Is Your Agency Ready for Now and Next Year?
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One of the things that theappleofmyi prides it self on is understanding online marketing. Without wishing to be full of it, this is what we love, what we read about and do every day.
The online markerting space is developing at a rapid pace and there are many traditional agencies who, frankly do not have a clue. A good example of this was when I was working in the corprate space and an agency came to see me to pitch their services. A couple of quick questions involving feeds, twitter and blogging soon established them to be pretenders. The final straw came when I pointed out their news section on their homepage featured one item from 2005 (it was 2007 at the time).
Now I am not writing this to be arrogant or clever. It is to make a simple point. If you are using an agency or marketing consultant, they MUST understand the digital space.
This leads me nicely onto a very interesting report from one of my favourite companies, Sapient. If you have a few £100,000 for an online campaign, then these guys would be good to talk to 
They have recently published a survey -
national online digital marketing survey of more than 200 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and senior marketers responsible for managing digital budgets (among other things).
Top 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future
1. Greater knowledge of the digital space. With more than a third of marketers surveyed revealing that they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the unchartered waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising, it’s clear that agencies need to have a greater knowledge of the digital space in order to thrive. In fact, nearly half (45 percent) of the respondents have switched agencies (or plan to switch in the next 12 months) for one with greater digital knowledge or have hired an additional digital specialist to handle their interactive campaigns. Further, when it comes to an agency’s area of expertise, 79% of respondents rated “interactive/digital” functions as ‘important/very important.’
2. More use of “pull interactions.” When trying to engage consumers with their brand, 90 percent of respondents agree that it is becoming increasingly important that their agency uses ‘pull interactions’ such as social media and online communities rather than traditional ‘push’ campaigns.
3. Leverage virtual communities. An overwhelming 94 percent of respondents expressed interest in leveraging virtual communities (public and private) to understand more about their target audience.
4. Agency executives using the technology they are recommending. Ninety-two percent of respondents said it was ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ important that agency employees use the technologies that they are recommending. For example, it is important that agency executives regularly use Facebook, Flickr, wikis, blogs, etc. in their personal social media mix.
5. Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing. Forty-three percent of marketers surveyed said that agencies with chief digital officers are more appealing than those without.
6. Web 2.0 and social media savvy. Sixty three percent of marketers surveyed said that an agency’s Web 2.0 and social media capabilities are ‘important/very important’ when it comes to agency selection.
7. Agencies that understand consumer behavior. Seventy-six percent of respondents deemed this as an ‘important/very important’ aspect of their agency’s online digital marketing and interactive advertising area of expertise.
8. Demonstrate strategic thinking. Seventy-seven percent of marketers surveyed ranked strategy/brain trust capabilities at the top of their agency wish list.
9. Branding and creative capabilities. Sixty-seven percent of respondents ranked branding at the top of their agency wish list while seventy-six percent ranked creative capabilities as ‘important/very important.’
10. Ability to measure success. It’s no surprise that marketers want an agency that can report on where campaigns succeeded, fell short and where they should be fine-tuned. Sixty-five percent ranked analytics at the top of their agency wish list.
Jon’s Thoughts
These results do not surprise me in the least. The online or digital channel is becoming more and more important. The clients that I am working with are starting to realise this and we have been having some real successes, for example:
A YouTube channel which has attracted 25,000 + views
An email campaign with consistent 40%+ open rates on a list of around 1000
A mini 10 day course, all online, which is getting superb sign ups and amazing feedback
These are just small examples of what can be done. Your imagination is the only thing holding you back! Companies do however, need to get the simple stuff right first, and then start doing bigger projects. Unfortnately, most companies have still got those simple things to do. Just do them quickly.
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Thanks to all - Visitors from around the world!
A quick end of weekend post to say a HUGE thankyou to everyone from around the world visting the blog! 
A quick hello!
Impressed with retaggr
A quick bit of link kudos to retaggr - they have a free service to create online business cards, you know, the kind of thing that has all your details on, email, phone etc. The really nice thing about retaggr is that it is a doddle to use, you can integrate all your social sites / blog feeds / twitter etc and they do a nice embed feature which produces a badge like the one below:
Pretty cool eh? They also do smaller badges for blog sidebars, so if you look over here in my sidebar, you should see mine. Anyway, big thumbs up from me on a cool service!
UPDATE - the blog sidebar badge is way better than I originally thought - click it, and it shows the widget above, which is extremely dynamic - you can contact me via email (even with it’s own captcha form), links to all my social sites, shows the latest blog posts … the list goes on. IMPRESSIVE!
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Woohoo! We’re back!!!!
Hot donkey!!!! We are back in business!!!!
By some miracle, the blog move seems to have worked. Not quite sure how that happened, but hey ho, no complaints from me. A big thanks to Jamie for spending time with me doing the move - we couldn’t get it working on the night, but something must have happened, and bingo!
So, blogging will be returning to my normal day’s routine. I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things, and look forward to your comments - please don’t be shy, it’s great to get interaction and create a conversation.
The really big news (drum roll …….) is that finally, my Marketing Consultancy / Company site is now live, LIVE baby!!! Please do check it out >>> click!
It is 95% done, need to integrate the blog and change some copy, but we are pretty much there. I am delighted and a huge thanks to my good friend Anand, whom without, nothing would have happened. Thanks dood!
Right, time for a good night’s sleep - I had a busy day with a client, and have a very early morning on Sunday (down to Silverstone to shoot the Time Attack Series - fingers crossed for some sunshine!).
Fancyzoom is working
Well, after a little jiggery pokery and a lot of help from Mike (check his excellent blog out here), Fancyzoom is now working.
So when you click on the link here - Spec C it should produce a photo for you!
For those of you who spend any time online and read Blogs, you have probably heard of Twitter. For those of you who are thinking, what is Jon twittering on about now (that’s a joke there, I’m here all week) ;-) watch this video!
You can follow me in Twitter here. (Thanks to Douglass Karr for reminding me to post about Twitter!).
