Want Your Ad Agency to Survive? Take These 3 Steps Today.
The marketing director of our largest client announced that she was leaving for an overseas assignment.
And I freaked out.
I’ve been in advertising a while.
I’ve seen this before.
The Reality of Ad Agency Life
Marketing director leaves. New one takes her place. New one fires current agency and hires old agency.
“Nothing personal. You do great work. I just want to take the account in a new direction.”
Not a big deal if the client makes up 5% of your agency’s billings.
A huge deal if it makes up 50%.
My mind took the announcement to the extreme:
She leaves. Agency goes out of business. I’m out of a job. Can’t pay bills. Go bankrupt. Lose our house. Move in with my mother-in-law.
That night I had a stress dream.
I was checking in at the airport and the gate agent said that the flight had already taken off. According to my ticket, I still had an hour before the flight was supposed to depart. Still, it left. Without me.
I woke up.
It was 3:00 in the morning.
Stressed? Do What Copywriters Do. Write.
Unable to go back to sleep, I got out of bed, pulled out my journal and asked myself a few questions:
What facts do I have to support my story? Well, none.
What would be possible if this story wasn’t true? I’d be free to keep on doing great work for this client, regardless of who the marketing director is.
What action can I take to create my desired outcome? I could make sure that the new marketing director understood the value of our partnership.
In that moment, I had an insight: Freaking out solves nothing. Action does.
Later that day, I met with my team and we put together a plan to create a reel and landing page to showcase our work to the new marketing director.
For ad agencies today, landmines lie buried around every corner.
Clients can fire us at any time or slash budgets.
New technologies can make a deliverable we offer obsolete.
Our best employees can leave.
What can we do when so much is out of our control?
Three Steps to Help Your Ad Agency Today
Above all, helping your agency begins with a mindset shift: Focus on what you can control.
Then, implement simple tactics that everyone knows, but we tend to lose sight of when caught up in the day-to-day.
Balance your roster so the loss of one client doesn’t destroy the agency.
Produce strategic work that produces results for our clients.
Make your employees feel valued and appreciated.
By focusing on our actions – instead of worrying about the actions of others – we not only stress less, we also have more time and energy to devote to the steps that will move our agencies forward.
If you’re freaking out about something at the moment, ask yourself the same questions I asked myself:
What facts do I have to support my story?
What would be possible if this story wasn’t true?
What action can I take to create my desired outcome?
Going through this exercise shifts your mindset from what you can’t control to what you can.
It also produces within you a sense of power.
Over the situation.
And your life.
Want more control over your agency’s finances and copywriting? Try Copy Rocket today.
Photo by Mikael Seegen on Unsplash