Let’s face it….after almost 18 months of many of us being tied to our desks in our home offices feeling a little Zoomed out, we could all do with some fresh air and thinking space.
Our members’ lunches have long been a firm fixture in the BCI events calendar – the perfect opportunity for a small group of members to connect and exchange information about their businesses. That said, these sessions are way more than just pitching; they offer a shared space for connecting with your peers to share successes and discuss challenges….and boy, there’s been a few of those in recent times!
As the world starts to open up once again, we’re keen to offer our members more creative ways of networking so we’re teaming up with Outside for a BCI Walk & Talk session on Friday 17th September. Similar to our members’ lunches, we’ll gather a group of 12 people who are keen to don their walking boots and explore the beautiful countryside around Bristol and Bath.
Over the course of a 3 hour circular walk, you’ll get to spend 10-15 minutes chatting to each of your fellow walkers. No agenda as such, just clear open space for thinking, connecting, sharing experiences and exploring possibilities. Chris Thurling (BCI’s Chair) and Alli Nicholas (BCI’s Membership Manager) will be joining the group too so it’s a great chance to chat to them about getting the most out of your BCI membership.
The starting point for our first Walk & Talk will be in the beautiful Mendips, just south of Bristol. We’ll meet in the car park at Burrington Combe ready to leave at 9am. If this format proves popular, we’ll look to arrange future walks starting from different locations around the area.
This event is exclusively for BCI members. There’s no charge but you do need to register in advance here.
We all know how important it is to encourage equality through our culture in the workplace. But it’s no secret that women are underrepresented in senior leadership positions.
It’s everyone’s shared responsibility to become not only advocates, but champions of women from diverse backgrounds within their organisations – and in their lives at large. And in the creative sector, if we want to truly do our part to help women stake their claim, it means businesses taking ownership of their own equality scores in a number of ways – not least, by appointing women to the senior leadership positions we need them to be in.
At Proctor + Stevenson, we’re one of the UK’s longest-established independent marketing agencies. Despite this, we’ve never been conformists, and we’re a good step ahead of your traditional London-based agency in more ways than one.
Our Founder and Chairman, Roger Proctor, has always been an outspoken industry figure. He’s championed diverse young creative talent from the South West of England and Wales – an often neglected region for the arts – throughout his career.
Back in 1979, he laid in our bold and independent foundations in Bristol. And the rest is history. We’ve been challenging inequities and hiring diverse talent ever since – such as through hosting the South West Design + Digital Student Awards (which saw a particularly high volume of entries from young female designers this year).
In short, the talent is there. So what changes are being made?
At the start of 2021, Roger and the senior team restructured Proctor + Stevenson by splitting the larger brand into three companies: P+S Creative, P+S Technology and P+S Strategy, all overseen by the P+S Group (you can read more about these changes here). And this change marked a new milestone for the P+S team.
Our restructuring was the perfect opportunity to progress our own equality targets across the team at Proctors. It was at this point in our journey that we ensured the P+S Group met a target of 50/50 male-to-female directorship.
So, without further ado, meet our board…
· Joy Locke is our Company Secretary. She applies her 20+ years’ experience with us to take lead of everything operations, finance, accounts, and administration. She ensures that we were keeping on track with budgets.
· Ailsa Billington is one of our Directors. She leads our client services operations and takes charge of directing major global campaigns for our multinational portfolio of clients. She directs over all teams in the P+S Group to make sure that we deliver the best campaigns to transform our clients’ businesses for the better.
· Nikki Hunt is our Financial Director. CIMA-qualified, Nikki brings a wealth of experience in management accountancy, HR, payroll, and health and safety to our business, keeping us running efficiently and safely.
· Roger Proctor is our Chairman. He founded P+S in 1979 and has continued to lead its transformation ever since. Under his leadership, the business has grown from 2 people to more than 70, plus a network of freelance talent, and has won a global portfolio of clients such as Panasonic, National Grid, Saudi Arabian Airlines, and much more. He is passionate about the power of creativity to make positive change and is also heavily involved in strengthening the links between the creative industries and education.
· Mark Jamieson is another of our Directors. He helped establish our presence in the Middle East and is an expert in developing, building, and maintaining positive client relationships in across all sectors.
· Steve King is the final member of our current team of Directors. He leads our large-scale digital projects on everything concept creation, development, and project delivery. He’s worked on many innovative and world-first technology projects.
At Proctors, we’ve always taken equality and diversity extremely seriously. Because when we celebrate and empower women in business, it benefits everyone.
We strive to nurture careers amongst our female talent, building them up into more senior roles within our business. And we want to continue to progress further. We’re currently building a broader, transparent picture of our teams, our diversity, and our biases to discover how we can do better.
There’s lots more to be done to help narrow the gap between women in leadership across the UK. It’s a fact that only 5.6% of women in the UK run their own business and women only account for 33.8% of positions as directors on business boards in the UK, with only 16% of creative directors reported to be female.
We’ve just launched the first instalment of our Women in Business interview series. In it, our own Marketing Manager, Becca Peppiatt, sits down with Peaches Golding OBE CsJT, Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of the County and City of Bristol. This interview, like the rest of the series, delivers insight into the female perspective of working in business, so aspiring young women can see themselves represented in leadership roles. Stay tuned for more instalments of the series, coming soon.
We can all do our part to progress the important conversations which need to be had about an industry that is in many ways stuck in the past, ignoring some of its blatant inconsistencies. There’s lots more to be done and we intend to continue to work hard to narrow some of the gaps that exist. We need to think intersectionally about how we hire, and how we can create healthy, fair environments for women to succeed in.
For more information about Proctor + Stevenson, or to discuss our services or teams in more detail, please email us.
Press releases are an essential part of any digital marketing campaign, whether you’re making a general business announcement about a new product, service or crisis communication management, you need to think about why this news really matters and quickly demonstrate that you have a NEWS story. This is at the heart of all digital PR campaigns.
In light of recent discussions disputing the relevance of press releases, our stance at OggaDoon, Bristol, remains the same. The hunger for compelling stories, from publications, journalists and our industries as a whole, is stronger than ever. This has created a relationship, an essential yet, albeit, conditional one between journalists and PR – they need our help to deliver the stories their publications need and our industries want to hear about. For this reason, the competition among communicators is fierce and in turn, they have a wealth of different approaches on how to write the perfect press release – one they think will satisfy the needs of the journalist and secure them that vital collaboration. Here at OggaDoon PR, digital marketing and social media agency Bristol, we would like to share our formula gathering the key newsworthy facts to craft your perfect release. Here’s introducing the 5Ws, the 3Ps and the vital 1C. Intrigued, then please read on!
One common mistake is trying to write like a journalist – when what you should be trying to do is think like a journalist. Imagine you are on the receiving end; you have tens, perhaps hundreds of press releases along with other emails sent to you every day. What are you going to want to read and what is going to make your eyes roll? It’s fair to say that you’d click on the headlines that you are drawn to because they stick out, perhaps because they’re funny, perhaps because they’re succinct, maybe because it was unexpected. It’s also fair to say that you would be put off by big chunks of writing, you’ve got 101 things to do and think about and only 1% of that energy is reserved for reading emails. You would want to recognise newsworthy value, the angle and outcome within the first few lines, otherwise, the tidiness of your inbox would quickly supersede in value and just like that, the email that you spent an hour fashioning now resides in the trash.
If you want to make your press release stand out in a crammed inbox you must find a healthy balance between being original and trying too hard. The best way to do this is to think outside the box with your subject line and title, this is the only place you are granted to be creative and witty – the actual bulk of the release is purely pragmatic. Keep it to the point and make sure you hit the ‘Five Ws’. Don’t try and zhuzh it up with unnecessary jargon and clichés – journalists already know the jargon, they won’t be impressed that you do too. Lastly, don’t say your story is newsworthy, show that it is – if a press release looks like an advertisement, it will be ignored.
One way you can do this is by maintaining a sense of objectivity but also having an overarching sentiment throughout. This could be a sentiment of excitement, regarding a new launch or change in the marketplace, or it could have a theme, like nationalism or nostalgia. Part of identifying these themes is refining your angle and identifying the societal implications of your story.
Whilst people often stress the 5Ws when it comes to writing the perfect press release, the angle that you need to convey from these is often lost – so really, there should be three Ps, a C and an I threw in: alternative perspective, progress, public eye, conflict, and local impact. The angle of your story answers the questions journalists really want to know; Have you got another side to the status quo? What solution is it to what problem? What will the public response be? Who and what does it challenge? What impact does this have on the community? Remember that you have good reason to be invested in your story, but you need to look for the bigger, engaging storyline to give everyone else a reason to be.
Once you have got all these juicy bits in, it is time to offer a bit of context. Your second paragraph should contain an impactful quote from one or two persons that have authority in the industry. Here it is easy to fall into the trap so many are partial to – the temptation of adding fluff. Every sentence in a press release needs to have value, if you are adding one for the sake of it, maybe to balance out the sizing of your paragraphs, you have fallen headfirst into the trap. The key objective should be to select a quote that brings the story to life and helps paint a picture of how influential the announcement is. Quotes are not for information, but for insight – so make sure to use a quote that reflects a unique perspective on the subject.
The further you get down a press release, the less vital the information. Thus, there should definitely be nothing crucial to the story in the last paragraph. This section serves to strengthen and round off your narrative – this could mean offering background into ways the company developed the project or insights into future implications of the news (if this is a core theme of the release, then it belongs in the first paragraph, but if there are other stronger angles, it may be more appropriate at the bottom as additional content).
Empathy may not be the first emotion you would associate with journalists yet employing it will make not only make writing the perfect press release a far more streamline process but also far more successful in terms of responses. We can all think of ways to make our own jobs easier, so try and think of how you can make theirs so, and in the time you save doing so, invest more energy on constructing an irresistible title that will surely make them look twice.
If you take a look around Digital Agency Coach’s website you’ll see the two core services we offer to digital agency owners: Mastermind Groups and Coaching & Mentoring Programs.
Digital Agency Coach’s bi-monthly Mastermind Groups provide a peer-to-peer learning and networking environment for agency owners and are a brilliant way to share ideas, learning and insights with other like-minded professionals. Watch our Mastermind Group Explainer Video (1min) for a detailed look at how this service benefits busy digital agency owners.
Our Coaching & Mentoring Program is by far our most comprehensive and rewarding service, where our agency owners benefit from extensive 1:1 consultancy and expertise guaranteed to scale and grow their digital marketing agencies.
In this article, we share how our Coaching & Mentoring Programs work and what you, as an agency owner, will experience both during and as a result of the program.
1:1 coaching provides a dedicated space to solve problems, gain accountability, design and execute business plans through external, expert advice. You’ll make decisions faster, build better teams, deliver higher quality work and your digital agency will grow, and you’ll enjoy the journey.
All Digital Agency Coach Mentee’s have the opportunity to become one of our successful agency owners who:
Grew Their Revenue & Profit
You’ll achieve significant growth in both your revenue and your profit within the first 12 months of working with us.
Won More Leads, Clients & Awards
You’ll develop the skills to convert more leads, grow your client base and win noteworthy, genuine industry awards as part of your recognition.
Bought, Merged Or Sold Businesses
Want to grow quickly through Mergers & Acquisitions? We’ll guide you through the processes and purpose behind these growth strategies so you can benefit from the results faster.
Gained Freedom And/Or Early Retirement
You’ll be able to spend less time in your business and start working on it. Our mentees now have more time and freedom to do the things they enjoy, and many have been able to reap the rewards of their lifetime’s work and step into retirement.
Participating in our Coaching & Mentoring program generally follows this engagement process:
Onboarding — This where the scope of work is agreed and all our reciprocal learning and understanding is carried out.
Building — Together, we put together a strategy and a plan based on our learnings from Step One
Execution — As the name suggests, Stage Three is where we execute the plan and start to grow your agency.
This is where we get to know each other. We’ll begin with a discovery session, where our consultant will ask you to share details and insights about your agency’s current status and any plans, aspirations and goals you have for the future.
This then is reviewed, packaged and shared with you. We’ll put together a presentation that summarises your goals, business position and the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for your agency. We’ll also detail a top-level roadmap and a handful of quick wins for you to implement then and there which are guaranteed to have an immediate effect on your business from day one.
This onboarding phase usually takes about a month to complete and once we have this understanding we can put together a plan and roadmap for us to move forward with.
This is where we put together your growth strategy. We’ll use our Agency Accelerator Canvas to break down your business plan into achievable, bite-sized objectives, milestones and KPI’s for you and your team.
Our consultants will work with you to formulate a plan and share insight, context, benchmarks and tactics from our portfolio of the 250 digital agencies we’ve worked with. Creating these objectives and key results and writing your business strategy usually takes about 6–8 weeks to complete.
Stage three – execution, makes up around 75–85% of our program. This is where we put our planning into practice and start to make big, impactful changes to your agency’s operations.
You’ll chat with your consultant weekly for 10–15 minute accountability meetings to check in and make sure things are running smoothly. Between these sessions and our ongoing, ‘always-on’, ad-hoc support, you’ll execute the daily and weekly tasks in your business plan.
Every four weeks we’ll set aside a few hours to plan for the coming month and set the KPI’s to make sure the overarching plan is still in sight. Then each quarter, we’ll orchestrate a full review of the work completed and the work ahead and make any necessary changes to the master plan.
At Digital Agency Coach, we work deeply with a small roster of agencies at any one time as our Coaching & Mentoring Programs are long-term relationships that deliver long-term, long-lasting results. The average timeline for these programs is anywhere between 12 to 18 months, depending on your capacity.
Now that we’ve unpacked our Coaching & Mentoring Program and how our services can help you achieve stratospheric growth for your marketing agency — it’s time to ask yourself if this is the right fit for you and how you like to work.
If the answer is yes, please get in touch and Arrange A Free Consultation with one of our friendly consultants. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have and get you on the path to success.
Is your digital marketing agency profitable on purpose, or by accident? At Digital Agency Coach we’ve worked with hundreds of agency owners over the years, some of whom were unaware of their profitability stats.
Many agencies end up being profitable by accident, as a positive consequence of the year’s work. In this article, we share our insights on turning an intentional and deliberate profit.
As a busy agency owner, it can be easy to prioritise managing the day-to-day operations and allowing your profitability to become an afterthought. With this mindset, it’s difficult for you as an owner, to have that profit-oriented, strategic mindset that is key to growing your agency.
At Digital Agency Coach, we always recommend approaching profitability with intention and purpose. This approach can feel foreign and a little acquisitive at first, but it’s important to remind yourself that it’s completely genuine and moral to design your business in such a way that it earns you money.
Having a profit-driven mindset enables you to reinvest into your business, enhance the quality of your service and grow your agency.
When it comes to an agency’s profitability, there are typically three different degrees of intent and three defined profit groups as an outcome.
Agencies who generate anywhere from 0–12%* profit are generally doing so by accident. These agencies usually no profit strategy in place and the year-end results are unpredictable and often speak for themselves.
Those digital agencies turning anywhere between 13–22%* profit, are almost always doing it on purpose. The closer the number lies to 22%, the more deliberate and considered the profit is. The lower the number, the less intentional their outcomes have been.
And as for those generating a profit percentage anywhere north of 22%*, we classify those guys as purposeful, profit machines. These digital agencies know their services, their clients, their team, and their business like the back of their hand. Their sales pipeline and financial systems are geared toward driving high volume, quality leads which convert.
*These figures are general only, actual profit margins will depend on the agency size. Large organisations with substantial overheads typically will have tighter margins.
Address these six top-line areas and improve your agency’s profitability today.
Take a close look at your gross margins. If they’re outside the range of 50–60%, unfortunately, you’re not profitable enough. Your gross margins are calculated by taking the overall revenue of your agency, less the sum of those direct salaries and/or contractor and freelance fees required to deliver your particular service.
As a service-based business, your agency sells time — utilisation looks at how many billable hours you have available to your clients. If you are operating at less than 72% capacity, there is scope to improve your profitability by maximising your utilisation.
These can be either your employees or clients. If you attract and retain poor performers, this will lead to inefficiency and low profits within your agency. It might be that you need to address some of those long-standing, legacy clients from your start-up days, or certain team members who are less efficient than others. The solution? Try raising your fees or developing the skills and/or expertise of your employees.
Usually, those agencies who fall into the 0–12% profitability category, have no insight or oversight on their financial or sales reports and forecasts. Having a robust sales pipeline and reporting structure in place will allow you to understand when, where and how you can maximise your revenue and minimise your expenses — which we know will lead to a direct increase in your profitability.
For digital marketing agencies within the UK, it’s recommended you charge £90 per hour as an absolute minimum for your services. At Digital Agency Coach, we advocate charging anywhere between £100 — £150 an hour and ensuring you bill all for those all hours at your full rate in order to maximise your profitability.
Is the service you provide right for the current market? This is a big question for web design agencies who are competing against the likes of Wix and Squarespace. These ‘done-for-you’ website builders have significantly devalued the product to where it’s now within the reach of many small businesses and small budgets. As a specialist agency with a highly skilled team, you need to be bold and honest with yourself and ask if there is a future within your market. If the answer is no —you have to innovate and change with the times.
Remember, it’s perfectly moral and genuine to gear your agency to become a profitable, money-making business. As a business owner, you are doing your customers, employees, and your market a disservice if you are unable to reinvest your profits back into your industry.
Ready to begin? Start by asking determining which of the three levels of profit and intention describes your agency. If you’re turning a profit anywhere south of 20%, it’s time to change your mindset and address these six ways to increase your profitability.
Watch Our Free Video Class: Profit On Purpose (7min) & kickstart your journey toward profitability
Of course, if you have any questions or would like to chat with one of our Digital Agency Coach Consultants, please Get In Touch — they’d love to help.
Our friends at TechSPARK are celebrating the CreaTech sector this month so we thought we’d join in and highlight five awesome businesses from the Bristol Creative Industries member community.
As outlined in this article, CreaTech is the term used to describe where creativity meets technology. The Creative Industries Council defines it as “bringing together creative skills and emerging technologies to create new ways of engaging audiences and to inspire business growth and investment”.
The CreaTech sector is strong in the UK as a recent report by Tech Nation showed. Despite a very tough year in 2020, CreaTech companies raised a record £981.8m in 2020. That puts the UK third in the world for CreaTech venture capital investment, behind only the US and China.
The sector is big news in our region too with the South West having the highest median investment between 2015 and 2020, ahead of Scotland and London.
With that in mind, we thought it was the perfect excuse to showcase five businesses from the Bristol Creative Industries member community doing amazing things. Connect with them by visiting their member profile. If you want to join the community, you can sign up here.
This company describes itself as “changing the face of cyber security education for young adults” through its CyberStart product. The platform that gamifies cyber security education has been used by over 200,000 students. Teaching cyber security to 13-18-year-olds is hard so this is a really innovative way to do it. In the game, participants take on cyber-criminals by solving puzzles and using learning techniques like code breaking and password cracking,
The company has a US version of the product and it was recently part of the National Cyber Scholarship competition with over 10,000 high school and college students taking part.
Congrats to the 70 CA HS students named National Cyber Scholars! Thank you @CyberStartUSA @NCScholarship for nurturing + empowering our next generation of #cybersecurity experts. See full list of our rising stars https://t.co/OCBYY1nwfo pic.twitter.com/HGd8RI119W
— Dept. of Technology (@CADeptTech) June 8, 2021
Visit Helical Levity’s BCI member profile
In the midst of Euro 2020 (come on England!), it seems appropriate to include this Bath-based business. Founded in 2017, StatsBomb provides football data and analytics to clubs, media and gambling companies across the world. The company has developed its own proprietary, industry-leading data collection and analytics software with a user-friendly high-vis front end.
The business started out as a team of three but now has over 150 employees based in its head office in Bath and in the US and Egypt.
Yerson Mosquera, Atlético Nacional 2020 & 2021
Wolves have become the latest club to dip into the South American market 🇨🇴
Scouting from a global database has never been more important. StatsBomb customers can shortlist players from 80+ competitions 🌎https://t.co/TY2rzzCOBN pic.twitter.com/XxJ480y2uP
— StatsBomb (@StatsBomb) June 17, 2021
Visit StatsBomb’s BCI member profile
Bristol-based Gravitywell describes itself as using “technology and creativity to guide businesses through digital transformation and help startups blossom and achieve their goals”.
The company has delivered some impressive projects including working with English Heritage and artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins to creatre an interactive illustrated web app map of English myths and legends.
In just six weeks, the team designed, built and launched the web app. They turned Clive’s analogue artwork into a digital production that brought the creatures and characters to life. The map picked up a number of awards, including best digital design at the 2919 SPARKies, TechSPARK’s annual awards celebrating the best tech in the west.
View Gravitywell’s BCI member profile
We are all craving the return of international travel and here’s a company that can help when we can finally go on our next adventures. Bristol-based TravelLocal is disrupting and bringing online the huge tailor-made holidays market and pioneering the “buy local” movement in travel.
The company’s cutting edge web software platform connects locally-owned travel companies in more than 60 countries worldwide with a global client base of travellers, to create and deliver tailor-made holidays.
TravelLocal was started in 2008 by founders Tom and Huw who felt something was missing from the travel industry. Big tour operators were dominating the market and the local experts that planned the trips were treated as a “trade secret”. They started TravelLocal to change that.
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Visit TravelLocal’s BCI member profile
This Bristol-based company believes “there’s a brilliant storyteller in everyone but sometimes you just need a little help unlocking your superpower”. Sparkol was “born out of the simple belief that everyone should be able to share their stories quickly, easily and affordably (without any special skills)”.
The company’s flagship software, VideoScribe, has been used by over two million users worldwide. It allows users to quickly create professional-looking animations.
Another service is Scribley which gets you creating engaging video experiences in minutes using a browser on desktop or tablet.
If you don’t want to do it yourself, Sparkol Studio can help by taking your wildest ideas and transforming them into ‘share-worthy’ video content, and Sparkol Academy provides training on video skills and animation.
Visit Sparkol’s BCI member profile
We love the creativity of Bristol Creative Industries members and there are hundreds more we could have shared. Meet them all in the member directory. If you want to be featured, join as a member.
The Creative Industries Council CreaTech Ones to Watch competition is celebrating inspiring companies and consortiums from across the UK. We’d love to see some BCI members featured. You can enter here until 28 June.
Taking place on 1 July, EntreConf is the dynamic new virtual conference to inspire the region’s entrepreneurs and advisors. To help with practical advice – financial, legal, marketing, management. And to broker valuable new relationships before, during and after the event.
Free conference passes are available via the website, entreconf.com, supplied by the EntreConf Sponsors.
The Running Order for the day can be seen on the website here. It includes three unmissable Keynote Speakers:
Chris Anderson: Owner of world-renowned TED Conferences on wisdom from dozens of inspirational entrepreneurs he’s known plus his own remarkable entrepreneurial story.
Ann Hiatt: Unrivalled top-level first-hand experience as a former business partner of Jeff Bezos at Amazon and then chief of staff at Google. Ann will be talking about business strategies.
Dale Vince: leading green energy entrepreneur and pioneer, also owns the eco-friendly Forest Green Rovers plus a portfolio of green companies, and was the executive producer of Seaspiracy.
Plus highly-practical sessions for entrepreneurs at all stages, provided by EntreConf’s expert partners. Take a look at what each expert insights session will be covering here. Business strategy, start-up help, advice on funding, developing business thinking, exclusive research, futurologising – and much more.
EntreConf also features the EntreLeague. The top 50 of the coolest, brightest, most interesting entrepreneurial businesses in the region. Chosen by a panel of experts, themselves chosen for expertise across a wide variety of sectors and business types: entrepreneurs, advisors, financial companies, lawyers, academics, incubators. These will be unveiled live at EntreConf on July 1.
EntreConf is sponsored by: Bath Spa University, Bevan Brittan, Burges Salmon, Lombard Odier, Rocketmakers and University of Bath School of Management. Plus Associates and Partners: Bristol Creative Industries, Creative Bath, Digital Wonderlab, EIP, MediaClash, PG Owen and Storm Consultancy.
This year, EntreConf is running as a virtual event with a select, in real life dinner in the autumn. The event is organised and run by MediaClash, publishers of Bristol Life, Bath Life, Cardiff Life and Exeter Living and organisers of over 100 events a year, including the Bristol Life Awards, Bristol Life Business Clubs and Bristol Property Awards.
Since my earliest years, I’ve been a fan of athletics. Long-distance running in particular. I’ve watched it on TV. Chatted about it with friends. Followed its greatest exponents with fascination and even become something of an (armchair) expert on the subject.
But until a year or two ago, I’d never taken the plunge and given it a go myself. It felt like something reserved for others. Something that you needed to prepare for meticulously, before ever getting out there and hitting the pavements for yourself. It just seemed altogether too difficult to try.
Then something changed. I was persuaded by a friend to join them on the journey from ‘couch to 5K’. And, at the risk of being that annoying running evangelist, I’ve never looked back.
For many in the marketing world, account-based marketing holds the same appeal – and presents equally erroneous perceived obstacles. It looks great. It seems to work brilliantly for others. But it can also appear prohibitively complicated and quite possibly hideously expensive.
Happily, if you get account-based marketing right, those negative perceptions are some way wide of the mark. And in this article, I’ll explain why it’s an approach you can’t afford to ignore.
There are websites, books, research papers, even degree courses devoted to an explanation of account-based marketing. But for our purposes today, I’m going to keep things straightforward. At Proctor + Stevenson, we view ABM as marketing that identifies high-value companies within defined sectors, and focuses on generating quality sales leads through targeted strategy and pinpoint messaging.
It’s an approach we’ve employed to great effect over the past few years, helping clients including Panasonic outperform campaign goals by as much as 100%. And we’re not alone: Forrester research reports that 62% of marketers have reported a positive impact on their marketing performance since adopting ABM.
It comes with strong credentials then. But if that isn’t enough to help you persuade your colleagues that account-based marketing is the way forward, here are those five key reasons that should really turn the argument in your favour…
The pandemic has taught us that certain sales and marketing approaches are affected by external conditions and factors beyond our control. Exhibitions and events being an obvious one. Account-based marketing remains impervious to those irresistible forces, replacing sales meetings and product demonstrations with digital outreach and online communication. It also has the flexibility to incorporate more ‘traditional’ tactics (personalised direct mail, for example) when the time and targeting is right, making it the marketing strategy for all seasons.
The beauty of ABM lies in its focus. Unlike other broad-brush strategies that make marketing a numbers game, account-based marketing is lean and keen, ensuring that your financial resources are allocated only where they’re going to have maximum, direct impact. Even in those longer B2B buying cycles, there’s no wastage. Communications and marketing collateral are sent to those prospects you’ve identified as interested, via the channels they use, carrying messages you know will resonate with them.
Most ABM strategies are built with digital communication at their core. So you can account for every penny or euro you spend, and attribute every click, reply, meeting booking, expression of interest or sales opportunity you elicit directly back to the activity you’ve instigated. And there’s little that will make your board-level colleagues happier than that.
Ah, the old sales vs marketing conundrum. Should be best of friends, very rarely are. In this respect, you can think of account-based marketing as the United Nations. Employed properly, an ABM strategy achieves that holy grail – a harmonious collaboration in which marketing and sales work in tandem, generating interest, qualifying leads and nurturing prospects until they’re ready to hit ‘buy’ (and beyond, if your ABM strategy is far-sighted enough).
As I mentioned a little earlier, our clients have enjoyed great success with account-based marketing over the past year or two. Working with them, we’ve doubled projected lead targets, improved ROI, achieved better conversion rates, even generated six-figure sales pipeline. And all within the parameters of tight marketing budgets.
The final advantage of ABM that I’ll mention here is that it isn’t an all-or-nothing strategy. It looks different for every business. And we can help you take those first steps towards making it work for yours. So if you’d like to know more, don’t sit on the side lines any longer. Lace up your shoes, get in touch and let’s see where account-based marketing can take you.
Enter, Digital Agency Coach’s Agency Accelerator Canvas, or AAC, for short.
Put simply, the Agency Accelerator Canvas is a template for designing your very own growth strategy. Designed to help you and your digital marketing agency create a considered, thorough and actionable roadmap for stratospheric growth.
The AAC prompts thinking and understanding across ten core elements of your agency growth strategy; Purpose, Customer, Value Proposition, Services, Vision, Goals, Strategy, Objective, Milestones & KPIs.
With handy guiding questions along the way, the AAC is easy to follow and easy to complete.
Our Agency Accelerator Canvas demands focus, defines your vision, establishes what it is your agency is trying to achieve, but most valuable of all – it produces an actionable roadmap to get you there.
Free from business school jargon and written in plain English – the AAC is designed to be helpful, straightforward, and easy to follow. At each of the ten stages, you’re offered a handful of guiding questions to formulate thorough and rounded definitions for each component.
While it all sounds so simple and straightforward, the results that populate from the AAC are powerful. At the end of your AAC strategy workshop, you will have defined objectives and measurable KPIs to drive your digital marketing agency forward and measure your success along the way.
Finally – a business strategy document that you can take action on!
The Digital Agency Coach consultants recommend hosting a workshop with your fellow directors or senior management teams to complete the AAC as a group.
Once you have defined your strategy, share it with your employees and wider team – print and mount it within the studio to encourage daily interaction from your cohort.
If there is anything the last two years have taught us, it’s that our world can change in an instant and we, as business owners, must be nimble and adapt our strategy accordingly.
While your AAC will be right for the time, as the seasons change, your strategy will require regular revision. We recommend reviewing your AAC quarterly, asking if any changes need to be made and if you and your team are meeting the objectives.
Use these quarterly reviews to nudge your agency’s strategy back in the right direction, then host a full review workshop and overhaul the overall strategy annually.
First things first, print out the blank AAC template and supporting documents and begin your workshop with our short explainer video to get your meeting off to a productive start.
The AAC is then separated into two focus areas;
We start by defining your digital agency’s purpose. There’s no right or wrong answer here, but it’s important your purpose aligns with your passion – so keep it true to yourself.
Secondly, the AAC takes a look at your customers. You’ll define a specific and targeted niche that your digital agency can approach and service.
Then, we ask about your value proposition. Which problems and pain points do you solve for your clients?
Then finally, – you’ll define your services. This is super important, as this defines your agency’s skill set and the work you agree and disagree to take on.
Then, we move on to…
The AAC then asks you to define your digital agency’s vision and articulate top-level, measurable goals.
Next, strategy. You’re encouraged to think about how you are going to achieve these goals? What are the big moves you’re going to make this year?
Once the big moves are defined, it’s all about the objectives. What daily tactics and functions will your team carry out in order to make the strategy happen.
Then you define growth milestones, or success indicators. What will illustrate that you’re on your way to success?
And then finally, what are the KPIs? How will you measure success and keep your team accountable? We’ll help you define realistic, aspirational and measurable Key Performance Indicators to pull your entire AAC together and ensure it’s the actionable document we promised.
Now you know how it works, it’s time to download the template and start formulating your growth strategy.
Each download includes a ready-to-complete AAC template, a supporting document with key questions to kick-start your thinking and a link to a short explainer video to walk you through the process.
Of course, if you need any help or guidance or you would like a Digital Agency Coach consultant to host an AAC workshop for you and your marketing agency please get in touch via our website.
At Proctors, our people make us who we are. Bold. Brave. Imaginative. Resilient. But resilience doesn’t mean things are always easy.
It’s truly taken a village to see us through the last 12 months. And this article explains more about how our team spirit and collaborative culture have helped us to balance the books throughout these difficult times – and flourish, rather than just float.
When COVID first hit in the beginning of 2020, the consensus was this epidemic would be around for three months in the UK, and we should start to see signs of economic recovery beginning in July 2020. (No comment!)
At the time, we’d just finalised our financial forecasts for the year ending March 2021, but it was clear we needed to review these figures.
After revisiting our forecasts, we worked on a realistic model which would see a dip of around 30% in the company’s income for the first quarter of 2020, before gradually returning to 100% by the summer. We then expected we’d see an uptick in work – to around 130% by the end of the year – as clients rushed to spend already -approved budgets.
Despite knowing now that the information on the pandemic’s duration proved to be inaccurate, this approach placed us in excellent stead.
Our biggest challenge was managing cashflow. With fee income dropping, we still had to cover our business costs. It became crucial to cut costs wherever we could – and quickly.
We reviewed our overheads, and any payments deemed non-essential were stopped or placed on hold. The government also launched an initiative called the CBIL Scheme, and allowed us to defer our PAYE and VAT payments, helping us manage cashflow.
We also made the decision to place any money received from loans or PAYE and TAX deferments into a savings account. As we knew the funds were always going to have to be repaid in March 2021, we decided to only use them if we had to.
Employee utilisation is something we’ve always used to measure productivity across the business at Proctors. It describes how much time any staff member is spending on achieving paid work each month.
During the pandemic, we were able to use our employee utilisation data to forecast upcoming work, and quickly identify the staff members who would be under-utilised over the coming weeks and months, and the skillsets where there wouldn’t be a lot of work coming in from our clients. We could then place those affected employees on furlough, whilst ensuring all other staff had high utilisation levels, reducing our costs while keeping our clients happy.
Over the last few years, we’ve introduced a number of KPIs to ensure we’re always performing efficiently, aiming to be within the top 10% of agencies of our size, financially. This has given us a strong financial foundation, allowing us to continue to support our clients who were also struggling though uncertainty.
Our relationships
Externally, we’ve been part of a working group of Financial Directors within creative agencies for the last four years. Pre-COVID we would meet quarterly, discussing all things financial and operational as well as sharing ideas, best practice tips, and KPIs.
At the beginning of the pandemic we met via Zoom, and as usual shared our latest updates – only this time, we discussed how to approach the upcoming challenges which would affect all of us.
Many agencies cut back on their non-fee earning staff, including new business and marketing. But our own stance differed: as long as we weren’t at a net loss, we would continue to look for new clients and deliver new initiatives to our existing ones.
We kept our new business and marketing team together, giving them the creative and technology staff needed to work on pitches and ideas – and for us, it paid off, resulting in new clients and new business.
Despite a number of businesses in the aforementioned Financial Directors group making different decisions based on what might work best for them, being part of a community that shares knowledge, resources and support has been invaluable.
Those invaluable relationships have extended to our clients too. Like many other businesses, we’ve been there for our clients – and vice versa – during an incredibly testing year. In most cases, we’ve gotten to know each other even better, and have built even stronger business and personal relationships with many of them.
A challenging time for the world, for our business, and for our people. It was so important to us to ensure our employees felt valued, informed – and were able to have just a little fun wherever possible.
Over the last year we’ve introduced a number of new staff initiatives, including our Quarantine Quiz. We originally introduced the quiz to raise money for the Quartet Community Foundation, donating to their Coronavirus 2020 Response Fund, as well as to boost our teams’ morale while we’ve all been forced to work remotely.
And unlike many of the Zoom quizzes we might have held in our personal lives, to this day The Proctors Quarantine Quiz lives on! The format has now evolved slightly, with different staff members hosting each Wednesday, and one lucky winner claiming a £50 Amazon voucher in a nice little midweek boost.
We’ve been rewarding staff for more than just their general knowledge, too. 2021 has seen the return of our famous Proscars awards. The Proscars are our quarterly awards by employees, for employees, with every staff member able to vote for three colleagues they believe should be rewarded for their hard work. Our three winners then get to choose a prize – either £250 in cash or £400 in vouchers.
To get us all moving, we’ve been further breaking up the working week with weekly lunchtime fitness and yoga sessions, hosted by a personal trainer online. And if you’d rather gin than gym, on Fridays our weekly virtual social kicks off at 5pm – although, it’s strictly BYOB!
If all that wasn’t enough, each Friday afternoon our Chairman, Roger Proctor, sends out his weekly ‘Good News’ email. Just as it sounds, it’s a cross-department weekly catch up about all things good – inside and out of work – and an informal welcome to the weekend.
As well as looking after our finances, it was also critical our staff had access to the support they needed to look after their personal wellbeing.
We engaged a psychotherapist and Mental Health Consultant to run a series of wellbeing workshops and Q+A sessions with all Proctors employees. This was followed up with a further series of workshops with our managers, providing them with additional tools to guide and support their team, as well as handouts on working from home, managing stress and more.
Throughout the pandemic, we’ve continued to promote our Employee Assistance Programme, offering 24/7 GP, legal and financial helplines, with options for counselling and psychiatric therapy available through our private medical insurance.
We also felt it was important to offer extra help to those who might be struggling with the pressures of family life in lockdown. Therefore, we sought to share helpful guidance and tips to P+S parents for effective home school and balancing with work as well as providing additional flexibility for maintaining work balance and wellbeing during additional childcare and home schooling. We even set up regional and international remote working agreements for those who benefited from being with their family outside of Bristol.
Christmas looked different in 2020, but we still managed to celebrate in style. In lieu of our traditional knees-up, we sent a hamper brimming local treats and bubbles from The Mall Deli in Clifton to each of our staff. But it was also important for us to give back too.
We joined forces with Caring in Bristol to donate a video in aid of homelessness in our city, helping to raise over £20,000. And we’ve kicked off the new year in a similar way by sponsoring Lebeq Ladies – a local women’s football team, in our community of Easton, Bristol.
Our future
None of the positive action we’ve taken should be viewed as temporary.
We intend to continue treating Wellbeing as a priority across the Group, and are continuing with initiatives in this area, such as with Mental Health First Aid training for select staff in June.
Above all, our people will continue to steer our direction moving forward: whether that’s via team surveys, policy and process updates or with lots of creative ideas. Because this has been one of the hardest times in recent memory to manage and market a business. And tough times lie ahead. But with a strong foundation, and an overwhelming commitment to your original values, it is possible to stay above water – even in the most testing of times.
If you’d like to talk to a truly ‘people first’ agency, we’re herewith a listening ear. So talk to us, at [email protected].