things that I am a very big fan of is finding ways for agencies to generate multiple revenue streams, right?

You need to be very careful as an agency that you are not simply selling your own time. If you sell your own time, you have a very difficult time of building something that is scalable, profitable, and stable. And so you want to think about, are there pieces of what you offer that you can productize? And that doesn’t mean that you have to create some software or put something in a literal box, right?

This is not a literal product. This is taking your services and saying, look, what I’m providing to you are these five things. This is the process that I follow, the standard methodology I was talking about earlier. Here’s what it takes for us to accomplish it. Here, here’s the framework for it. Here’s the timeline for it.

And you give it, a name or you at least describe it in more product oriented terms. And this is a great way to handle project work these days because it’s a way to communicate the value that you’re delivering to a client. So instead of talking about, you know, the mechanics of what you’re doing and the amount of time it takes, you’re talking about the value.

And anytime you can have a conversation with a prospective client or a current client about the value that you’re creating, you can price that at a premium. And by pricing at a premium, you’re able to generate the kinds of profits that you need in order to have a sustainable growing business. Now, finally, you also need to think about whether you have any of your own intellectual property.

And this is not… this is something that I would say the minority of agencies actually have. But there are agencies who are developing real IP. And so, and I’m not talking about, you know, this is the knowledge I have in my head, or this is my checklist, but these are people who are creating something that is more what you would consider to be a traditional product, whether that’s something that’s software based, or you’ve got some proprietary algorithm.

And I mean an actual proprietary algorithm, not, not something that you’ve simply labeled it that way for marketing purposes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But you need to think about if you have any of that, because that’s, these are all the kinds of things that go into the question of how does your process work.

And as you’re telling your story, if you’ve got that, you want to be able to communicate that in your story. So. That takes us to the, the last question, and in some respects, perhaps the most important question. Why do clients hire you? Why is it that they should part with their own budget funds to bring you on board?

What is it that you’re going to help accomplish for them? And so, you want to stand out. There are a lot of agencies out there. Thousands and thousands of agencies in the U. S. alone. More than that when you start looking globally. And, you certainly run up against these folks, I’m sure, on a regular basis.

And you don’t want to be one of the gray guys. You want to be the red guy that’s standing out, that the client says, aha, that’s the one I want. Because if you’ve positioned yourself well, if this whole focus process has worked well for you, you should be getting close to the point now where you are the one that will be making a difference that will appear as different to the client so that they want to engage your services.

And so you need to think about what makes you unique. Now, when it comes to being a unique agency, there’s a fine line to tread here. And, you know, if you think about, you know, when folks are hiring lawyers or accountants, right, you, you need to find a way to, to stand out if you’re one of those businesses, but you don’t want to be so different that it makes people nervous, right?

Nobody wants an accountant who’s too creative or a lawyer who’s too creative, because those are the kinds of things that can come back to bite you. Look, the same thing can happen, perhaps not on the same scale, or perhaps maybe in some certain cases on the same scale in the agency world. So, you need to make sure that you’re positioning yourself as having unique value that you can provide, and a lot of that comes from this focus that we’ve been developing so far in this conversation, by knowing who you serve, what you’re doing for them, what their geography is, how your processes are working, what kinds of packages you’re providing, whether that’s projects or retainers, that whole mix. That becomes part of your unique selling proposition.

It becomes part of the way that you present yourself to the marketplace as not just another agency, right? You’re not, you don’t want to ever call yourself a full service marketing firm, right? Because once you start doing that, people like, well, what does that mean? And anybody can do that. So you want them to look at you and say, You are the one who is uniquely positioned to provide value to my organization. Whether I’m a business or a non profit or a government agency or whatever it is, you are the one who has got what it takes. And the only way you can do that is if you’ve got strong focus and if you’re telling your story well. And so you want to think about that.

And you also want to think about, you know, what are the other things that are going to make you different in this process? It’s, you know, it’s not just the story. Perhaps you have, you know, a particular pricing model or perhaps you’ve got a really good way of explaining the ROI that you’re providing.

Because again, going back to what I said earlier, if you’re able to position yourself as providing particular value to your client, and if you’re able to articulate, what that value is, and particularly if you can paint that picture in real currency dollar terms for my listeners in the U. S., perhaps euros in Europe, other things elsewhere, if you’re able to present it in that fashion, you will have much greater luck

at bringing a client on board and convincing them to do the kinds of creative, innovative work that I know many of you are looking to achieve. So you want to think about those things and think about how you communicate them. You want to think about how your pricing model is tied into this. Do you, are you actually pricing in a way that is helping you to present that value?

If you do something like an hourly rate, which I discourage almost every agency from doing. If that’s what you’re doing, it becomes purely transactional. Someone is simply buying widgets from you, and that’s not a good path to success. So you want to make sure that you’re putting your pricing model to work to help answer that why question.

You want to use everything that you have at your disposal to tell your story, to tell your story effectively, and to paint the picture of how you can help, of the value that you’re providing. If you do that, if you’ve answered the who, what, where, when, how, and why, you’re able to communicate that message in such a way that you will land more clients, that you will be able to operate more profitably, and that you’ll be able to grow business from your existing clients.

So, as we sort of wind down this webinar, I think back to the movie Sneakers. And if you saw that movie back in the 90s, great, if not, it’ll still make sense here, but in that film, there was a bit where they had to collect, voice snippets from this guy here, and, and he said, the little snippet was for opening a particular door, and it said, my voice is my passport, right, my voice is my passport. And so that was the way that they were able to unlock

what they needed to achieve in that movie. Well, your story is your passport. It’s your passport to success. It is the way that you will be able to communicate to your internal team and to your external audiences what it is that your agency does, what it is that your agency achieves, and why it is that people should work for you, and why they should hire your agency.

And we really need to think about that focus as a really critical part of everything that we’re doing. And so, it’s not just about figuring out business development, right? I mean, when people think about focus for an agency, they think about targeting for business. But it’s not just that. It really is the story that underlies your whole agency.

It is what drives you every morning when you get up and go to work, and it’s what your staff is looking at and understanding so that they’re following the same path with you. A lot of agencies make the mistake that because they are making some of the mistakes I’ve talked about here, which is viewing anybody with money as the client, doing whatever work you can that someone will pay you for as the services that you offer, viewing the whole world as your geography without regard to language, time zone, anything like that.

Providing whatever kinds of service someone wants, whether that’s retainer or project, short term, long term, big, small, all of these kinds of things. It’s about if you, if you’re not thinking these things through carefully, you will not build the kind of agency that you want. And every agency owner, every agency executive, anyone who is helping to run the business needs to think very carefully and needs to be on the same page with each other in understanding what it is that they’re building. And they should all, every employee, from the owner, from the CEO, all the way down to a junior account executive, heck, even an intern who’s been there at least a few weeks, should be able to tell the basic story of focus for that agency. If you can do that, if you can tell that story, you will have success. So what I would encourage you to do is take what you’ve learned in this webinar.

Take the journalistic questions that I’ve put together for you. And many of you have come from a background either in journalism or writing, so you know this is just, this is sort of ingrained in you to ask who, what, where, when, how, and why. Take those questions. Take the guidance that you’ve gotten from this webinar.

Think through each of them. Put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and start putting together your focus. Start putting together your story in the way that you want to tell it, in the way you want people to hear it. And if you do that, If you pull all of that together, you’re going to have much greater success.

So, with that, that brings to an end the presentation here. And I thought I would try something a little bit different with this webinar. Usually at this point, I just take whatever random questions are coming in. But I’d like to try something a little bit different, and that is to give more personalized answers to questions to folks.

So what I’m going to encourage you to do instead is to drop me an email, chip@agencyleadership.com with whatever questions you may have out of this webinar. If you’ve got a particular thought, or frankly, even if you disagree with something that I’ve said here, you want to sort of poke holes in it, by all means do that.

Because this is really designed to be a thought provoking exercise for each and every one of you. It is designed to get you thinking, to get you questioning, and get you putting your ideas together. Because ultimately, if each agency is unique, that means that each agency’s story is unique. And so none of you have a cookie cutter approach to follow.

Instead, you’ve got a process for thinking. Thank you for your time. Thank you for being with me today. And I look forward to your emails and the dialogue that we may build out of this webinar. So thanks again, and I look forward to having you on a future Agency Leadership Advisors webinar.