WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A TOP ADVERTISING AGENCY TODAY

Building , running, and profiting from an advertising agency is undeniably hard!

In the modern digital marketing and advertising world, agencies mainly do their business and offer services online. There are over a million ad agencies across the globe, each with individual specialties, processes, and a unique team. In fact, some reports prove this. They state that the global market for marketing and advertising stands at an estimate of $322.5 billion and is still expected to rise to $640.2 billion by 2027.

Businesses rely on advertising agencies to create and execute effective and thriving marketing strategies. But with the advent of modern technology and the internet, the methods and skills of digital ad agencies have changed. Successful agencies must keep up with the trends and follow the most effective approaches to survive and thrive in this hyper-competitive industry. 

Below we discuss some crucial statistics, challenges facing advertising agencies, and offer the best solutions for ad agencies to stay on top of the competition.

2022 Advertising Statistics

The advertising industry is dynamic and is constantly changing. Technology, the internet, trends, and tactics never stay stagnant. Therefore, you must keep up with developing aspects of the industry; after all, you do not want your business to hit the bottom while your competitors grace the curve.

Understanding the latest marketing statistics and trends is a great way to stay ahead and remain relevant. Here are a few interesting statistics that can act as solutions when seeking ways to run a successful advertising business.

Online Advertising

• Facebook (19.6%) and Google (37.2%) are still the largest shareholders of the U.S total ad spending.
• Most small businesses earn an average revenue of $3 every time they spend $1.60 on Google AdWords.
• 90% of online consumers search and read reviews first before visiting a page.

Mobile Advertising

• 68% of businesses have adopted mobile ads as part of their overall digital marketing strategy.
• 88% of online consumers search for businesses near them through their mobile devices every day.
• By 2020, global spending on mobile ads was projected to hit $247.4 billion.

Social Media Advertising

• Over 40% of online consumers research new businesses or products via social networks.
• By 2018, the total global spending for social media ads reported an increase of 32%.
• 80% of Instagram users follow at least a single business, while over 200 million users browse at least one profile every day.

This list, which is not exhaustive, proves that the advertising industry is always in a state of fast flux. Advertising has become more competitive than before, and ad agencies need to adopt new advancements to stay on top of the game. To ensure they stand out from the crowd.

Challenges Faced by Advertising Agencies

Every advertising agency faces various challenges. The 2020 global pandemic pushed people in new ways, these challenges have been unlike anything businesses have had to deal with before. Marketing is so fast-paced that ad agencies find it difficult to identify areas that need development to ensure growth. That’s why it’s crucial to pause and reflect on some of the biggest challenges ad agencies face.

Hiring and Training the Right Talent

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Surprisingly, the leading challenge doesn’t involve the numerous KPIs or quantifiable goals surrounding marketing. Instead, choosing and nurturing the right team is. It is never easy to manage profitability if the talent is inefficient.

Additionally, the dynamic and fast pace of the advertising world makes it a challenge for agencies to find time for employee training. The employees might also lack the funds and time to access career development programs outside their everyday tasks. The quality of company employees distinguishes an agency from competitors, which further enables retaining and attracting more talented professionals easily.

Generating Leads and Traffic

This is always top of the list for many marketers.

“To weather this storm of change, marketers need to be vigilant in monitoring and understanding industry-wide acceptance of privacy protocols and updates to search, social, and display/native platforms (consumer-side and marketing/advertising-side). And last, but not least — lean into the power of peer support and networking for sharing best practices and learning,” said John Lee, Microsoft Advertising Evangelism Head.

Most advertising agencies struggle to produce sufficient demand for their product or content. This problem worsens as years progress, and the industry becomes more competitive. It’s extremely hard to know where to focus efforts when so many platforms exist for publishing and promoting content.

Demonstrating The ROI For Ads

Gaining and measuring ROI is a vital tactic agencies use to understand how effective each campaign or content is. Decision-makers can also rely on this information to determine whether to invest in a project in the future. Although essential, tracking and demonstrating the ROI of every ad isn’t always simple, especially without effective communication between an agency’s activities and sales reports.

 

 

Budget

It’s almost impossible to generate any winning digital marketing campaign without a good budget. Securing a budget has never been easy for the digital marketing industry globally. But even with a great budget alongside a revenue-generating marketing idea, your agency will still usually need to find a higher-up to approve the budget. And when you have the budget, you’ll need to fight hard to keep and increase it when needed. That’s always easier said than done, particularly for smaller agencies that don’t have access to a flexible or sizable advertising spend.

Hitting Global Reach

Nowadays, marketers target international audiences. They still face several challenges that make it difficult for brands or agencies to gain awareness worldwide. Developing and adopting a global marketing strategy can be difficult not only when trying to figure out perfect ways to target and reach different locations, but to optimize and organize your site to be accessible in different countries.

What to Do to Stay a Top Advertising Agency

Running a successful advertising agency can be a profitable endeavor. But managing and growing an advertising agency has never been a walk in the park. However, these tips will set you on your journey to the top of the marketplace.

1. Target the Global Audience

These global changes have made it necessary and similarly possible for marketers to broaden their reach. Advertising agencies can now target the international marketplace and test new regions by using strategies such as shifting the product offering. Your website visitors, for instance, speak and understand numerous different languages and are from different time zones.

To make your ads appealing to a wide range of audiences, you’ll have to consider global customers when creating any content. Ensure you understand seasonal references, provide translations of units of measure, and allow your team to customize ad content for a particular audience whenever they need to. Also, ensure your website is optimized for international visitors.

2. Build and Maintain an Incredible Website

The modern business world dictates that industries such as advertising agencies must at least have a robust, active, and engaging website that captures the attention of potential clients and explains how they can help these clients with their various marketing campaigns. Therefore, your agency needs to build a compelling and informative website, maintain consistent content, and highlight success stories of previous team results. This will drive traffic and get you more clients quickly.

Additionally, display your agency’s portfolio to create a trustworthy environment for visitors. You can also ask your past clients for testimonials, referrals, and feedback about your content and use it to create a section for customer reviews on your website. Make these credible by uploading the client’s name, company, and photo, if possible, and with their permission.

You can decide to DIY using one of the numerous website building tools online or use the services of a professional web designer for a more customized web page. Either way, the website will need a good domain name and hosting. Include pages describing the business, a contact page, and high-quality visuals to communicate the brand idenitity.

3. Build Lasting Relationships With Clients

Traditionally, advertising agencies built partnerships and trust with various businesses to design advertisements, create marketing strategies, and help people see a service or product. This involved a massive amount of effort, time, and constant interaction between agencies and the client company professionals. Today, even with numerous technological changes, such interpersonal connections and relationships are still necessary.

Most clients need a reliable person at the advertising agency that is professional enough to discuss with them and offer recommendations about campaigns. Make it easy for clients to contact you. Have an active contact page, with phone numbers, emails, and addresses, especially for local clients visiting your business.

4. Keep Targeting New Prospects

It doesn’t matter how much your digital advertising agency has grown; what matters is that it keeps growing through continuous prospecting. In the advertising business, there are never enough prospects for an agency. Targeting many prospects will bring you plenty of offers, more money, and constant success.

However, never come off as desperate to your target market. There are various prospecting approaches that you can employ to propel your ad agency. Try as many as appropriate until you find one best suited for your business. Remember, it’s fine to lose an offer or decide that you won’t work with a particular prospect. If a prospect doesn’t match your brand, it’s okay to decline. Sometimes, you have to be selective to protect yourself and the company’s future.

5. Create Strategic Partnerships

Building a strategic and effective partnership with other agencies- non-competitors- makes it easier for your agency to find new resources and clients. Often, companies worry about developing partnerships with an agency in the same industry. They fear that it will affect the target audience or client relationships. But this myth is busted when agencies build partnerships within the industry helping them attract more prospects. For example, an ad agency can easily partner with a PR or content marketing agency. This way, whenever content marketing or advertising services are required, your partner can refer you to the client.

Strategic business partnerships are one of the best ways to tap the market for a new audience and get more clients. Just ensure to partner with non-competitor agencies who are scaling separate verticals.

6. Be Visible on Social Media

Social media is the current gasoline for customer acquisition. Most businesses nowadays use social media to share their products and services. For instance, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are some of the greatest social media tools for direct communication with clients, customers, and companies. Post videos and tutorials on Instagram and Facebook, and use Instagram reels to inform your audience about what services you offer. Reels work like wildfire among the modern online generation.

Social media marketing can either be paid or organic. Organic is the best way to improve brand awareness, build a business personality and share appealing content. Blogging is also a great tool for sharing informative content while also gathering a customer following.

Although it’s relatively new, social media helps businesses build awareness by staying ahead of the game in daily business and technological advancements. Embrace social media to widen the horizons of your advertising agency.

7. Build an Offline Presence

Although your online presence is great for visibility, building an offline presence is also essential to get even more clients. Ensure you create a similarly compelling offline visibility and step out into the customers’ real world. Offline networking events, seminars, and business expos are great places to expand your connection by delivering your best pitch as an advertising agency, explaining the products or services you offer and where you need help. Step out with practical objectives, point out the existing market gaps, and use data to explain how your agency can bridge the gaps.

This will help you present your advertising agency as a part of the local community so that other businesses know you and provide referrals.

Hire a Digital Marketing Agency

If winning and attracting the right clients, providing satisfying results, while also sourcing, training, and motivating the right audience aren’t challenging enough, then add an ever-evolving and changing marketing industry, with the ebb and flow of budgets and margins every season, and you get the perfect making of a remarkably tough business. However, running a top digital ad agency can be phenomenally rewarding – financially and creatively when well-strategized.

Contact us to streamline your digital business marketing strategies and find out how we make ad agencies stay on top of the digital marketing world. Digital Delane will ensure your brand is visible to help youreach a new audience quickly and efficiently.