The recently completed SAGA Agency Owner Survey looked at business development approaches, including what is working best right now.
Among the most successful tactics identified by small agencies were hosting podcasts and creating videos.
Yet those are also two of the least utilized tactics for agency business development.
As Gini and I discussed on this week’s Agency Leadership Podcast, if you’re not doing either of those things, they should be on your roadmap for strong consideration in 2025.
I’ll talk more about why I think podcasts and video are so valuable — especially for small agencies — a bit later in this week’s newsletter, but first let’s look at what Jen has rounded up for us this week.
— Chip Griffin, SAGA Founder
Latest podcasts from SAGA
- Q3 agency owner survey shows overall optimism, but dissatisfaction with state of business development (Agency Leadership Podcast)
Weekly Roundup
Below are some articles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos that we came across during the past week or so that provide useful perspective and information for PR and marketing agency owners. While we don’t necessarily endorse all of the views expressed in these links, we think they are worth your time.
— Jen Griffin, SAGA Community Manager
Articles & Blog Posts
- Someone asks to buy your agency. What should you do next? (Sakas and Company)
- Don’t Look at the Tree (Anchor Advisors)
- How to Turn Data Into Engaging PR Stories (Spin Sucks)
- Balancing the Short- and Long-Term (Punctuation)
- To Defend or Condemn the Agency Showreel (The Sutter Company)
- The Secret to Effective Leadership: Step Back to Move Forward (Bureau of Digital)
Podcast Episodes
- How to Avoid Commodifying Your Offering (2Bobs)
- Cultivating Courage and Empathy Through Agency Leadership, with Ken Jacobs (The Innovative Agency)
- How PR Pros Can Leverage that Back to School Energy (That Solo Life)
- The Importance of Teaching (and Learning) Negotiation Skills (Spin Sucks)
- Danny Markstein on the Workforce Crisis and the Power of Specialization (The Digital Agency Growth Podcast)
- Building a Global Agency From the Ground Up With Tim Kelsey (The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast)
- Building Trust & Credibility in Agency Sales (The Digital Agency Show)
Videos
- Ad Agency Expectations for the Second Half of ’24 (RSW/US)
- “What’s the best way to ask for referrals?” (The Sutter Company)
- Life after owning your agency, and proposal advice: Agency Q&A with Karl Sakas & Khaleelah Jones (Sakas and Company)
- 2024 Agency Edge research results – Agency Management webinar for Owners (Agency Management Institute)
AI in Focus
- FIR Interview: Ezri Carlebach on Speculative Fiction in Business (For Immediate Release)
Why doesn’t your agency have its own podcast or video content?
The SAGA Agency Owner Survey revealed that most of your peers are not satisfied with the state of business development at their firms.
Digging deeper, we found that some longstanding growth approaches — including word of mouth and attending events — tend to produce the best results.
But a couple of things also appeared near the top of the list of most effective tactics that may surprise you: hosting a podcast and creating video.
What’s surprising about it is that most of you aren’t using either one, according to the survey results.
And not all that many have plans to introduce either or both to their marketing mix for 2025.
But you should.
Podcasts and video allow you to showcase your agency’s expertise in an incredibly human way.
We all fuss over our marketing copy on our websites or in our PowerPoint decks, but none of those make the same level of human connection as seeing or hearing us on podcasts and videos.
Even in the work I do at SAGA, just about every client I win has watched or listened to my videos and podcasts — often for many hours — before we connect 1:1.
You can create that same kind of connection by creating audio and video content that speaks directly to your ideal clients and pre-builds the relationship before you talk directly with each other.
That not only shortens the sales cycle, but it increases substantially the stickiness of those clients because they come in with a strong understanding of your agency and its perspective.
Even better, if you create a podcast that includes guests, you can use that to build relationships with prospects and those who might be able to refer business to you.
My experience is that just about everyone says yes when asked to be a guest on a podcast because they appreciate being able to stand on a pedestal and share their own experiences and expertise.
For most of you, that’s a more comfortable ask than requesting a conversation to talk about how their website is ineffective or their media strategy is off the mark.
You can even kill two birds with one stone by recording video of your podcast (as I do) so that you have both forms of content created at once.
So if you aren’t using podcasts or video as part of your agency’s business development strategy, listen to your peers who rank them as among the most effective approaches and start planning to use both in the months ahead.
