Susan Baier began her career as a brand manager for companies like Dial and Conoco-Philips. She also worked agency side and within client companies in their research departments, honing her skills as a research professional.
Recognizing that primary research was often too expensive for small to mid-sized agencies, she launched Audience Audit, where she conducts quantitative attitudinal audience segmented research. She helps her agency clients develop marketing strategy for their clients based on customer insights. They find it much easier to develop messaging, strategic plans, and business development plans with real data that helps them understand how customers who look (demographically) the same behave in very different ways and what motives those choices and behaviors.
Over the past few years, AMI and Audience Audit have partnered together for studies on how business owners find agencies, their attitudes towards working with agencies, and more.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- How the research that Audience Audit does differs from a lot of the research that’s out there
- How your agency can leverage research inside your agency-client relationships
- The ways agencies can better sell the value of research to existing and prospective clients
- Why agencies can’t build their business around “shiny toys”
- The ways research has changed and why agencies shouldn’t be afraid to bring it to clients that they haven’t done research with in the past
- How bringing research to clients can give them a sense of relief and make it easier for your agency to retain their business
- A specific example of how this kind of targeted research helped a client in a big way
- The mistakes agencies make when trying bring research into their shop
- Why niche really matters when it comes to research
- Baby steps agencies can take to start incorporating research
Ways to contact Susan Baier:
- Website: www.audienceaudit.com
- Email: susan@audienceaudit.com
- Twitter: @susanbaier
Resources:
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!
Chuck Meyst has been in sales all his life, from his childhood bike route to CEO and founder of AgencyFinder.com, a matchmaking service for agencies.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Why Chuck started AgencyFinder and how it works
- Why agency descriptions of themselves should be results-focused
- What both clients and agencies need to do well to find the right partner
- The big mistakes agencies make with their websites
- Sales: why do agencies not like this word?
- The traits Chuck sees in terrible employees
- Why processes are so important, especially when it comes to sales
- The characteristics in agencies that clients love to see
- How agencies win business through pure chemistry
- What AgencyFinder does to assess agencies and how to receive that perfect score of 100
- How AgencyFinder helps agencies team up with clients that are great matches
- Things agencies can do today to improve upon the topics discussed in this episode
Ways to Contact Chuck:
- Website: www.agencyfinder.com
- Email: chuck@agencyfinder.com
- Phone: (804)346-1812
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!