Our Process and Planning

Analyze the current performance of your company. Identify key strengths, such as specialization in a growing market sector or a strong creative reputation. Assess any weaknesses, such as lack of experience in growth areas such as social media. Identify threats to your business, such as competitive approaches to your major clients. Review important opportunities, such as an invitation to pitch for a major account or rapid growth of advertising expenditure in your specialty area.

Set out your growth objectives. Key objectives might include increasing fees and billings by 15 percent, adding new clients to reduce your dependence on a few major accounts, establishing a presence in a new market sector by winning a minimum of three new accounts, and increasing billings in social media to 10 percent of agency turnover. Prioritize the objectives and allocate responsibility for action to members of the team.

Describe your strategies for achieving growth objectives. Write down revenue targets for each existing client, using information on current spending and the client’s budget allocation for the year ahead. Assess opportunities for recommending additional advertising expenditure. Set revenue targets for new business development and identifying potential clients.

Review the services you provide to each client. Create a list of current company services that you could offer to existing clients. Identify gaps in your service portfolio that clients might use, such as social media, market research, sales promotion or direct marketing. Describe the services you could offer using existing agency skills and resources. List potential partners who could provide other services under your management. Assess your company’s skills and resources. Identify recruitment or training needs to deliver any new services or manage the planned higher level of business.

Set out your marketing plan to achieve your objectives. Describe the responsibilities of the company team that will manage the new business program. Outline the key points of presentations you will develop to pitch for new business. List advertising industry events where you could network with potential clients.

Carrying out market research enables you to identify and compare growth opportunities. You may find that demand for construction engineering services is increasing faster than demand in the mechanical engineering sector. Research firms publish detailed market studies that include information on market size, competitors, success factors and drivers of demand. Use the research data to identify target markets and evaluate potential competitors. The data may indicate opportunities in niche markets that large firms ignore but where you can offer specialist skills.