5 essential sections for a great agency proposal template
First things first: a proposal isn’t a pitch. A proposal is usually used as the first stage of a wider pitch process to filter down a field of agencies. I'm focusing here on the long form written proposal.
As an aside, alarm bells should be ringing if the prospect or client only wants a written proposal sending through with no opportunity for you to meet or at least ask questions. So I’ll assume you have requested and secured a meeting or some form of Q&A before you start creating your proposal. That way you have all the facts you need to answer the request and you’ve also started building a relationship.
'Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is.' Zig Ziglar
There'll be times when your proposal isn't written in a competitive context:
you may be the incumbent and have a great client relationship…
Keeping digital skills relevant in an agency
If you think life is a continuous learning experience, then consider working in a digital marketing agency as a microcosm of this experience.
Flux, evolution and transformation are a constant theme in digital marketing. Digital marketers have to keep up to date with the latest technology, upskill on a regular basis and deliver results in an increasingly competitive market. I have experienced these challenges and in this post, I would like to share my experience of over five years working in digital marketing and SEO agencies. My goal is to give some tangible advice that can help you keep ahead of the flux and be more successful as marketers. Of course, flux is not restricted to agencies! So the advice can be applied to both agency and in-house marketers.
Let’s get started.
1. Project Management and Organisation
Project management is…
Is there a growing disconnect between a brand and its digital marketing strategy?
Failing to adjust and implement a clearly defined digital strategy could be due to the disconnect between a brand, its purpose and the digital tactics used to meet company objectives.
With the brand’s purpose not clearly understood and integrated within the journey through the digital transformation, brands may be finding themselves lost. This leaves their digital operations and tactics isolated, being operated and managed in a silo.
This growing disconnect between the brand and its digital marketing strategy was highlighted in a recent survey by Smart Insights who asked the question:
“Does your organisation have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy?”
For organisations to…
Mobile payment search peaked in late 2014. Now the market is maturing.
In the classic new technology hype cycle the key stages defined by Gartner are New Innovation > Inflated Expectations > Disillusionment > Regained confidence > Productivity.
The chart below from Google Trends shows how 3 of the top mobile payment solutions have traversed the hype cycle. Google Wallet and Apple Pay peaked a year or two ago, whilst the mobile payments app Venmo is still gaining traction. Mobile payments are becoming increasingly common and are well on their way to maturity. Having overtaken Google Wallet and being on track to do the same with Apple Pay, Venmo is certainly a provider to watch.
More broadly, marketers should consider how they can capitalise on the increasing popularity of mobile payments. Whether it's streamlining customer journeys or …
Examples of applying proven techniques to create higher converting landing pages
Your landing page serves as your first impression to your site visitors. When you give them a great first-time experience, then they will want to explore further, even go as far as making purchases, returning and giving you referrals.
Well, the term ‘good landing’ page is relative. Hence, we will get more accurate in our post and talk about a high-converting landing page, which is our definition of a great landing page.
In this post, we will talk about the importance of a landing page giving different statistics as proof while including data-driven tricks for landing page designs in 2016.
In brief, here is what you should expect to find:
Important landing page statistics you should know in 2016
Causes of low landing page conversion rates
Proven ways of boosting your landing page conversion rate
Important Landing Page Statistics You Should Know In…
Snapchat's new offering provides a great way for brands to reach younger demographics.
Snapchat's massive popularity with twenty-somethings and teenagers has driven its massive growth, from an already impressive 50 million daily active users back 2014 to nearly 200 million today. Its users are highly engaged, and spend an average of 20-30 minutes per day on the App, fueling 10 billion daily video views.
The platform introduced some very basic advertising, in an attempt to monetise back in 2014. Now it's popularity has exploded, it will be looking into going public and increasing revenues, which means offering more and better ad options. So that is exactly what Snapchat has done, announcing an impressive range of new ad types as well the launch of an API for ads on June 13.
The new ad options launched yesterday include:
Ads between 'stories'
Snapchat stories let you see what people you are following are posting. Snapchat…
When your agency gets big enough you'll have to think seriously about account handling
Maybe a surprising question (especially to those account managers or handlers reading this post) but it is a question that comes up fairly regularly from owners of new or smaller agencies. And that’s who this post is aimed at.
Actually, rather than being asked if an account handler (at the right stage in the agency’s growth) is necessary, I’ve sometimes been told that it isn’t. Period. To paraphrase some conversations:
“we won’t be recruiting account handlers, clients will deal with a flat structure, we’ll save on overheads and that’ll also set us apart from other agencies”.
Not to sound flippant, but ‘good luck with that’! That approach will be what eventually makes you over run on projects, miss new business opportunities and underserve on proactive ideas. And tie you (the business owner or creative/tech lead) up in knots, trying to…
More clients think their agencies are innovative than ever before!
When it comes to digital marketing, innovation beats tried and tested. No one gets excited by banner ads, but a clever new Snapchat campaign or interactive billboard might just get some attention. So it stands to reason that clients would want and expect a good level of innovation with respect to digital initiatives from their marketing agencies.
A report from SoDA shows how many clients think their agencies really are innovative when it comes to digital. The numbers are looking fairly promosing, almost twice as many cleints thought their agencies were very innovative this year as did in 2015. More also thought they were 'somewhat' innovateive and less thought they were average.
So agencies had better keep up their efforts to become digital innovators, lest they fall behind the competition. If you're a marketing agency owner looking at offering new digital services, you'll…
Agencies and clients disagree on organisational structure, but do think the relationship is improving
The agency-client relationship has always existed in a state of strain and 2016 is no different. The brand uses an agency because it doesn't feel it can deliver campaigns as effective in-house, and that can't help but generate a little bit of healthy resentment or envy. The agency has every incentive to convince the brand to engage in ever more costly marketing activities, and very little reason to tell them pull the plug on costly campaigns that won't deliver ROI. Both partners need each other, but have different goals. It's a recipe for dissatisfaction.
So it hardly comes as a surprise that latest SoDA & Forrester report on the state of the agency-client relationship, based on surveys conducted in Q1 2016, finds the client agency dynamic to be hitting a 'roadblock'. But when you get beyond the negative headlines…
European online advertising spend is growing 9.7% year on year. But who is spending the most?
IHS Inc. & IAB Europe have recently announced some interesting findings from its European Online Advertising Report, highlighting a sizeable increase in advertising spend, compared to this time last year.
One of the most notable statistics from the report is the difference in spend between the UK and the rest of Europe.
With the UK spending in excess of €11.8 billion on online advertising, almost double that of the nearest country in Germany and triple that of France.
Eleni Marouli, principal analyst at IHS Technology highlighted the disparity, stating how the UK is
"clearly the first stop for advertisers in the region and shows no signs of slowing down.”
He goes on to highlight how the top three markets account for the lion's share of the advertising spend…
