Building brand advocacy is at the top of a marketer’s to-do list, but we rarely think of internal marketing to achieve it. Maybe we’re missing a trick. What if you ... Read more

I have always found working in the marketing and agency world a fantastic choice of occupation. Endless career options, bags of innovation and creativity, and most of all, some of ... Read more

60% of the World’s population is now active on social media. It’s probably time we learnt how to sell to them there then. In this latest episode of Through the ... Read more

A common challenge for B2B marketers is how to reach a C’Suite audience. After all, they’re the decision-makers, right? So we really need to get some content in front of ... Read more

Hiring an agency sounds simple. But it isn’t. Not when you think about the custard soup of firms that make up the agency landscape. One big melting pot of award-winning, ... Read more

Have you ever been asked to justify your marketing spending? How about whether your marketing is actually working? I will be amazed if you haven’t. All marketers need to justify ... Read more

How do you win some new business for your agency? With our agency new business playbook, that’s how. I must have been asked this question a million times. It’s about ... Read more

Remember social media? It’s what marketers got excited about before the metaverse and then AI stole the headlines. Despite being out of the limelight, social media is no less important. ... Read more

When you engage an agency, there’s a good bet they will ask what your marketing budget is. I encourage agencies to ask this question early in talking with a client ... Read more

There’s a lot of chat about AI at the moment, most of it hyperbole, end-of-the-world stuff. Not so much on the practical application of AI in marketing outside of content ... Read more

Running an agency can be a white-knuckle ride. I found the part-written blog post below, reflecting on eight years of running an agency. It was written back in 2015, which ... Read more

How do you create a brand that’s dynamic and successful, and in tune with the zeitgeist? In this episode of Through the Line, I explore brand transformation with Dr Emmanual ... Read more

I’ll bet good money you’ve heard the term personal branding a lot in the last couple of years. And for good reason. Every man and his dog has seen the ... Read more

Retaining talent is a critical job for an agency’s leadership team. The problem is, we’re not always that good at it. Agency life can sometimes feel like an ever-revolving door ... Read more

How important is your website? I’m going to hazard a guess that the answer is very. Since the advent of the internet, websites have moved on at quite a pace. ... Read more

In the 20+ years I have worked in marketing, there’s been one constant: change. The marketing industry is pretty fast-paced, whichever discipline or side of the client-agency world you occupy. ... Read more

Have you Considered Public Sector Contracts? Do you know how much the UK government spends on communications? In the last ten years, it has spent approximately £3.4 bn, with £247m ... Read more

How do you put a price on ideas or creativity? It’s a perennial challenge faced by marketing, advertising and PR agency owners. You know you can make a massive difference ... Read more

Earlier in the year, my friend and host of the TechLondon podcast, Bernie Mitchell, invited me to join him on his show to discuss what agencies should start and stop doing ... Read more

Running an agency can be a mixed bag of emotions. One minute you’re full of elation at winning an award for a successful campaign. The next, you’re dealing with a ... Read more

Hiring agencies is a critical task in most marketing roles. In the modern world of marketing, there are so many expert disciplines that it’s tough, if not impossible, to do ... Read more

You’ve probably heard about the importance of diversity a lot recently. It should come as no surprise that building a team of people from different cultural backgrounds will create a ... Read more

Bernie Mitchell, the host of the TechLondon podcast, has invited me on to the show to offer some advice for small agencies. Specifically, what are the ten things to start ... Read more

One of the primary tasks of a marketer is to understand people and to put them at the centre of your thinking. More often than not, that’s your customers or ... Read more

If you’re pursuing a marketing career, you have two primary choices: work for a brand, a.k.a. client side, or work at an agency. The two sides of the marketing coin ... Read more

If you start your agency as a freelancer and grow from there – as many do and have – it’s easy in the early years to take on any project ... Read more

Great client service and successful agencies go hand in hand. In my opinion (and I’m a client service guy), you can’t run a successful agency without knowing how to handle ... Read more

I’m in the process of writing a book about how to grow an agency from the ground up. It’s a labour of love, documenting my achievements and mistakes running agencies. ... Read more

What does the agency of the future look like? That’s what I wanted to know from John Bottom, an experienced agency pro and a very nice chap to boot. Shortly ... Read more

Last summer, I met up with a talented and intelligent agency owner – let’s call her Susie. I have known and respected Susie for quite a few years, and she ... Read more

A common goal for many agency founders is to grow their business to a size big enough to sell. Very few understand what this takes, let alone realise that vision. ... Read more

Very many agency owners have a view of growing their business to a point where they can sell or hand it over to a management team. But, often, agencies reach ... Read more

I was invited to speak to a room full of smart young people (the next generation of marketers) about my career in marketing and what I love about the industry. ... Read more

A typical goal for most business owners is to grow your agency. The challenge is that most haven’t set clear targets or metrics for this goal. It’s often wishy-washy-we want ... Read more

When you run an agency, creative shop, or any service-based business, you will come up against a client that doesn’t want to pay their invoice. It’s not if but when. ... Read more

What is agency culture? What does it mean to say there’s a great culture in a business? Is it a table tennis table and free beer on Fridays, a fancy ... Read more

If you are responsible for business development at your agency, it’s probably no surprise that you need to properly qualify leads when they come into your pipeline. After all, not ... Read more

How do you find the right agency? It’s a question all marketers ask at one time or another. With over 20,000 agencies* in the UK alone, finding them is not ... Read more

We’ve been working with some talented marketers to put on five Scale-Up Marketing Roundtables for start-ups and high growth companies. We’ve held the first two Roundtables and received excellent feedback… ... Read more

There isn’t much more important in agency life than the relationships you build with your clients. As I’ve been in client service for most, if not all, of my agency ... Read more

The marketing industry is a bit odd. It’s a people-centric business that relies on relationships and good communication. Yet it seems many of those who earn their living in marketing ... Read more

I don’t often talk about Karate, at least not in my agency life or professional life. But, I thought I’d share something I picked up at training recently. And no, ... Read more

We’re once again looking for an agency to deliver a project for a client. This project is for a local authority that needs a content agency to help tell the ... Read more

It’s over two years since I launched Agency Squared. I say launched; really, I stumbled into the idea courtesy of Hayley Williams. We met at a networking event called Drive ... Read more

What a treat it was to run the Agency Squared Mastermind in person again on Friday. Thanks to the pandemic, we’ve been running the sessions via Zoom, but it was ... Read more

The pandemic has had a dramatic impact on how we build teams. In agency land, and every industry really, we are challenged with a workforce that no longer expects to ... Read more

If you asked me about my vision when I started my agency, I might well have looked at you rather blankly. I may even have remarked that I have twenty ... Read more

Let’s be honest; nobody goes into running agencies because they love financial management. Whatever flavour of agency you run, your first love is likely to be design or banding, or ... Read more

Agency Squared’s Agency Masterminds are coming back! During the pandemic, we ran monthly agency masterminds on Zoom, which certainly helped some of us to stay in touch while we all ... Read more

Our Confident Communication training course is for people who want to knock their next presentation out of the park. Remember that time you delivered a presentation on Zoom and you ... Read more

I’ve been a bit quiet on our agency community outposts recently; sorry about that blog and podcast – I’ve just been too flipping busy to focus my attention on you ... Read more

Understanding agency finance may not be what gets you out of bed in the morning. In fact, I’d bet my kids’ college fund that accounting is at the bottom of ... Read more

Agency lead generation is one of those issues we like to talk about all the time in agencies. We’re on a constant cycle of business development because, frankly, it’s how ... Read more

I first read the book Traction by Gino Wickman in 2020 and it blew me away. I recognised from the book how I could have overcome many of the issues ... Read more

I can tell you from experience that it’s a great feeling running an agency that’s growing. But it is horrendous running one that’s going in the other direction. That’s where ... Read more

I am over the moon to announce my appointment as an advisor to boutique agency Hana Clode Marketing. Hana, the agency founder, approached me in early 2021, and we began ... Read more

If you have ever looked at the size and the complexity of the Chinese market, you will know it’s both massive, exciting and terrifying, all at the same time. Yet, ... Read more

I am joining agile marketing consultancy Bright as a guest speaker at its next Bootcamp webinar this Thursday 11th March at 2.30pm. We will be looking at what it takes ... Read more

Way back in 2019, before the pandemic – which feels like a different lifetime – I interviewed Kristin Luck, a brilliant lady and entrepreneur, about scaling agency businesses. Kristin has ... Read more

If you run a small agency, I am prepared to bet good money you have heard someone say ‘you need to work on the business and not in the business’. ... Read more

We put everything into helping the agency community thrive. It’s our raison d’être. If you are new to Agency Squared, or haven’t had a good look around yet, this comes ... Read more

Does your agency look like every other agency? Are you part of the custard soup of marketing and creative services companies? Does your messaging focus on you being award-winning, or ... Read more

Excellent client service goes hand in hand with a successful agency.  There is little value in winning new clients if they churn away quickly because your account servicing is lousy. ... Read more

Growing businesses is a journey full of learnings. Whether you are developing a publishing business, a travel brand or a marketing agency, I promise there will be plenty of lessons ... Read more

It can be very easy to get distracted and chase every little sniff of an opportunity when you are focussed on agency new business. This is especially the case if ... Read more

I know that presentation skills training is probably not at the top of your shopping list during a global pandemic. But, has there ever been a more important time to ... Read more

In the dynamic world of marketing, change is pretty much a constant. Over the last two decades, everything has changed, except perhaps for how most of us approach the delivery ... Read more

I have been in client service in agency land for most of my 20-year career in marketing. I love it, but it is not without its challenges. Without wanting to ... Read more

There’s a common belief among marketing agency entrepreneurs that when the time comes, and they have made enough money or spent enough energy on their business, they will be able ... Read more

We have been able to help several marketers find and appoint a new agency while we have all been in lockdown. It is a process that’s challenging for marketers on both ... Read more

Our Beyond the Creds Deck episodes are interviews with agency founders and an exploration into the realities of Agency Life. People who took the crazy and challenging road to fame ... Read more

I first posted this article on Linkedin in June 2018 and received a lot of great comments. People who could either relate to many, most or all of the same ... Read more

Ever wondered why some leaders are always in your social news feed, while others are invisible? For every Richard Branson, there are hundreds without a voice, which is a huge ... Read more

Running a marketing agency is easy, right? Raising a family is a walk in the park too. Well, actually that’s a no on both counts. They are challenging in their ... Read more

I’ve been in the marketing agency world for a while, and I love it. I’ve dabbled in other sectors, but I gravitate towards agency life.   But, for all that I ... Read more

The hackneyed expression that people fear public speaking more than death is probably not far from the truth. But, being able to stand up and deliver a compelling, confident presentation ... Read more

According to the PRCA’s recent census, 89% of communications professionals in the UK are white, and 67% are female. In an industry tasked with creating impactful communications to reach an ... Read more

Introducing the #AgencyCalm webinar series, to help agencies survive the lockdown.

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Business development is a constant challenge for marketing agencies. Most are on a constant hunt for new business and spend their time pitching to marketing directors, managers, heads of, CMOs ... Read more

Patterns of consumer behaviour are changing; how we look for and engage with brands is changing too. Where we once used to look for features and benefits, we now look ... Read more

A critical part of working in agency land is business development. For whatever reason, most agencies are always on the hunt for new business; growing agencies is like being on ... Read more

Here’s the last post of the year from me, folks. 2019 has been pretty great for Agency Squared. I was going to write a long post with all the highlights, ... Read more

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at The Marketing Meetup in Cambridge. The room was packed full of marketers, from both the client and agency sides, and I was ... Read more

An essential ingredient of impactful marketing and communications is understanding your customer. After all, we’re taught marketing is about putting the customer at the heart of your business. So how ... Read more

One of the key challenges of agency life is pitching.  Whatever type of agency you run the chances are good at some point you’ll be involved in a pitch. Some ... Read more

I spent much of my time as an agency owner seeking retainer clients. You know those clients that pay you a fixed fee every month for the delivery of a defined ... Read more

You’ve probably heard about as much about ‘millennials’ as you can take, right? You’ve heard for years how the world is changing because of millennials, how they think and act ... Read more

Is your content marketing working and generating new leads for your agency? Here’s why it might not be.

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There comes the point in every agency founder’s life when you sit back and think, is this really what I wanted when I started?  Be honest. You’ve been there. I ... Read more

Running a marketing agency of any flavour requires grit, determination, some serious smarts and of course, persistence. Without these ingredients, you will do well to survive, let alone thrive. But ... Read more

In my experience, a digital marketing agency business, or any agency for that matter, is either growing or failing. There’s no standing still.  If you aim to maintain the status ... Read more

I’ve been in the agency world most of my 20-year career in marketing. It’s an environment I love and, as a consultant now, often miss. But mental health in agencies ... Read more

Marketing agencies and the agency landscape have never seemed more confused.   Just look at how agencies label themselves. Are you a digital agency, a PR agency or maybe an influencer ... Read more