Michael Gass is the founder of Fuel Lines Business Development, LLC, a firm that provides business development training and consulting services to advertising, digital, media and PR agencies.
Since 2007, Michael has pioneered the use of social media, content and inbound marketing strategies specifically for agency new business. Michael has originated a system that makes targeting, positioning, and differentiation easier and helps agencies to find, attract and engage their best prospects online. He has trained over 200 agency CEOs and their senior management teams in all 50 states here in the U.S. and agencies in over 21 foreign countries.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Generating new business through niche blogs
- Making these niche blogs truly niche (hint: “healthcare” is not a niche)
- Why these blogs need to be written by one or two visible authors
- The pace these blogs have to be written, at least initially
- Why you should start out with just one niche blog
- Why a person should be the face of only one blog
- How to keep this process running smoothly and consistently
- Why agencies have to add consulting as a service line
- The differences agency websites and niche blogs have to have
- The time commitment this kind of program requires
- The steps your agency can take right now to get this program up and running
Ways to Contact Michael Gass:
- Website: michaelgass.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/michaelgass
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgass
- Twitter: @michaelgass
- Google+: plus.google.com/108664560492921436543
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Michael Farmer grew up in the Midwest and was the first child in his family to go to college. He went to Princeton on an NROTC scholarship and worked at various jobs to pay the difference. After that, he spent 5 years as a naval officer, 3 years at sea, and 2 years teaching NROTC at Iowa State University. Then he was off to Harvard Business School and a one-year research assignment writing cases and teaching marketing in Lausanne, Switzerland. He then joined some consulting firms and worked all over the globe. Eventually, he ended up at Bain & Company where he spent three years in Boston, and then nine years in London, Munich, and Paris. Bain then started his own consulting firm, Farmer & Company, specializing on solving agency / advertiser problems. He stayed in London until 2001, and then returned to the States and continued his work. He wrote Madison Avenue Manslaughter between 2009 and 2015, and the book was published in 2015.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Some of the big problems agencies face today
- Why the future is bright for small to mid-sized independent agencies
- Why your agency needs a uniform approach for working with clients and an example of what that looks like
- The documented scope of work document: what should this look like?
- Why it’s harder than ever for agencies to make money
- Michael’s “price for the work” metric
- Creating accountability with client heads
- Why agencies probably will have an easier time fixing scope of work than they think
- What agencies can do right now to start fixing some of these mistakes
Ways to Contact Michael Farmer:
- Website: farmerandco.com
- Twitter: @farmerandco
- Email: mfarmer@farmerandco.com
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfarmer
- Book: "Madison Avenue Manslaughter"
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. He has also owned and operated his own agency over the last 20-years. And all through the year, he straddles the fence of working in his agency and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies in a variety of ways.
AMI works with agency owners by:
- Leading agency owner peer groups
- Offering workshops for owners and their leadership teams
- Offering AE bootcamps
- Conducting individual agency owner coaching
- Doing on-site consulting
- Offering online courses in agency new business and account service
Because he works with a lot of agencies every year — he has the unique opportunity to see the patterns and the habits (both good and bad) that happen over and over again. He has also written two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Gross Billings vs. Adjusted Gross Income
- How agencies lose money when pricing
- Why scope creep leads to little or no profit
- Why your agency needs to issue change orders and how to turn this into a process
- Why you need to use the one page business plan
- How to know if you need a better new business plan (hint: you probably do)
- Why you need a tax advisor not a tax preparer
Ways to contact Drew McLellan:
We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!
Jason Swenk shares how to scale and sell. If you got a call with an offer, would you be ready? It happened to Jason Swenk. But, he had a plan and shares the details in this episode of Build a Better Agency.
Jason Swenk calls himself the defender of truth, justice, and effective business practices. 16-years ago, he founded a digital agency and they worked with clients like AFLAC, AT&T, Coca-Cola, and LegalZoom. He sold that agency and is now working with agencies, teaching them to use cutting-edge business strategies to defend themselves against the competition. His website, www.jasonswenk.com, has a plethora of information dedicated to educating agency owners including Agency Insights, his weekly newsletter.
What you’ll learn from Jason Swenk during in this episode:
- How Jason prepared his agency for sale
- The importance of systems inside an agency
- What to do when the systems you put in place make you nonessential for day-to-day operations
- Lead generation: why Jason believes this is the biggest pain point for agencies and what can be done about it
- How agencies can deliver exceptional value to clients willing to pay a premium price and how to get those clients in the first place
- How to recognize which clients to seek out and which to avoid
- Jason’s “Agency Playbook”
- Things agencies do to get in their own way
- Agencies and niche: why you need to start very, very small
- What can agencies do right now to take action on the ideas in this episode