Chief Marketer sister pub Event Marketer has released its 2022 IT List, the top 100 event agencies curated annually by EM editors across 20 core competencies—from B2B conferences to festivals to influencer programs to virtual events. Check out the most buzz-worthy event marketing companies in the experiential marketing industry.

The post Event Marketer Releases 2022 IT List Event Agency Roundup appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Contentious times like these call for brands’ adaptability and agility. Here’s how agencies can help brands create stability amid the chaos of another tumultuous year, according to a column in AdExchanger from WorkReduce CEO and founder Brian Dolan. from building relationships to investing in consumer insights to designing adaptable business strategies.

Build Relationships

In some ways, personalizing working relationships has been easier during the pandemic. In addition to humanizing those relationships, Dolan suggests that agencies focus on client retention through providing new insights and analytics that relate to changing consumer behaviors.

Adaptable Business Strategies

With chaotic, unpredictable events regularly occurring these days, brands require adaptable business plans. As such, agencies are charged with imagining a slew of “what-if” scenarios and how those events will affect clients. Achieving that flexibility requires making contingency plans that enable agencies to pivot when such scenarios play out.

For more ways in which agencies and brands can work together during chaotic times, read more in AdExchanger.

The post How Agencies Can Help Brands Weather Crises appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Worried about losing your ad agency gig? Have you considered hiring an emotional support clown?

Probably not, especially considering the popularity of IT. But for one New Zealand man about to be downsized from his job at FCB, bringing a clown along to meet with his employers seemed like exactly the right thing to do.

Everyone is used to stories of people bringing support animals—dogs, cats, chickens—places to help them get through the day, but a clown is decidedly unusual.

As the New York Post reports, Joshua Jack of Auckland had been called in to meet with his superiors and knew while it could be for a promotion, the more likely scenario was that he was being let go. The email informing him of the meeting told him he could bring a support person.

“I thought it was best to bring in a professional—so I paid $200 and hired a clown,” he told Magic Talk radio.

The clown earned his paycheck, miming crying as Jack was served his redundancy papers, and created balloon animals to lift his spirits. The folks at FCB were cool with his choice of meeting companion—if he was a doctor or lawyer, it might not have been so well received.

“He was $200 so basically he was, I assume, one of the best clowns in Auckland,” Jack said. “I definitely recommend bringing Joe or another clown. Highly recommended.”

In the end, “a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants” may have been a smart career move after all: the New Zealand Herald reports that Jack and his creative partner (no, not the clown) already have new positions lined up at DDB.

No clowning around: Is your marketing agency one of the top shops in the country? Let everyone know: apply now to be part of the 2020 Chief Marketer 200, our exclusive list of the country’s top 200 B2B and brand activation agencies.

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As the possibility of recession draws nearer, keep these three marketing employment trends in mind:

1. Employees have more options than ever.

Some people assume the war for top talent is only being waged within the tech industry, but smart marketing execs know better. Today’s most talented marketers have plenty of employment options to choose from—freelancing included — which means businesses and agencies must make a compelling case to attract the best and brightest.

Agencies have become one of the biggest talent pipelines for in-house teams. Clients who love their agencies often poach talent to cut costs. Some agency owners feel frustrated by their part-time roles as talent trainers, but unfortunately, that trend will continue until the recession arrives in earnest.

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To combat this, agency leaders must proactively recruit their own top talent. That translates to raises, promotions, and consistent praise and recognition for top performers. Great employees deserve to operate in environments where they feel valued, and if agency owners don’t provide that environment, in-house teams will.

Whether you lead an in-house team or an agency, prioritize employee satisfaction to keep your best team members happy. Push them too far (or fail to recognize their value), and another talent-hungry organization will be happy to provide what you didn’t.

2. Employees want to work asynchronously and remotely.

Today’s employees think differently about the nature of work. The agency owners and executives of yesteryear wanted all their employees working under the same roof. Now, those same marketing leaders must learn to manage dispersed teams if they want to survive.

Fortunately, the phenomenon of remote work provides far more advantages than challenges. Gallup found that employees who work remotely at least some of the time are more engaged than their exclusively in-office colleagues. Engaged employees do better work and take fewer sick days than disengaged employees, which are critical advantages in creative marketing fields.

The best marketing leaders must learn to manage mixed teams of in-office, remote, and international employees simultaneously. Some companies have removed offices entirely, relying solely on remote workers to pursue their goals. No matter where you fall on the spectrum, top marketing employees now expect remote work options. If you don’t offer them, someone else will.

Flexible schedules also matter to many employees. Some prefer to work four 10-hour shifts to enjoy three-day weekends every week. Others prefer to work remotely and travel frequently. You can offer as much or as little flexibility as you like, but if you limit the options, you could miss out on that unicorn employee everyone wants.

3. Employees Need More Diverse Skills

Though employees have more power than they used to in the marketing world, they don’t hold all the cards. Just as employees expect more from their employers, companies and agencies expect their marketing workers to bring (and keep up with) a wide variety of skills.

Back in the early 2000s, most agencies put together digital teams to supplement their creative workforces. Those digital teams acted as the subject matter experts for everything online. Today, digital exists in every department, which means every employee needs at least a basic set of digital skills to provide sufficient value.

This expansion of expectations does not mean marketing leaders expect employees to become interchangeable. Marketing departments simply need people who can have relevant conversations with each other. Email marketers need to understand enough about the creative process to work with designers, while designers need to learn the basics of digital advertising to create better deliverables.

Help your marketing team collaborate better by establishing clearer expectations. Get everyone certified in the basics, like Google Ads, to provide a foundation for more productive conversations. When everyone finds common ground, everyone knows what to expect.

Marketing leaders will face plenty of challenges when the looming recession arrives, so don’t add unnecessary talent struggles to your plate. Keep your best employees longer by helping to diversify skill sets, offering remote options that modern employees want, and providing competitive benefits packages and advancement opportunities.

Drew McLellan is CEO of Agency Management Institute.

The post A Recession Is Coming: Is Your Talent Strategy Built to Last? appeared first on Chief Marketer.

While the more mainstream self-care methods are aimed at individuals, the concept absolutely applies to businesses as well. If clients see that marketing agency doesn’t take the time to promote itself, they may follow your lead and decide it’s not worth their efforts either.

When prospective clients ask whether your marketing services are effective, they want to see that you believe in what you sell. It’s one thing to talk about how other clients have succeeded with your services—it’s something else entirely to act as your own best example. If you can’t depend on your marketing wisdom to provide your own company with a steady stream of qualified leads, how can you ask other businesses to trust you with their growth?

Here’s seven tips for marketing agency promotional self-care.

1- Ask the right questions. Before you start pumping money into your new self-marketing priorities, ask yourself a couple of questions. First, how do you currently get leads, and how much does that cost? Second, do you expect your growth to come from new business or current accounts?

2- Look at your current clients. Don’t underestimate the power of existing clients to help your company grow. While focusing on current accounts typically leads to slower growth, clients love working with companies that treat them as long-term partners. Just make sure you never get into a situation where losing one big client could tank your business.

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3- Play to your strengths. Wherever you decide to start, lean on your marketing agency expertise to do for yourself what you do for your clients. Do you provide social media capabilities? Use those channels to kickstart your growth. Does your agency focus more on inbound services? Start digging deeper into your keywords and get serious about your content creation.

4- Boost your B2B signal. But before you play too much to your strengths, remember that the clients you want and the customers you help your current clients attract don’t necessarily respond to the same tactics. If your agency focuses exclusively on B2C retail clients, you might need to shift your approach to boost your own B2B appeal.

5- Don’t put all the burden at the top. Founders and CEOs do need to involve themselves in marketing to spur growth and provide strategic direction. However, if they spend all their time on sales and marketing because nobody else in the organization is focused on it, the business will struggle to grow. Small agencies in particular suffer from CEO sales overload. When the boss does all the selling, the company’s brand gets tied up too closely with the head honcho’s personal story. Without adding hours to the day, you can’t scale your own efforts, which means your business can only grow as much as you have time to let it. Plus, if you ever want to sell the agency and start a new venture, the selling price of your company will plummet if all the value depends on you.

6- Have a dedicated team. When you delegate marketing responsibilities, don’t ask account managers to do too much. People who concentrate on bringing in new business while serving current clients often get caught between two worlds. Rather than generating new leads, they focus on the needs of current clients (as they should), and your scaling efforts never take off. Instead, identify a person or team of people to handle your marketing, then give them the tools they need and back off a little. As you work to give your agency the marketing self-care it needs, your goal should be to create scalable, people-agnostic processes that will guide your company forward with or without your input.

7- Manage your own expectations. Just as you would want to set client’s expectations for how long it will take to start seeing the results from a marketing campaign, you should set your expectations according to your goals and strategy and be realistic. If you crave recurring revenue and a consistent source of fresh leads, put in the same kind of effort you would for a top-priority customer—or even more. Remember, your company has to succeed on its own before you can deliver high-quality, long-term services to others.

Kelsey Raymond is the co-founder and CEO of Influence & Co.

The post 7 Tips for Promoting Your Marketing Agency appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Wondering what makes a branding agency worth hiring? These seven simple questions to ask a prospective partner can help you pick the right agency to bring your brand to life.

1. What does branding mean to you?

A brand isn’t a logo, and it isn’t marketing materials. A brand is an idea in your head – it’s whatever pops into peoples’ minds when they see, hear or think of you. A good branding agency must make sure to help tell that story for each brand. They will build that story, and put the idea of the story into people’s minds through marketing.

Bottom line: An agency that focuses mostly on logos/design may not be the best fit, or, worse—they may be a design house masquerading as a branding group. (Trust me, It happens a lot).

2. How do you help brands differentiate themselves from competitors?

It is important to figure out which product and service offerings set you apart from competitors, but those items shouldn’t be your leading differentiators. It is more important to lead with emotions, e.g., what does this product difference mean to consumers? A good branding agency will ask: How do we capitalize on the consumer’s connection to the product — not just features and functionality?

Bottom line: A good agency will immediately ask you about your differentiating promise of value and what makes it believable. They will help you identify it and leverage it to tell a story.

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3. What kind of ROI can I expect?

This depends on your goals. The important thing is to set those goals (either on your own or by working with a branding agency) and to make sure you have measurements in place to see how you are progressing and achieving them. Equally important is being able to measure the pace at which you are achieving so you can adjust and change your strategy accordingly.

Bottom line: Everyone will promise you metrics, but best agencies know how to a/b test creative and adjust to maximize the ROI on your investment. They know they won’t bat 1000 every time

4. Are you an inbound only marketing company, or do you also incorporate branding strategy?

A lot of agencies like to tout themselves as inbound, but that’s only one part of the total strategy. If they’re solely focused on inbound marketing, that’s great, but then you will need to find another company who can handle all other aspects of marketing. Make sure you know what each agency’s strengths are. Most importantly, make sure they understand your brand as it is today, and all the aspects of branding you need to build a solid foundation for your brand.

Bottom line: Know what you are looking for in an agency and make sure they are strategic—whether they execute all these programs or not.

5. Is your agency a good fit for our company?

In the end we are selling people, not manufacturing a product. There is going to be a lot of collaboration between the agency’s people and your people, so if you don’t get a good feel for the people at the agency, you’re not going to have a good experience. No agency is going to share their finite strategy with you, but you should be able to get a feel for how they think and operate on a high level. 

Bottom line: Don’t get married to someone who you can’t be in a room with. What you’re really buying is transformative ideas from people who help inspire you. Talk to these people when vetting an agency and trust your gut.

6. Is the team pitching us the same team you will be working with?

So, you’ve established that you have chemistry with the agency – great! Just make sure that the people that are pitching you are actually the people who will be working on your account, or at least leading the account. Agencies will always pitch you with the A team, but that doesn’t always mean you’ll end up with the A team.

Bottom line: Don’t get sold on the Lamborghini with the Ford Escort engine.

7. Do you focus on a specific type of business?

Working with an agency that concentrates on your specific business type may seem like a no-brainer, but it also means you may get the same messaging as everyone else in your field. Meanwhile, an agency outside your vertical can give you a fresh point of view – and won’t be as burned out on the subject. Choose an agency that can think strategically on a high level, and can show that they have the ability to take those ideas and put them to use. That’s more important than them already being able to work with companies who do what you do.

Bottom Line: People get tired of working in the same vertical and your brand can’t afford sleepy ideas.

Consider an agency that has a proven track record of crushing it no matter what category they touch. Their people may not know as much on day one as the specialized agency’s team … but they will bring more passion and differentiation to the table.

Just like dating, finding the right professional partner isn’t easy. However, asking these seven questions can give you a better idea of whether an agency can give you the tools to build a solid foundation for your brand. Now get out there and find your right match.

Brian Blanchette is president, MicroArts Creative Agency.

This article was first published in January 2017 and has been updated regularly.

The post Choosing the Right Agency to Tell Your Brand Story: 7 Questions to Ask appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Choosing a new agency is a huge commitment for any B2B brand. How do you know if a shop is really the right fit for you?

We talked to several B2B shops from the Chief Marketer 200 to get their take on the questions brands should ask agencies (and themselves) to find their marketing soulmates.

1. What’s the agency’s vertical market expertise?

Can they share recent references and case studies of companies similar to your business both in size and focus? How long have their current clients been working with them? Do they have experience with companies similar to yours, with comparable products or challenges?

“Every vertical market has its own vernacular, and you need to speak the language of the customer you want to market to,” says Howard Breindel, partner at Desantis Breindel. “An agency needs to understand the business they’re representing.”

There’s a big trend towards convergence in the agency world, notes Breindel. Digital, branding, advertising, PR—you name it, every agency says they do it today. This, he says, can lead to brands hiring the wrong agencies for their needs. “It’s an interesting challenge, because you might not get [a shop] that’s the right fit.”

Always make sure you’re meeting the team that will actually work on your account, not the business development team, says Breindel. Also, get a sense of what level of talent will be working on your account. Will you be getting senior level creative, or the JV team? 

2. Is B2B really their specialty?

Is business-to-business a major focus for the shop? Do they have expertise in both demand gen and branding? How long have they concentrated on B2B, and do they have the necessary skill sets you need to accomplish what you need?

“An agency doesn’t have to be 100 percent B2B to be a good fit, but if B2C is their main focus, there can be a danger of the B2B clients being treated as second class citizens, and not getting the more senior teams to work on their projects,” says Gary Slack, chief experience officer at Slack and Co.

The size of agency is also something to consider, says Josh Albert, vice president, business development at Godfrey. If a marketer believes they’re going to bring large amount of business into an agency, how will the agency handle it? Will they outsource, or hire more team members to pick up the slack internally?

3. How do they measure—and show—results?

Reporting is more critical than ever before throughout the B2B sales cycle. Often, it takes longer to convert and you need to know what is driving those conversions, and how an agency will partner with you to optimize the process, notes Ashley DePaolo, president at CommCreative.

“Ask agencies for examples of how they connect sales and marketing and connect the dots to provide closed loop reporting,” she says. “Agencies should be able to talk about how they can shift strategies and deal with changes—today, we all have to adjust and be nimble.”

4. Are they thought leaders?

As with many B2B buying decisions, the agency search process today often starts online, with prospective clients doing a lot of searching on the web before they reach out.

“Look at the content an agency is publishing—is it relevant or helpful to you? This is a way to quickly disqualify agencies that don’t have your perspective,” says Albert, noting that in this new world, many brands are actually opting to do pilot projects with potential agency partners to get a sense of how they work, rather than going through the traditional RFP process.

Albert adds that he always likes to ask why the potential client is interested in his shop. “Did they like our work? Did they like an article we published? Did they see us speak at an event? That’s a question that often gets overlooked. If they don’t have a good reason, they haven’t done due diligence.”

5. Do you get along?

“Meeting people in person is critical, because at the end of the day, culture is important,” says Breindel. “It’s important to understand how they are going to make decisions throughout the process. “

DePaolo agrees. “We want to partner with people who are as excited to work with us, as we are to work with them,” she says. You should ask yourself, “Do you believe you’ve found an agency that will make the process fun? Will they prioritize your work? How will it work in the grand scheme of all the work they do? Do you trust them?”

Getting together early in the initial qualification process and talking about the business allows the marketer to access quickly if the agency understands their industry and helps uncover immediate needs, says Albert. “After all, both sides ware making investments.”

But remember that getting along doesn’t mean always being in agreement. A client needs be able to challenge their agency—and vice-versa. “You don’t want an agency that is too quick to fold and say yes,” says Adryanna Sutherland, COO at gyro.

“Being a Midwesterner, I have a very respectful persona, but at the same time we can push back. You want to hire a company that can bring in a strong outside perspective and respectfully disagree if needed.”

6. Why are you looking to make a change?

Why are you interested in hiring a new agency? What worked in your previous relationships? Are you happy with your current shop’s work? If not, why not? And if so, why are you searching for someone new?

“We’ll probe whether they’re looking at the agency as a partner over time,” says Tom Stein, chairman and chief client officer at Stein IAS. “If it doesn’t have that potential, it could be a great project but we have to make a hard decision.”

It can be helpful to know what department is driving the agency search process. If marketing isn’t running the show, the agency review may simply be happening because it’s on the corporate schedule and required. The RFP process might be an onerous one, with a crazy tight timetable for agencies vying for the business. “Clients might be on a fishing expedition looking for information,” says Slack. “If there’s an incumbent involved, almost always they have the advantage. [It’s hard to know] if the client really even wants a new agency.”

7. What is your budget?

It’s hard for an agency to respond to an RFP if they don’t know the budget range for what they can spend, or what they’ve spent or invested in the last year. Holding this information close to the vest might seem intuitive, but it won’t help you find the right partner.

“We really try to pin people down on their spend,” says Stein. “We have a threshold for what an opportunity needs to generate from a revenue standpoint, and a lot of the time clients don’t want to divulge that. But we should know what the financial situation is, so we can know the resources [for the] account.”

8. What are the deliverables?

What is your goal? What do you want to have happen when this engagement is over? Awareness? Thought leadership? Targeted media spending? What are they key KPIs?

“So often when we see initial RFP questions from a client, there is a real lack of clarity around what the client is looking for and requires,” says Stein. “It all feels fuzzy and non specific, like a fishing expedition with people putting general questions out there to see what comes back.”

“We highly qualify clients,” he adds. “We will ask as many questions or more than they ask in some instances—if we’re going to go after something, we want to be sure that it is a fit and that our approach aligns with what the client wants to achieve.”

9. Is your c-suite on board?

Does marketing have support from the highest levels of the organization? Is there a lot of turnover in the management and marketing team? Do you want to collaborate or do you want to be presented to? Who, ultimately, is the agency’s point of contact?

“You need to have someone who will be dedicated to managing the agency relationship,” says DePaolo. “Sometimes it is the CMO and sometimes it might be someone at the marketing manager level. If we get a call from the CEO, we know they’re not going to have the time to dedicate to us, so we need a [strong] point of contact.”

10. What do other people think?

While many people still see Glassdoor as a place for employees to rate employers, it can also be a good place to get insight into an organization. “We check Glassdoor on every prospect to see rating and recommendations, and to see what people think about their CEO,” says Slack. “We hope our prospects are doing the same for us.”

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The post Ten Questions to Ask Before You Hire a New B2B Agency appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The client hired your agency to produce results. They want to meet their marketing goals, and felt confident that you were the partner who could help them. Despite this, they often request projects that won’t get them there (and they don’t even know it!).

We’ve all seen it happen: the client’s goal is to increase website leads by 10%, but they want to allocate their budget to creating a print ad. You believe in this instance the client’s budget would be better spent on content marketing, but what should you do? When this occurs (and it will), your agency needs to be there to act as an adviser, even if that means saying “no.”

Saying “no” is never easy, but as the marketing expert, it’s your job to advise the client on what will produce the best results (and what won’t). This is especially important in retainer-based agencies in order to establish trust with the client and build the relationship. In the end, they’ll thank you for it.

How to push back while maintaining the relationship

Shooting down a client’s idea can be touchy. It’s important to approach the conversation from a place of respect and professionalism in order to avoid hurt feelings. Here are some tips for pushing back (in a nice way):

• If possible, have the conversation in person or over the phone. This way nothing can be taken out of context, and it doesn’t feel one-sided
• Review your client’s goals and explain why their idea won’t meet them
• Provide facts and figures that back up your reasoning
• Offer up a different solution that will meet the client’s needs (i.e. writing a whitepaper to increase website leads vs. a print ad)
• Listen to your client’s reasoning to better understand their point of view
• If they still want to proceed with the project, offer to take it on as an additional (billable) project to complete in conjunction with goal-oriented marketing efforts

As long as you provide solid reasoning and make the client feel heard, the conversation should go smoothly. Remember that you’re on the same team and want to accomplish the same goals. In order to hit it out of the park, you have to keep your eye on the ball.

It gets easier

Pushing back with clients is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. As you gain your client’s trust, they will grow to respect your recommendations. As the marketing expert, it’s important that you guide your client in the right direction instead of taking on projects that will make them happy in the short term. When they see a boost in their website leads, they’ll be much happier that they didn’t go forward with that print ad.

Brooke Wiley is an account coordinator at Gorilla 76.

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The post Agencies Need to Realize the Client Isn’t Always Right appeared first on Chief Marketer.

That business model would now sink an agency within a month. As computers became commonplace, even non-marketers started to fancy themselves publishers, leaving professionals to wonder what really made them valuable.

Modern marketers must realize that their value doesn’t lie in the commoditized pieces they produce. It lies in their ability to think strategically, understand audiences, create messaging and personas, and help clients gain outside perspective. Billing rates for agency executives have plummeted, but it’s not because they don’t do good work. Rather, it’s because they don’t know how to demonstrate to clients why their services are worth top dollar.

Getting in Position

To charge a premium rate for high-quality services, agencies must position themselves in a way that makes it obvious to clients why their services are so valuable.

Client companies are usually made up of three parts: sales, marketing, and customer service. Agencies that understand the relationship among these three segments and can communicate to clients how they move prospects from marketing into the sales funnel and beyond create a significant advantage for themselves. The more an agency can directly tie its services to the client’s bottom line, the more willing a client will be to pay an appropriate rate.

Understanding these relationships is just the first step, however. Agencies that work directly with sales teams to help clients streamline their funnels and track progress after the sale create another path for themselves to demonstrate bottom-line value. Clients need agencies to ask questions about their processes: How do they follow up? How do they respond to reviews and ratings? How do they respond to complaints?

Agencies also need to help clients understand exactly what services they provide. An agency doesn’t just make marketing materials — it also develops a marketing strategy, creates and standardizes marketing messaging across channels, and generates leads from multiple paths.

All of this starts with defining an audience, something that agencies specialize in but that clients generally struggle to achieve. Knowing who the audience members are, why they should care about the product or service, and how to reach them in relevant ways while keeping them engaged is the primary way agencies can demonstrate their value.

How to Earn a Premium Fee

You can’t just raise your rates and expect clients to happily comply. You’ll need to rethink some of your processes, your team structure, and how you track results. Start by incorporating the following five strategies into your business model:

1. Own the data.

In today’s marketing world, data is king. Without it, you will struggle to generate concrete ideas that provide demonstrable value to your clients. Don’t abandon the creative team entirely, but do understand that you need analysts and data professionals to be the driving force behind the scenes. They ultimately make your content successful by putting it in front of the right people.

2. Be more than the brand.

A great brand campaign is no longer enough. Agencies are now held accountable for results; to charge a premium, those results have to improve. Get involved with the client to influence the entire process. Don’t drop tons of leads on the client, only to hear that the sales team can’t handle the volume or isn’t following up. Get into the process to help your client’s sales team use your services effectively so the company’s leaders can see the results of your services on their balance sheets.

3. Work messier.

Good data fosters smart experimentation. It’s no longer the 1950s, when a client would pay for a 26-week campaign and you could throw your work out there and let it perform its magic. The reality of marketing today is real-time decisions made upon real-time data. You must be able to shift and tweak your strategy based on the information available right now. Your client will be tempted to be either too reactionary or too cautious — your experience and expertise must shine in these moments.

4. Get your team ready.

Traditionalists in marketing shy away from the reality of the new interconnected, data-driven industry. If you’re going to be involved in everything from marketing to sales and customer service, your team needs to have a holistic understanding of how your campaigns affect client businesses. Train your team on data and sales funnels to give them a better understanding of the effect their work has on a larger scale.

5. Prove your worth.

The agencies that charge a premium and consistently win new business have one thing in common: They can prove their worth. Clients can look at their balance sheets and see that for every dollar they gave the agency, they made three more through new sales and repeat business. Don’t just collect data on prospects for your clients. Collect data on your own agency; when someone asks you to justify your price, you can do so with confidence.

The landscape has changed, but that doesn’t mean you have to become a budget agency to remain competitive. Stand your ground, get more involved in the sales process, and use your expertise to demonstrate to clients why your services are worth what you charge.

Drew McLellan is leader of the Agency Management Institute.

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The post Five Ways Agencies Can Prove Their Value appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Check out our new 2017 Super Book, where you’ll find:

Marketers Most Wanted: Profiles of the hottest demographic segments B2C and B2B marketers need to focus on in 2017, including millennials, LGBT, teachers, moms, doctors and more.

2016 PRO Award Winners: Profiles of the best promotional marketing campaigns of the year, including Octagon’s “44 Days of Crazy at the Rugby World Cup” effort for MasterCard Global and RedPeg Marketing’s “Assassin’s Creed Challenge” for Ubisoft.

PROMO Top Shops: Chief Marketer’s exclusive listing of the top 100 promotional agencies.

B2B Top Shops: The best of the best business-to-business marketing agencies.

Source Directory: Chief Marketer’s 2017 resource for marketing services providers.

B2B by the Numbers: Key stats from our exclusive B2B lead gen research.

Check out the digital edition of the Super Book now!

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