A Little History

Our agency opened its doors in 1986. We’ve come through the recessions of 1990/91, 2001 and the economic crisis of 2008/09. Over the years, we’ve seen agencies with hundreds of employees shutter their operations and watched others go from a two-person boutique to dozens of employees.

Covid-19 is different. Never before has an economy gone from booming to literally shutting down overnight. The aftershocks of these events will be too much for many businesses to withstand.

However, there are things that many agencies can do as part of a survival plan to get through these extraordinary events while recognizing that we can all expect to lose long-standing accounts and reliable revenue streams in the weeks and months ahead.

Throughout our existence, our firm has relied on four primary principles in order to survive and thrive:

• Education
• Consumption
• Adaptation
• Innovation 

Education

In real estate, the term is Location, Location, Location. Our agency practices Education, Education, Education. We read everything. We get every point of view. We stay ahead of the information curve so we are up to date and aware of what’s happening in our industry. This ensures that can deliver optimal value to our clients.

Of course, the biggest obstacle to staying informed is finding the time to do so. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to read the latest article about PPC, catch up on the most recent changes to Google’s algorithm. learn about the latest innovation in gathering marketing data,  or watch the newest webinar about Facebook and Instagram advertising. But we make it an agency-wide practice to set aside blocks of time to stay up to date.

Now and for the next few weeks, many of you have time on your hands to start a daily ritual of information absorption. Choose the resources that most interest you and are most relevant to your business. 

If you really want to offer value to your clients and prepare for what’s ahead, be informed.

Consumption

Different from education is consumption. In our agency, education is about being learned and informed or having a good foundation of knowledge as it pertains to the business we are in. Consumption, on the other hand, is all about digesting specific educational materials. 

You can read 25 articles a day but you are only going to be interested in consuming two or three. The information you ‘consume’ should be highly relevant to the core services you offer. For example, if you are a PPC agency, your staff may read articles, listen to podcasts or watch videos about various areas of marketing but you’ll want them to consume critical details that relate to PPC. 

Don’t try to be an expert at everything but look to become an educated leader in the services you offer while obtaining a strong knowledge of ancillary topics that can help your business grow.

Adaptation

During the economic downturn of 2008, our firm was faced with the dynamically changing needs of a diverse range of clients. In a relatively short timeframe, many of our clients were forced to pivot from forward-facing strategies designed to upsell and generate new business and move to maintenance initiatives intended to keep existing business and cash flow while minimizing the decline in ROAS.  

Today’s situation, although significantly different from 2008, requires marketing agencies to adapt to the new reality. As marketers, we have to innovate and move out of our comfort zones. And I’m not talking switching to Facebook ads instead of Google Ads. I’m talking about a radical, paradigm shift in your business. Agencies have to look at partnership opportunities that may create synergies that benefit our clients, not just for today but for the road ahead. 

Merging service offerings with other agencies which bring a different skill set to the table, partnering with value-added propositions intended to help your clients survive, and moving beyond the services you have traditionally offered in order to create untapped opportunity streams for your clients; these are just some of the ways you’ll need to change your thinking if you are going to survive and adapt your business to the new reality.  

Innovation

As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. But as the other saying goes, six of one, half a dozen of the other, so let’s just swap out invention for innovation. When faced with a crisis or other unforeseen events, marketers are often called upon to craft messaging and strategy that mitigates fallout or assuages concerns. For agencies to survive the current crisis, we need to innovate our own messaging and perhaps even our entire way of operating.

Many agencies will need to become more efficient, streamline operations and consider different services or innovating the way current services are offered. If outdoor lines become the norm at the grocery store or online commerce explodes, how do we as marketers innovate in order to address what will very likely become the new norm for many companies?

No doubt, we’ll soon hear about companies that are innovating and developing new ideas to address the new reality just as we did with these companies in 2008 and 2009: 

• Credit Karma
• WhatsApp
• Groupon
• Instagram
• Slack
• Uber
• Pinterest          
• Venmo
• Airbnb

These are not your typical businesses but they all started with an innovative concept that became an idea and turned into a business and then a brand. Marketing agencies can apply those lessons on a smaller scale by innovating the way they think and create ideas for clients.     

Takeaways

The weeks and months ahead are going to present challenges as well as opportunities. For marketing agencies that can ride out the storm, they will need to be educated, consume information, adapt to a rapidly changing market, and innovate their business models.

Understand that the needs of your clients are going to change dramatically for the foreseeable future and if you are going to survive throughout this crisis and beyond, prioritize and focus on the areas over which you have control.