While there appears to be no slowing down in terms of the number of agency new business technology tools being developed every day, new research show there’s a limit to how much marketing agencies can do to stay on top of what’s new—which impacts how much they can truly benefit from these offerings.
Marketing agency lead generation and business development firm RSW/US recently completed its fifth annual New Business Tools & Technology Report in partnership with training and resource center Mirren.
In this year’s survey, agencies state they do not have the resources to utilize agency new business tools in a consistent and productive manner—which in the end, makes them feel like many of the offerings simply aren’t that effective.
This feeling of inadequacy has resulted in meaningful declines in the usage of tools over the past couple of years, to the point that it’s become a “new” version of the cobbler’s children tale.
* 2016 rankings
Feeling like a cobbler whose children have no shoes is not new to marketing agencies. Back in 2005, when we started our outsourced lead generation business, agencies struggled to do much of anything to market their own firm.
In this year’s survey, comments like: “We don’t have capable in-house staff to use and manage these tools” and “not easy to use” were present throughout the open-ended responses.
In other past surveys run by RSW/US, agencies have cited the importance of referrals and networking as a key resource for agency new business—but also recognize that relying on those resources is not a sound way of building a sustainable agency new business program.
If agencies are going to continue to grow, they’ll need to find the time and resources to manage their own process or look outside for competent help.
