Agency differentiation for business development is all the rage isn’t it? In our role as advisor to agencies on how to find new clients, one thing has been nagging at us for a while now. Why is it that so many agencies spend so long trying to make themselves appear unique?
Think about it for a minute. If you’re a marketing director with £5m to spend are you really looking for a unique agency to give it too? We doubt it very much. Imagine the CMO, having blown his £10m marketing budget on a campaign that failed to deliver explaining to the board “well I chose that agency because they were so very different to all the others and not like anything I’d ever seen before”. You can imagine the response!
Clients are not looking for an agency that is completely different from the one they already have – they just want one that is BETTER than the one they already have. We are, on the whole, creatures who value security above else – this is why it is so low down Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Yes we might crave the new and the exciting, but only if it can satisfy our basic need for security as well.
So, when sitting down to write your agency proposition, stop trying so hard to make it different and concentrate on what it is about you that by its very nature proves that you are BETTER than the competition, not simply different from them. One way of testing it is to think of a prospect asking you about the competition – you should be able to say “we’re kind of like them, but with one little difference that makes us a whole lot better …” and then insert your proposition. Does it work?
An agency proposition needs to be:
- Differentiating
- Compelling
- Demonstrable
Find out more about agency differentiation HERE.
