Woolley Marketing: Is agency new business a marketing or sales activity?

Only when selecting an agency can you compare agencies side by side and understand the challenges they face in marketing and selling their services. With such an extensive market for choice, it's no wonder that many marketers struggle to find the right agency, and many agencies struggle to add new business for growth.

While the pitch process is just one method for agencies to expand their businesses, this challenge will affect all new business strategies they opt to pursue, except those aimed at generating incremental revenue from existing clients, which is more about relationship-building and is traditionally a function of sales.

When considering how agencies position themselves in the market, perceived in buyers' minds relative to competitors and aligned with buyers’ needs and desires, most default to primarily functional positions, such as full service, specialist, boutique, media buying, digital, lead generation, performance, or their chosen category descriptor. The problem is that these category descriptors land the agency in a crowded market position.

Therefore, these agency positionings will include one or more of the following elements: expertise, value, niche, excellence, results, partnership, tech-driven solutions, global reach, agility, and flexibility. This is why you will often hear an agency describe itself as “a boutique digital agency focused on delivering marketing value” or with a similar combination of vague adjectives which say a lot, while saying absolutely nothing at all.

So, while many agencies end up in vastly crowded marketing positions, it is no wonder many then focus on ways to differentiate themselves by highlighting specific attributes and features that set themselves apart from competitors. Often, this leads agencies to try and define or even create their USP. This has led some agencies to develop proprietary tools—a popular strategy particularly for media agencies.

However, agencies face an additional challenge in the B2B market. Although the fundamental principles of positioning and differentiation remain unchanged, B2B marketing requires a more nuanced approach that accounts for the complexities of business relationships, decision-making processes, and the specific needs of marketing and procurement. Therefore, agencies must customise their strategies to effectively engage and persuade these complex audiences.

The tragedy occurs when I observe an agency that has established a market position and differentiation and minimises or overlooks this strength during the sales process. This phenomenon is common, particularly amongst local offices of global network agencies, which often disregard their worldwide standing and brand promise to compete with the more ‘flexible’ independent agencies.

Like many organisations, agencies struggle with sales and marketing. They fail to see the opportunity to leverage their marketing efforts in their sales process or, conversely, rely too heavily on marketing when the need is sales. Strong agency market positioning, differentiation, and distinctive brand identity go a long way toward building a reputation and getting the agency on a pitch list.

While the pitch is a sales process for building trust and delivering a specific value proposition that meets buyers’ needs, leveraging the reason you are on the list in the first place is essential. The conundrum is that strong marketing typically targets a specific audience, and while B2B audiences can be complicated, this principle still holds. Meanwhile, the sales process focuses on appealing only to the buyer and downplaying the very reason you may be on the list, creating greater flexibility in that appeal.

However, this approach has a significant flaw: all the agencies pitching are doing the same thing. Everyone is trying to find the sales pitch that will win the business, but in the process, you might lose the very differentiation that secured your place in the pitch in the first place. Marketing is essential for agencies, and more agencies should engage in it to establish clear positioning and differentiation in a crowded market. However, sales is equally important if you want to convert that opportunity into business growth and success.

The inevitable truth is that marketing and sales for agencies, and for business generally, work best when the two work together.

Woolley Marketing is a monthly column for Campaign Asia-Pacific, penned by Darren Woolley, the founder and global CEO of Trinity P3. The illustration accompanying this piece is by Dennis Flad, a Zurich-based marketing and advertising veteran.