Why You? the ultimate guide to standing out

INTRODUCTION

The agency explosion

There are more agencies out there than ever. Digital, design, creative, advertising, social media, SEO, website and more. There are hundreds of thousands worldwide, and to prospects most look, sound and feel pretty much the same. The same claims, cliches and comms. Whether it’s a marketing agency in Manchester or a video agency in Vietnam, much of the agency world has become cookie-cutter blandness.

Open up ten agency websites and you’ll see this straight away. You could swap the logo out and nobody would notice. This is because the barrier to entry has never been lower. Today, anyone with a laptop and a dream can register an agency, create a website in minutes, and start selling their services. While this democratisation and ease of access should be celebrated, it’s also helped create a crowded and homogenous mush of mediocrity.

You see, agencies are weird businesses. Whereas most entrepreneurs identify a market gap or opportunity to exploit, most agencies start because of one person’s skill or passion for a specific discipline. Someone who loves graphic design will feel this is enough justification for bringing another design agency into existence, even though the world is bursting at the seams with similar design agencies. In the world of tech, most products launch because they have a feature set that’s different from their competitors and that solves a specific user problem. Whereas agencies are often started by disgruntled ex-agency employees who feel they could do better, and so set up their own agency. Both of these are valid reasons to start, but not standout reasons to be chosen.

Drowning in a sea of sameness

This glut of lookalike and soundalike agencies means a potential client has very little rational reason to choose one over another. When asked why they’re the better choice, most agencies jump to meaningless adjectives that are just table-stakes for how to not be horrendous. ‘We’re passionate, honest and results-driven’ they blurt blindly, but these are just minimum expectations and mask a lack of anything interesting or different to say.

The problem with this isn’t just about coming across as boring or bland. It’s much bigger than that. Because agencies who are seen as ‘just another agency’ have to rely on weaker ways to win work. They have to hustle to get leads in then haggle to close deals. This lack of power in the sales process forces these samey agencies to be cheaper than others, faster to deliver than is ideal, or just plain luckier. None of these are viable or scalable.

It’s this blending in that makes agencies lose out. They lose on pitches. They lose control of the process. And they lose sales pipeline. What seemed like a surface-level issue of sounding the same is actually a fundamental business problem of how to grow. A downward spiral of losing creates a negative and often toxic culture. As prices are pushed down and delivery times sped up, agency employees feel increasingly under pressure to perform. This leads to high staff turnover which impacts client satisfaction. New business and sales people then start to buckle under the unrelenting pressure, and slowly but surely the whole machine grinds to a gruesome halt. Suddenly the idea of standing out is less of an abstract concept, and more of a commercial must-have.

If you’re blending in, you’re losing out

The agencies that stand out, stick in clients’ heads, and sell themselves before they get in the room are the ones with a unique and powerful proposition. Something identifiable and ownable. An angle that gives them an edge. A standout selling point. You could read all kinds of books about this concept. Some spin it into stuff about red and blue oceans. Some about winning without pitching. While others make this concept feel like some huge and abstract beast that only a grey-haired strategy guru could tame. The truth is crafting a unique agency proposition takes a lot of thinking and navel-gazing. But more importantly, it takes commitment. It’s as much about saying no than yes. Precision targeting, not scattergun tactics. Decision making, not deliberating endlessly. A future focus, not being stuck on right now. But most agencies struggle with all this because they hate saying no. They see it as lost opportunity and revenue, which is the wrong mindset. Yes, there might be a dip as you refocus. Sure, you might want to think how you can service the No clients too. But if you’re trying to be all things to all people, you’ll struggle to create a proposition that anyone remembers, or responds to.

Today’s B2B buying process

The way clients buy nowadays is changing, mostly driven by technology. Today many B2B buyers make their decisions digitally, preferring to do their own online research before bringing their findings back to a buying committee. This means sales cycles are often longer and more complex, especially when the brand and budgets are bigger. Agencies now need to guide buyers through the process and across multiple touch points. In many cases, it’s often the agencies that are first on a prospect’s mental list that make it to the final decision. Those agencies that are quiet, dull or indistinct will struggle to stay top of mind as buyers make their choices. In contrast those that stand out both strategically and through their marketing will prevail. As buyers move through the process, agencies need to appeal to both their rational and emotional sides. The aim is to influence the decision by being visible, credible and well-suited at every stage. It’s about standing out from the wash of bland agencies also vying for attention. Because coming second is nowhere.

Stand out or lose out

The whole process of creating a unique proposition relies on looking forward to the kind of agency you need to be. If you spend months simply capturing a snapshot of where you are, nothing will change or progress. Sure, you’ll have an accurate record of right now but nothing to drive the agency forward into the future.

Developing a unique proposition is not about being pointlessly provocative, bucking trends for the sake of it, or being combative without reason. It’s easy to stand out the wrong way. You would be unique if you proudly proclaimed your agency was sexist, but it would be a stupid idea without any strategic benefit. Instead, your uniqueness is about finding a strategic reason to be chosen over others in your space. It’s about narrowing down the place you play in the market, then finding a competitive advantage you can leverage to win more of the work you really want. Once you have a strategic way to stand out, you gain more power in the client relationship. Instead of selling low-value execution you sell high-value expertise. Instead of taking briefs, you make them. Instead of being told the timeline, you control it. Instead of searching out prospects, they seek you out. Instead of discounting prices, you command a premium. You see, standing out is the best way to grow your agency. It’s not an end in itself, but rather a mechanism that makes selling and scaling easier. But so many agencies get this wrong and end up lost among the clones, clambering to win clients. It doesn’t have to be this way, the answer is stronger positioning, differentiation and messaging.

What it means to stand out

It’s imperative to know that nailing a unique proposition is a strategic process, not a creative process. This means it’s not enough to just look or sound unique, it has to be built on something more substantial that will help you succeed. Of course, you’ll need creativity to bring your proposition to life, but this is the final step not the first one. Before the slick design and snappy copywriting starts, you need to nail that big strategic reason to be chosen over similar competitors in your space.

Standing out happens in three steps. First is to define your positioning, that is narrowing down what you do and who for. As above, this can be simplified to; we do <SERVICE> for <CLIENTS>. The next step is to define your difference over others who also have this positioning. Because it’s highly unlikely you’ll find a positioning that has both a small competitive set while also having a large viable market. And lastly, you’ll need to communicate all of this to potential clients through messaging.

Today, most areas you could position yourself into already have a glut of agencies serving them. For example, you might decide to position your agency to do SEO for manufacturing companies. A quick google search will tell you there are a number of players who specialize in this service and client combination. Add on the multiple other agencies that run landing pages for this positioning, and you’ll quickly find most combinations are crowded. If you find a positioning that has little or no competition, it’s likely too small a market to be commercially viable. This is why you then need to add a layer of differentiation onto your positioning.

Setting the big goals

Of course, standing out is great and has commercial value. But before embarking on any positioning or differentiation process, it’s important to align on the big goals you want to achieve. For most agencies, there will always be a commercial goal to win target clients and grow the business. And while this is useful to a degree, adding more specifics around how this will happen is better. For example, it might be international expansion, increasing client lifetime value, or winning more awards. The more specific the goal, the easier it is to measure over time. Having multiple goals is fine, but be wary of having too many as it’s easy to get distracted. One main, overarching goal will be a valuable north star as you work through your positioning and differentiation, and it’ll be the best way to broadly measure its success.

The program

This book covers the key areas needed to help you stand out and land clients. Each one is vital to inform the next, so none can be glossed over or rushed through. These areas are:

• Discovery

• Positioning

• Difference

• Value

• Validation

• Internal proposition 

• External messaging

Think of these as the strategic levers you can pull. Give each ample time and headspace, and make sure each is done as deeply as possible. To achieve this it’s often useful to bring in someone external to challenge your thinking along the way. Remember, design by committee is the enemy of great strategy. Sure, you can value lots of voices but someone senior needs the vision to make brave decisions. So, it’s time to get started.

DISCOVERY

As an entrepreneurial problem-solver, you’ll probably want to jump right into the positioning process, asking the big questions and pushing to make some strategic breakthroughs. But as unsexy as it is, great outcomes are built on strong foundations. The discovery phase takes preparation and energy upfront, but will save you time and effort in the long run. It’s about giving everyone a chance to add their input so you don’t need to make big decisions by committee. Here are some discovery processes to work through before you start perfecting your positioning.

Audit and analyze your current positioning 

Before you can make any kind of shift in your agency’s positioning you need to take a temperature check of where you are now. You’d be surprised how often stakeholders have massively different opinions on what the agency is all about. At this stage, you don’t need a consensus, just an acceptance that you’ll be better off if you can find it as a result of this process. If you have the time, energy and resources, then get some external perspective on how people see your agency and its positioning. Getting input from the wider team can be valuable, as well as previous or current clients. If you’re feeling particularly analytical, you could use a third-party feedback and testing platform to gather people’s opinions and scores. Okay, these aren’t your target clients but they’ll highlight any glaring issues or inconsistencies.

Stakeholder questionnaires

Sending out a positioning questionnaire ahead of the workshops means you can find the common gaps before everyone steps into a room together. This means you can go into each workshop with some understanding of each stakeholder’s viewpoint. At this stage, nobody needs to write War and Peace. In fact, less is more so ask stakeholders to add scannable notes not huge swathes of text. Each stakeholder should complete the questionnaire individually, without external input, and based on their own gut feel - not just towing the party line. Ask all the basic questions you assume everyone would know; What kind of agency is this? What do we do? Who do we serve? What’s unique about us? Nine times out of ten this will shine a light on the differences and disconnects most agencies have on the inside.

Stakeholder interviews

If you have the capacity to do one-to-one interviews with stakeholders, they’ll be much more likely to offer nuanced information and insights. People are generally much better at talking in detail than writing, and they often divulge their deeper feelings and thoughts when prompted as part of an informal chat. Interviews also give you the opportunity to delve deeper into interesting answers, whereas the questionnaires will only ever gather answers to the questions asked.

Team surveys

While your stakeholders will be the driving force behind any change in positioning, it’s useful to bring the wider team into the process. Your positioning has a whole business impact, and employees might push against any new positioning changes. For example, if you’re looking to reposition yourself to focus solely on automotive brands, you need to know whether the team’s happy to work exclusively on one type of client. A simple survey link is easy to distribute and makes collating the answers much easier.

Client interviews

If you have good relationships with your previous or current clients, then it’s a good idea to get their input now, as well as later on. Of course, they’re busy and your positioning will be low on their list of priorities, but they’re the closest you can get to ideal clients without taking your new positioning to market. Be aware that having worked with you already, they will have a biassed opinion. They already chose you over the others, so they’ll come with some confirmation bias, being unable to see their options with fresh eyes again. That said, they will often be happy to share their opinions and ideas with you as it hands them some power back. 

Speaking directly to clients to ask them some questions is ideal as you can ask them to elaborate when needed. It can also help reopen some valuable conversations. That said, a survey or email can help them be more honest about weaknesses, affording them some anonymity rather than having to tell you to your face. This can sometimes yield better results without the awkwardness. Either way, you need to draft a handful of questions ahead of time.

Initial insights

So you’ve asked questions, had conversations, and collated everyone’s input. Now you need to analyse it all and see where the weaknesses lie. Read through everything and see if specific points come up repeatedly. Is there a general unity in what people are saying, or is it all wildly off-script? Your process for this phase will depend on the questions you asked, and whether they’re qualitative or quantitative. Ideally a mix of the two means you can draw some initial conclusions based on numerical data like scoring and rating, and others based on sentiment and clarity. Write down all the main areas to address and make some quick notes about potential transformations you might want to make. If possible, share these insights and ideas with all the people involved as this will save you arguing it all out on day one.

Get your decision-makers in a room

If your decision-makers can’t set aside a day to make your agency bigger, better and easier then you’ve already lost. Bribe them, incentivise them, punish them. Coffee, cake, cocaine, whatever tempts them in for a big old strategy session. The point is you have to all be coming from a place of improving your agency, even if that means going backwards to go forwards. Once they’re in, reiterate the whole point of this stuff. The default reasons are to:
 

• Align you on your agency's new direction

• Attract and land the best clients for you to do your best work

• Enhance your agency's reputation and revenue

Next, let everyone know the timescales for your positioning session(s). People like to know when they can get a break, have lunch, moan about the weekend etc. When it’s just your internal team, expect people to push the boundaries of these. They’ll sneak onto their phones or you’ll hear them ‘just checking in with client X’. Slap their hands. If they’re not totally focused on this, it’s pretty pointless and will take ages.

Consult the crowd, but choose a chief

Great positioning comes from getting multiple people’s input, but having one ultimate decision-maker. Design by committee will lead to weak or waffly positioning that tries to please everyone. You need to decide who has the ultimate sign-off on this positioning and differentiation work. It might be the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion), or you might have someone else in mind. Ideally you’ll reach consensus at every stage, but you should plan for disagreements. Pick someone you trust to steer the business in the right direction before you go any further, because these will be major business decisions including which clients you should target.

POSITIONING

The confusion around positioning

Before going further, it’s important to align on what positioning actually is. There should be some industry standard for business terms like this, but unfortunately there isn’t. This means everyone has their own interpretation of what it is, how it works, and why it’s needed.

The problem is that the word positioning is often applied to different areas, processes and meanings. Its definition has become blurry and this leads to confusion and misunderstanding. Similarly, it’s a process that’s become more and more prevalent in the era of hyper-competitive digital marketing. Today, many consultants and businesses offer what they call positioning, but it’s simply some questioning before delivering their main service.

At its most basic, positioning can be split into two related but distinct layers:

Business positioning is concerned with the space you occupy in the market. It’s the category you compete in, which is formulated by defining the service you deliver and the target client you serve. 

Brand positioning is concerned with the mental associations people make with your agency. This can stretch to cover areas such as a core concept, a brand idea, brand messaging, or visual identity. 

Of course, others will have different interpretations of what positioning is. For the purposes of this book, it’s important to align on how it will be used and applied. For clarity and consistency, positioning will now always refer to business positioning, that is…

We do <SERVICE> for <CLIENTS>.

For example, you might do SEO for pet food brands, or video production for enterprise tech businesses. It’s a simple statement that masks a serious amount of thinking and decision making just to reach it. Later we’ll look at how to narrow and decide both your service and target client, but for now it’s necessary to align on what positioning means in relation to this book.

Positioning agencies, not anyone

Agencies are people businesses. They rely on close relationships with clients. The positioning advice available from other experts won’t always port across to agencies seamlessly. For example, positioning a tech product is not the same as positioning an agency. Tech products often launch with a distinctive technical feature that solves a specific user problem. These products gain huge investment initially because they bring something different to the market that’s valuable and desirable. The positioning process is then about honing in on a use case and finding the best-fit market for this. In contrast, many agencies launch because of one person’s talent or passion for a specific discipline. Because agencies spend most of their time interacting with humans, the positioning process works better when we consider the ideal client first, then position the agency to attract them.

Some general positioning theories

Your positioning is the combination of service and target client, acting as a filter for who is or isn’t a good fit for your agency. This filter operates on two axes, width and depth. Width is how open you are to any kind of client, depth is your expertise in a specific area. There are pros and cons to narrowing and/or widening your positioning. No doubt, you’ll have heard people talking about the advantages of niching your agency, or of being a generalist. Before diving into the details of your clients and services, it’s useful to consider which broad positioning area appeals to you as you move forward.

Generalism

This is where you do everything for everyone. Sure, this might seem like the smartest play because you have the biggest potential market. And while that’s true, giving any of these potential clients a compelling reason to choose you over the others becomes challenging. Generalist agencies benefit from working with a wide variety of clients across a wide variety of services. This means new challenges and opportunities, new things to learn, new experiences. To many creatives, this is a real draw. The downside is that generalist agencies are harder to market, with messaging that’s vague and catch-all. Their marketing efforts are less targeted, which means they’re more expensive to scale.

Horizontal specialism

This means you do something specific for everyone. This might be a specialist service like LinkedIn banner design for any kind of client. So clearly there’ll be a smaller potential market than a generalist agency. But the marketing and messaging can be much more targeted and resonant. You’re more likely to be known, remembered and recommended for having a specialism. If you knew someone who needed a new LinkedIn banner design, you’d recommend the specialist agency, even though the generalist could offer it too. With a specialism comes the ability to go deep into the details. Your agency can be seen as an expert and you can easily plug in to networks, organisations and partnerships that can help you scale. For example, you could partner with LinkedIn copywriters to offer your banner design. You could become affiliated with Canva or Adobe who create the design software itself. You could join online groups who are looking to expand their LinkedIn marketing efforts and easily land new clients.

Vertical specialism

These are the agencies that offer a range of services to a specific audience. For example, a digital marketing agency that specialises in working with drinks brands. Again, specialism means reducing the potential market size in order to be known, remembered and recommended in a smaller one. This specialism allows agencies to build expertise in a specific industry or audience. It’s pretty easy to find groups, networking, organisations and strategic partners once you’ve specialised. It means your marketing can really resonate because you understand the deep and detailed day-to-day challenges of your target clients. Some industries will be less keen on you working with their competitors, so do your research to make sure you’re not restricting your ability to scale with non-compete clauses.

Full specialism

This is a specific service to a specific audience. Obviously, this is the most narrow of all the options. It has the smallest possible market so you have to be sure there’s enough depth to make it financially viable. For example, offering LinkedIn banner design to mid-century furniture manufacturers might run dry pretty quickly. That said, it is potentially the easiest to market because the offer is so specific that only potential clients would interact with the website, content and marketing comms. This reduces spending on spray-and-pray marketing, and is great for helping early-stage agencies get traction quickly. Because the market size is so limited, Full Specialists may have to look to widen out their services or clients over time, or look at ways to expand internationally.

What strong agency positioning looks like

There are countless blogs, articles and thought-leadership pieces about agency positioning. And while they’re a useful jumping off point, few of them dig into the useful details of what positioning done well looks like. Before you start the process, always align everyone on what you mean by positioning. Even if your interpretation is different from ours, having everyone on the same page will save you hours of pointless meetings and misunderstandings. Once everyone’s agreed on the terminology, it’s good to define the main aims of the positioning process. The aim throughout this book is to narrow and define the category you compete in. This means being as specific and targeted with both your service and target client. Remember, this isn’t about where your agency is right now, but rather where it needs to be to win more work and grow. The point of all this positioning process is to make your agency the obvious choice over your closest competitors, so you win the clients you want and take control of your agency's reputation and revenue.

The weak positioning symptoms

Weak positioning tries to appeal to everyone. It’s so wide and generic in its thinking that it neither attracts good clients or filters out bad ones. For example, doing marketing for brands is so wide and catch-all that your competitive set is the majority of the agency market. Look, it’s not that you have to niche into a tiny competitive set with almost no viable market, but the wider your positioning (We do X for Y) then the harder you’ll have to work to differentiate your agency from the thousands of others who do the same. 

Understandably, most agencies don’t feel they’re becoming lost in the sea of sameness. Naturally from the inside, your agency feels brilliantly different and unique. And sure, it is in some senses but the market probably doesn’t see it that way. It’s a harsh reality that many agencies only realise they’re blending in once they start to lose out, because the symptoms are easier to spot than the cause. Here are a few telltale signs to look out for…

Internal confusion

Everyone in your team tells a different story about who you are, what you do, and who you do it for. Your sales people have started to make up their own go-to-market messaging, while your CEO still tells people your previous positioning while out networking. Rather than there being one consistent party line, there’s personal interpretation. This never ends well, because you need all your people and departments pushing in the same direction. As soon as you spot internal confusion, it’s time to realign.

Commoditisation

Commodities are seen as interchangeable, and this is the worst possible place for any agency to be. When your agency has weak positioning and zero differentiation, your services become seen as products that can be easily bought, changed, dropped or discounted. You’ll notice prospects start picking their own service mix to solve their perceived problems rather than relying on you to diagnose their issues.

Haggling and discounting

If the only way you can close deals is to drop the price, you have a positioning and perception issue. Because agencies with a strategic edge over their competitors can control their pricing and command the fees they feel they warrant. When prospects request discounts or demand commercial negotiations, this suggests your strategy isn’t working hard enough to establish your authority and value.

Relying on case studies

When asked why a prospect should choose you, you simply show them countless case studies hoping they see something they like. Of course prospects want to see the work and results you’ve delivered, but if this is your only reason to be chosen you’re leaving a lot down to chance. It’s the equivalent of walking into a prospect’s office and throwing your portfolio on their desk and walking out. Those agencies that also explain why they’re a better fit will undoubtedly win more.

Relying on chemistry

Of course chemistry is important. You need to create that click with a potential client in the room. But it’s not a strategy in itself, and if you find yourself relying on your best performers to charm a deal over the line, you’re not in the right place strategically. The whole point of defining a standout strategy, positioning and difference is so you don’t have to rely on chemistry and emotion because you have such a convincing case for being chosen.

Only referrals and relationships

Again, these are great sources of new business but they shouldn’t be the only source. The problem with relying on these is that they’re hard to control and scale, and often depend on one person’s network. If they’re your only route to new clients, then you probably have a weak positioning issue.

Being hurried on timelines

When poorly-positioned agencies lose the power in the relationship, their timelines for delivery often end up dictated by the client. Of course every timeline is a negotiation, but deadlines become unrealistic when an agency feels they can’t push back. The work then becomes rushed and results suffer.

01 TARGET CLIENTS

What is a target client?

These are the clients you’re positioning yourself to attract in the future, not just who you’ve worked with before. You may already be winning these or they might feel just a bit out of reach right now. Either way, they need to tick a few boxes to make sure they’re actually ideal for you. Here’s a Venn diagram with ideal clients at the intersection of:

Fun - you enjoy working with this client, or you find it fulfilling.

Fame - working with this client enhances your reputation.

Fortune - his client pays enough for you to do your best work.

Clearly, the ideal is all three. You’ll need to set your own markers as to whether you accept two out of three, and if so, which two. One out of three is less than ideal, and over time you’ll begin to resent the lack of the other two. This is the trap many agencies fall into, either following the money and hating the work, or loving the work but not the lack of money.

Your positioning should aim to attract ideal clients who can offer you all three elements. And if you’re brave enough to stick to your guns and turn down work, the law of attraction will (eventually) reward you with best-fit clients. Because your agency exists to serve its clients. They should sit at the centre of every strategic decision you make. Their success is your success, making them more important than anything else in your agency. Without clients you have a vanity project with no profit. But often agencies lose sight of how pivotal their clients actually are, and instead become focused on themselves and end up with a loose, vague, or nebulous definition of who they should be working with.

Analysing your previous clients

A retrospective analysis of your previous clients will help you see if there are any patterns in the ones you loved working with, as well as those you hated. Write down as many previous clients as you feel is appropriate. There’s a temptation to only add the extreme examples here, but the more you analyse the more you’ll discover. 

Then rating each client against the fun, fame, fortune criteria from 1 (awful) to 10 (exceptional). Go through each previous client and decide on a number between you. Clearly, team members will have varying experiences of each client, some good, some less so. The idea is to reach an agreement or average for each number. Finally, total up the scores and add them to the table, and then rank the clients from best to worst. At this stage, you’re looking for trends. Is there a specific kind of client that you prefer? Is there a clear client type that scores badly? Are the majority of your clients within a specific sector?

This exercise should open up a conversation about who you’re the best fit for. Remember, positioning is about focus, which in turn means saying no to things. You should start to focus on the clients who fulfil all your criteria, and who you can reach easily. As David C Baker rightly points out, if you can’t buy a list of your ideal clients then you need more focus. For example, nobody can buy a list of ‘ambitious brands’. You can buy lists of ‘Automotive manufacturers’ or ‘Restaurants in London’.

Mapping your dream clients

Having looked retrospectively at the kind of clients you’ve enjoyed working with before, it’s now time to throw off the shackles of reality and think about who would be on your dream roster. Drop in some dream client names from everyone. Some might be once-in-a-lifetime possibilities, others a bit more realistic. 

Once you have a load, mapping their business type, sector, location, headcount, turnover, and the reason they’re a dream client at all. This isn’t an exact science but rather a starting point for a conversation about the kind of clients you want to work with. Are there trends or patterns worth noting? Do you all have very different dream clients, and if so, is that an issue to discuss? Maybe you’ve realised you all want to focus on alcohol brands. Try not to fall into the trap of spreading your net too wide. Most agencies think that a wide and vague ideal client leads to more market opportunities. In reality, it leads to undefined marketing and unrefined messaging that tries to please everyone and so pleases nobody.

Narrowing your target client group

Too many agencies are vague and catch-all in defining their target or ideal clients. They understand the mechanics of seeing who their current clients are, but this isn’t a future strategy, it's a retrospective record. When asked who they should target as an ideal client, many fall back on fluffy adjectives such as ‘ambitious brands’ or ‘future-facing companies’. While this may sound exciting, it’s all but meaningless.  Show me a brand that isn’t ambitious or a company that consciously faces backwards. These words mask a lack of strategic decision-making and because of this they don’t filter any good-fit clients in, or poor-fit clients out.

Remember, the aim of positioning is to narrow and define the category you compete in. This means you need to narrow your target client as much as possible. This is about finding commonalities among a group of clients and making that the persona you proactively build the agency to serve. The commonalities can cover a few areas such as firmographics (their business), demographics (the person) and even psychographics (their thinking). Each plays an important role and can help narrow down who you should aim to serve. But before delving into the finer details, let’s discuss a positioning strategy that’s become commonplace among agencies.

Niching by client industry

‘The riches are in the niches’ is a phrase you’ll probably have heard if you move in strategic circles. In essence, it implies that your agency’s success is contingent on serving a specific niche. To most people, the word niche means an industry, sector, or vertical. It’s a common theory that by focusing on serving this one industry, you’ll be able to win more work because clients feel you have the requisite experience in their world.

As a theory, this rings true. Going narrow and deep into one industry makes logical sense. Rather than being a generalist agency that has to hustle and haggle to win work, you’re instantly seen as a fellow industry expert with niche expertise. But in reality, most niches today are still competitive places to play. Yes, niching will remove most of the generalist competition but you’re still likely to compete against other niche players. And when this happens, your original competitive advantage is lost. You now need another layer of differentiation to be chosen over the others with this niche positioning. If you go so narrow in your niche that there’s no competitors at all, it’s unlikely the market is commercially viable.

The problem with niching by industry is that it leaves your agency vulnerable to market forces. During the Covid-19 pandemic, industries were decimated and the agencies that served them ground to an unfortunate halt. Many industry-niched specialists went under because there was no industry to serve. Post-pandemic, many agencies are understandably cautious about niching fully into one industry so they spread-bet by serving 3-5 industries instead. The issue is that this isn’t niching anymore, and they struggle to speak to such a wide group of clients cohesively. 

Narrowing by client firmographics

Firmographics is just a fancy word for all the aspects of a business or company you can use to describe it. Just as humans have demographic data about their age, location, eye colour etc. businesses have firmographic data about their headcount, revenue, HQ location, industry etc.

In terms of narrowing down your target client, you might decide that you’re better off focusing on a specific business type based on its industry, location, headcount, products, services, turnover, sales, size or ownership structure. For example, you might aim for founder-led startups who have just achieved series C investment funding. This means you can work across any industry, from pet care to pharmaceuticals because you’ve narrowed by firmographics.

Narrowing by client technographics

Again, this is just another bullshitty business word for targeting a client by the technologies they use. For example, if you’re a web design agency working exclusively with Wordpress, it probably makes sense to target clients looking to update their site on the same platform. Similarly, you might decide to persuade people to switch platforms. Either way, understanding their tech stack in advance can help you decide who is, and isn’t, a solid target client. Obviously this kind of targeting works better for technical and digital agencies whose business is built around tech in some form.

Narrowing by client demographics

Demographics are the characteristics of a specific person or population that you’re trying to target. You’ll need a mix of insight, imagination and empathy to truly understand your target client’s background. It’s helpful to create a written persona for them, starting with some simple demographics; their age, gender, education, job role, location etc. If you already have a handful of ideal clients, maybe interview them to uncover some of these necessary answers. If you don’t have them yet, you’ll need to use a mix of knowledge and research, using Google, LinkedIn, websites, your network etc. to build a more detailed understanding. This will help crystallise them into feeling more like a real person. If you’re into the idea, give them a name as a shorthand for future reference. Now you’ll need to step into their shoes and think like they do.

Narrowing by client psychographics

As the name suggests, this is about what happens inside your target client’s head. Psychographics is about the psychological characteristics your target clients have. It touches on their dreams, desires, fears, interests, values, habits, hobbies, and thoughts. Of course, you’ll never really know this but you can do some research and make an educated guess. 

The best research is to talk to your target clients as much as possible. Focus groups, surveys and interviews can all help you understand how they think, feel and behave. The aim is to build a detailed profile of an ideal client, mapping out some core psychological traits you can tap into through your positioning and messaging. There are third-party research firms who can handle this phase of work but expect to pay for the luxury. 

In reality, many agency leaders have a decent understanding of how their target client thinks as they’ve worked with them multiple times already. It’s rare that an agency repositions into a completely new client type where they have absolutely no empathy or experience. Most know their best clients better than they think they do. The problem is deciding to focus on one client type, rather than all of them

Your ideal client’s journey

Having just outlined your ideal client’s overall mindset, it’s useful to consider how it changes over time as part of their buying process. This exercise is about mapping their journey from first realising they have a problem to deciding to stay with your agency. Not only does this give you a more granular picture of their thoughts, feelings and actions, it helps you think about your future marketing and how to appeal to the separate buying stages your client goes through.

Start by writing down what your ideal client’s thinking, feeling and researching, as well the action they’re taking and the way they engage with your agency. Follow this process for each of the phases of their journey from realising they have a problem, through exploring solutions and considering options, and into hiring an agency and staying with them. This detailed mapping will open up some interesting conversations and ideas, helping you step further into the mind of your client rather than always appealing to their rational business brain.

Your ideal client’s buying objections

Prospects always have reservations. Sometimes they voice them, often they’re internal. Hiring an agency isn’t a snap decision, so you’ll need to think methodically about how to remove the barriers from their buying process. Put yourself in their shoes, and write down all the reasons they could have to not work with you. Don’t hold back and be brutal. Understanding and defining these means you can start to build out a strategic defence so you’re never on the back foot. Map out all the ways you can meet these objections head on. That might be through FAQs, website copy, face-to-face meeting, creds, case studies, whatever. Try to match their objections to your solutions. This exercise is invaluable as you start to build out your proposition and messaging. If you can find convincing answers to all these concerns, you’ve made closing the deal that much easier already.

02 SERVICE CATEGORY

Service mix vs category

After you’ve defined your target client, the next element of your positioning to consider is the service(s) you plan to offer these people. This is the things you do and deliver for them that meets their business needs; from Facebook advertising to global brand guardianship and everything in between. It’s important to understand the distinction between service mix and service category. Your service mix might be made up of various things you do. Your service category is the overarching term for this mix of services. For example, you might do digital strategy, UX, UI, wireframing, website design and custom coding. This is your service mix, but you might decide your service category is website development. 

Because whether you like it or not, your agency exists in a service category. It’s the term clients search for when looking for an agency to solve their problem. It’s the competitive space they place you in. It’s the simplest way to describe what your agency actually does. Many of these exist already and are common categories that clients will know and understand instantly. For example, they’ll have a decent understanding of what to expect from a graphic design service. For better or worse, they’ll put your agency in with other graphic design agencies. If you opt for a highly specialised service category, you compete with fewer agencies but also have to educate potential clients about what the service is and why it’s needed. The task at hand is to decide how narrow and specific your service category should be, so here are some things to consider…

Specialising by service category
Now you’ve explored narrowing and possibly niching by target client, it’s time to explore the same concept with your services. Specialisation is where you focus on one specific service or category. The theory is that you’ll be perceived as the expert rather than the jack of all trades, and as such win more work with clients who need this particular service. The advantage of specialisation is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that your expertise deepens over time by virtue of delivering the same service repeatedly. Alongside this, you’ll also become better, faster, and more efficient as you repeat, making your delivery more profitable. The downside is that it’s hard to retain clients as your value is only delivered during a certain phase of the process. However this does mean it’s possible to build strong partnerships with other agencies who offer complementary services.

If you’re already an agency with a wide service mix, the decision to specialise into one service shouldn’t be taken lightly. You’ll need to consider that some staff may no longer be necessary and that those that stay may not enjoy the repetition of service specialisation. Similarly to niching fully into a client industry, specialising in one service can leave you vulnerable to forces beyond your control. For example, you may decide to specialise in YouTube advertising campaigns. But if YouTube decides they no longer want to monetize their platform this way, you’re at the mercy of this decision. In fact, when your specialist service is linked to a specific channel or platform, you also have to weigh up the risk that they may change policy, update terms or even cease trading entirely.

Assessing demand through market research

Although the best test of demand is always real sales, you can get a useful steer on how viable a service mix and category is through a number of methods. Firstly, a simple Google search will show you how many other agencies offer this service mix and claim to play in this service category. You can then make an informed decision about whether there’s a big enough market with low enough competition. Using SEO tools to analyse search results data can also be useful for showing you target client intent. If lots of people are googling ‘event production agency in New York’ then there’s a fair chance there’s a viable market for that service category. 

Beyond the digital market research, you can try to canvas opinions directly from target clients. If you’ve narrowed them sufficiently, you’ll be able to reach out to them either on social media, email, mailer, or in person. This isn’t a quantitative exercise, but rather a qualitative process to see if any trends or patterns arise. You’re looking to find out what services they need from you most. Of course, the true test is when a potential client votes with their wallet, but if they all feel your service mix or category is misaligned then that’s potentially months of misdirection avoided.

Analysing your current services

Let’s be honest, not all of your services are actually equal. Most probably, you’ll have a handful of core services that you excel at. These will be the bread-and-butter work you can do without too much headspace, at pace, and while making a healthy profit. Beneath these is probably a layer of supporting services that you deliver to a solid standard but that maybe aren’t in your wheel-house as naturally. And lastly, you may offer some services that you know are out of your comfort zone where you bring in outside support through freelancers, contractors or partners to support.

Enjoyable, profitable, scalable

This is the holy trinity of any great service. The task here is to list each and every one of the services you currently offer, and then rate them with objectivity. Score each from 1-10 in how strong you are at them, how much you enjoy delivering them, how profitable they usually are, and how scalable they are. Once you’ve scored them all, tot up the totals and put them in descending order. As with the other scoring exercises, you’re looking to spot patterns and trends that tell you something. For example, did your core services score highest or did one of your supporting services come out on top? This then opens up the question of whether you’re focused on the right services or not. And if not, should you discuss rejigging your service offer to focus on the higher scoring options? This isn’t an exact science, but rather a discussion starter using some numbers to kick things off. 

Creating a service mix pyramid

Not everything you’re capable of offering needs to be communicated externally as your category. Many agencies want to have a tick box list of services somewhere so procurement-minded people can see what they’re looking for. This is often a sign of weaker positioning, where the agency has a vendor mindset to supply whatever a client needs. While this is understandable and even admirable, it leads to delivering unenjoyable and unprofitable services that can create a downward spiral.

So the question is which services should you prioritise? Sometimes you can group your services under a single core service name. For example, yours could be Branding. This one common term encapsulates all the potential sub-services you could offer, such as brand strategy, brand voice, brand identity, brand guidelines etc. The more concise and compact your core service, the easier it is for clients to understand at a glance.

In reality, many of your services can be a back-end up/cross sell to existing clients. As you grow, the temptation is to try to prove your expertise by expanding out what you offer. This can work if you’re very narrow on who your ideal clients are, but more often than not it has the effect of looking like hit-and-hope. So make a call and make a commitment to focus on what you do best, that you love and that has the potential to bring you scalable profits into the future.

Fill in the pyramid with your catch-all core service at the top, then mapping out the services in each layer by order of importance. This will help you focus your thinking and see if you’re trying to offer too much too soon. This has the effect of overwhelming prospects, making them choose from a huge menu of services without understanding the whole picture.

Deciding your service category

You’ve analysed, scored, and assessed your current service mix. And you’ve discovered, discussed and debated what your new service mix should be as part of this positioning process. Now you need to decide on the overarching service category that describes what you do and deliver. This may be exactly where you started or it may have moved dramatically. Either way, you need to feel confident that you’re in the right category and that there’s enough clients to make it commercially viable. If you’ve moved to full service specialisation, this is especially important. Once you’ve named the category, go back and research online again to assess demand and monitor competition. This doesn’t need to change your decision, but it’s important to nail your colours to one category mast before moving on.

Your agency’s new positioning

By now you should have narrowed (or niched) your target client, and specified (or specialised) your service category. In essence, you should have the relevant information to complete the positioning formula…

We do <SERVICE> for <CLIENTS>

How narrow and specific you’ve gone is down to you. The tighter both are, the better. If you’ve stayed broad and have something like Marketing for Brands, then you’ll have to work much harder when it comes to defining your difference in the next section. If you’ve managed to find more focus and have landed on something such as Google Ads for Automotive brands, you’ll be playing in a much less competitive market and won’t have to define such a drastic difference in order to give yourself a commercial advantage.

This simple positioning formula sets the foundation for all the work from here onwards. Don’t be tempted to skimp or skip it, and fall back on your old positioning because it’s comfortable. You need someone to challenge your assumptions and decisions as you go, otherwise you’ll invest a lot of time to end up back where you started. If this is a conscious and informed decision that makes strategic sense, then so be it. If it’s because it’s just easier than making a move to be more focused, then this isn’t a good place. But how do you know if where you’ve landed is any good? Enter 3D Positioning…

Scoring your positioning

The process of positioning is a calculated leap of faith. As much as it’s sensible to research and validate, the market is the only true test of how strong it is. But to give you an early steer, our 3D Positioning framework will help you score your positioning based on three simple criteria. Each one runs from 1 (Poor) to 10 (Strong). This is a self-assessment so you’ll need to be brutally honest and bring in external opinion where possible. You will score your positioning again once you’ve defined your difference, but it’s valuable to consider how strong your positioning is at this stage.

3D Positioning® 

Score your agency's new positioning against each of the three Ds and add up the total. Anything south of twenty in total needs to be revisited and rethought. The aim of course is a brilliant thirty, but this may only be possible once you’ve defined your difference to layer on top of this new positioning. Here are the three criteria to score…

Distinctive

How similar your new positioning is to your competitors. Here you’re looking to see how crowded this space is with other agencies that do the same thing for the same clients. Again, internet research is the obvious starting point and will highlight how common this positioning actually is.

Desirable

How much prospects actually want this positioning. Hopefully you’ve discovered there’s some form of market demand for this positioning, based on research or experience. Either way, you have to be confident that people want what you’re intending to offer.

Defensible

How effectively you can prove you live your positioning through. While your new positioning might push you slightly beyond your comfort zone, it shouldn’t be such a big swing that you have zero credibility. You’ll need some evidence you can deliver on it.

Layering on a strategic difference

Now you’ve perfected your positioning, you’ll most likely find it’s not enough to differentiate you entirely from competitors. Most positioning spaces have others that deliver the same services for the same clients. What you now need is to define an extra layer of differentiation to win over these new and close competitors. Because all of this work is to make your agency the obvious choice so you stand out and land the clients you deserve.

DIFFERENCE

Now you’ve perfected your positioning, you’ll be much clearer about exactly who you want to work with, and what you intend to deliver for them. But this is rarely enough to stand alone as a strategic reason to be chosen. Yes, you’ve shrunk your competitive set and no longer compete with the sea of full-service and generalist agencies. But you still have competitors, even if it’s just a handful. This may seem insignificant, but if they’ve defined a more compelling difference, they’re more likely to attract prospects, win pitches, and close deals. This is work you’re not winning, and you’re left to pick up the other prospects that may or may not be ideal.

When differentiation gets difficult 

Many strategists and consultants dilute differentiation to include areas such as messaging and visual identity. In the context of this book, differentiation is a pure strategy process. How it’s delivered and communicated is a creative process. Your agency’s difference is a strategic reason to be chosen over any competitor; close or distant. It’s a valuable asset you can leverage over and over again to make yourself the obvious choice for the kind of clients you’re looking to land. 

Superficial differences

The problem is that senior leaders often think their agency is different, but in reality this is a superficial and subjective claim rather than a strategic decision. This is when you hear phrases such as ‘We’re different because we care’ or ‘We’re not like other agencies because our people make us exceptional’. These are the kind of misleading and meaningless statements that leaders confuse for real differentiation. Just because other agencies aren’t also stating how much they care or how great their people are, doesn’t mean they don’t care or have awful people. In fact, most clients will naturally assume all agencies have both. It’s a table-stakes statement misrepresented as differentiation, and this can be dangerous from a commercial standpoint. Because agencies need to sell their services, and trading on generic truisms and superficial claims makes the sale much more difficult.

Strategic differences

A strategic difference is something that meets the criteria for 3D Positioning by being distinctive (unable to be claimed easily by competitors), desirable (a difference clients care about) and defensible (we can deliver on this difference). The aim of this strategic difference is to ensure you stand out when marketing yourself, and to help you land target clients by having a clear reason to be chosen over others. 

Whereas a superficial difference might make people feel warm and fuzzy internally, a strategic difference excites people externally. Whereas superficial differences might sound nice creatively, a strategic difference performs commercially. Whereas a superficial difference could be considered a brand decision, a strategic difference is predominantly a business decision. This distinction is vital, because this whole section Defining your Difference is only concerned with strategic differences. Below are the key areas to explore and define to add a layer of differentiation onto your new positioning.

Differentiation takes commitment

Defining your difference is half the battle. The other half is seeing it through with consistent conviction. Because your difference can’t be hidden away on your About page, or the last line in a huge creds deck. It has to be front and centre to separate you from competitors who play in the same positioning space as you. In fact, it should be a red thread through everything you do. Not just from an external perspective, but as a guiding principle internally. Rather than it being an exercise just to win work, it should sit at the beating heart of your whole business. It is a fundamental commitment to what makes you better, so don’t see it as surface-level beautification but rather the DNA of who you really are.

Differentiation takes explanation

Making the claim for your difference is the starting point, but you’ll quickly need to back it up with detail and depth. This is where agencies often go wrong, working hard to define a difference and proudly displaying it but never clarifying what it actually means. For example, you might claim your difference is your own software that helps your client track their brand performance. Without understanding the how behind it, the software feels like an empty claim.

Differentiation takes evidence

Any agency can say they’re the only ones that do this thing, or that think this way, but it’s just hot air without evidence. This can take the form of stats, results, images, testimonials, case studies, thought leadership, white papers or whatever else. It just needs to be convincing for a potential client.

The process of defining your difference

This is where many agencies go wrong with their positioning and differentiation process. What they claim is their point of difference tends to be something vague, unsubstantiated, or simply not different at all. The key to making your agency’s difference valuable so it drives commercial success is to start with your target client’s problems, then analyze the market to make sure there’s an opportunity or gap to exploit that’s not crowded with competitors, before finally defining your unique solution to this problem. This seemingly simple three-part process is pivotal for finding a difference that isn’t inward-looking or strategically shaky. 

As before with your positioning (Service for Client), your difference can also be scored against the same 3D Positioning framework. Don’t score your difference in isolation, but instead score the combination of your positioning and difference together. This combination is the ultimate output from this whole process, so it’s vital it scores highly. If not, then further work is needed. So here’s how the Define your Difference process works. 

03 CLIENT PROBLEM

Client empathy mapping

Differentiation is not an end in itself. Anyone can be radically different for the sake of it, but for it to be commercially successful it needs to be valuable for your target client. They are the lifeblood of your agency, so everything you do needs to be seen through their eyes. At the most basic level, agencies exist to solve a problem on someone’s behalf. The word implies both action and autonomy in the problem solving process. Basically, this is the beating heart of what it means to be an agency. But many agencies get distracted by their own reflection, rather than remaining obsessed with the people who make their whole agency possible; their clients. Now is the time to empathise with their specific aims, ambitions and problems through research and empathy mapping.

Researching target clients

It’s likely your agency speaks to a handful of target clients each month. These sales calls are invaluable opportunities to dig deeper into their problems. If you’ve built a consultative sales process, diagnosing problems and challenges will be a fundamental part of this. The phrases clients repeat, the language they use, the details and terms are all potential gold hidden below the surface. Record and transcribe sales calls where possible as it’s normal to miss the nuance during the heat of the conversation.

If you have access to target clients but they’re wary of being pitched or sold on a call, surveys and quick questionnaires can be a solid way to unearth their issues. Don’t expect them to offer large and detailed feedback, so try to create a simple scoring system with some chance to expand. This process can also work well to validate whether a problem you’re keen to hone in on has any market potential.

Future prospects are ideal when it comes to research as they’re still active in the market for services you offer. If speaking or surveying them isn’t feasible, looking back at previous client testimonials, feedback, and case studies can still yield some interesting insights. Again, the aim is to highlight any trending ideas, phrases, or words that relate to their problem.

Target client needs and objectives

Before diving into your target client’s problems, it’s sensible to pull up and think about what they’re aiming to achieve but struggling to get done. Because immediately jumping into problems can lead to ones that aren’t actually important or urgent for clients. Now you’ve narrowed and defined your target client, you’ll need to map their big ambitions. At this stage, if you’re able to speak to these target clients directly you’ll find they are much more specific about what they’re looking to achieve. Surveys, questionnaires, and testing may be useful but one to one conversations will allow you to dig deeper than their first, surface-level responses. If access to these target clients seems unlikely, you’ll need to make some informed assumptions based on past experience, industry knowledge, and good old-fashioned intuition. 

Target client problems

Once you’ve mapped out your target client’s big ambitions, it’s time to analyze the barriers, obstacles and challenges that are preventing them from finding success. All target clients have a problem they want an agency to solve. If they don't, then they’re not a target client or even a potential client right now. The deeper you understand the specific problems your target clients face, the more you can position your agency as the obvious solution. However, agencies tend to head straight to the biggest but most generic problems a client may face, such as growing their business, increasing sales, or driving performance. Sure, all of these are valid problems but they’re so universal in business that they’ve become moot points. Show me a business that doesn’t have these problems and I’ll show you a business about to close its doors.

Types of problems

Problems come in a range of shapes and sizes, starting with the macro societal issues and filtering down to the micro experiential problems of working with agencies. Here are some common categories of problems to explore for your target client.

Societal problems

This is the macro lens for target client problems, being concerned with global, political, economic, or cultural issues that impact large numbers of people beyond their business. This lens will only be applicable in certain situations, so should be used with caution. For example, many clients will have concerns around climate change and sustainability, but it may not be their most urgent and important issue in terms of winning their business.

Industry problems

These are problems your target client faces in relation to their market, industry, or sector. For example; changing consumer tastes, falling market confidence, or poor industry reputation. These should be more than just unsubstantiated opinions or beliefs, and should have some evidence to back them up where applicable.

Commercial problems

Many target clients will have a commercial problem or challenge. The more universal of these will be business drivers such as revenue and return on investment. Although these are valid, they lack the specificity needed. Other commercial problems could include profitability, increased competition, or even budget availability.

Operational problems

These relate to the running of your target client’s business. Possible problems include the ineffective operating systems, complicated processes, excessive manual input, or even a lack of internal innovation. Operational problems often cause subsequent issues such as lost productivity, disorganisation, and inconsistency.

Organisational problems

These often cross over with operational problems, however these relate more to the structure and management of the organisation overall. Possible problems to explore include a culture of poor communication, misaligned departments, or a lack of relevant talent to deliver on projects.

Technical problems

Relating to problems around technology, software, data, or logistics etc. For some clients this might be about adopting new technologies, or their business being changed by the shifts in technology. Technical problems lend themselves to being specific, so explore the details.

Experiential problems

These are issues around how a prospective client experiences your agency, from first engagement in the buying process through to liaising with your team, and even into ongoing customer service. These touchpoints can be sources of frustration for many clients, especially when they’re time-poor and looking to engage with a few different agencies at once.  

Personal problems

At this level, the problems are around your target client themselves. Their fears, frustrations and daily challenges. From time pressures to lack of information and support, every target client will face a number of issues they look to agencies to solve. Some of this work will have been covered in your previous target client empathy map.

Scoring client problems  

By now you’ll probably have mapped a load of potential client problems, ranging from the macro to the micro. But you can’t possibly differentiate on solving all these problems simultaneously, so you’ll need a system to decide which is the strongest candidate. Beyond your gut feel and best guesses, a simple scoring system will help you make a more informed decision. There are three I’s to consider, so score each problem against these three criteria.

Immediacy x Importance x Impact

Deciding on just one problem will feel limiting and uncomfortable. To make a more informed decision, you’ll need to consider the Venn diagram of Immediacy, Importance, and Impact. By scoring each potential client problem against these three criteria, you’ll get a deeper sense of which to choose as the lead problem to solve. 

Immediacy

This is how urgently your target client problem needs to be solved. The more urgent, the more the chance of closing the deal sooner. However, urgent problems can be smaller and more tactical in nature so you’ll need to consider whether solving it will lead to winning the wrong level of work.

Importance

Target clients have a to-do list of problems they need solving. The idea is to hone in on those problems towards the top of their list. The problem you ultimately choose has to feel important to the target client otherwise there just won’t be enough resonance to make them choose you.

Impact

This is a measure of how valuable solving this problem will be for a target client, their business, and the customers they serve. Defining this will be an educated guess in most instances, but even this can help you narrow down the most valuable problem to differentiate on. 

Picking one client problem

Clients will inevitably have multiple problems, and potentially across all of these problem types. The temptation is to spread-bet by appealing to multiple problems as part of defining your difference. While multiple problems can be a smart play across your marketing push, you’ll need to decide on one client problem for the purposes of this process. As you work through the Standout Strategy process, framing this one client problem becomes pivotal. 

Because by naming your unique solution to this problem, you’ll be able to differentiate from other agencies who compete in your space for the same clients. 

Framing this one problem

By working through this process of exploring potential problems, you’ll likely find that they can each be approached from different angles. For example, what appeared to be a commercial problem could also be framed as a personal or organisation problem. This means you’ll need to frame your chosen problem for the right situation. Because a client’s problem will change slightly throughout the buying process. Their immediate problem may start as commercial, but as they research more into possible agency solutions their problem may branch out to be more operational and organisational. Then as they move down the funnel and closer to the sale, it’s common for the problem to shift slightly towards the personal and experiential. This doesn’t mean the problem itself changes completely, rather that the lens it's seen through evolves slightly as the buyer gets closer to a possible solution.

Once you’ve completed this Standout Strategy process, you’ll need to take your new positioning, differentiation, messaging and brand to market. This is where it’s important your marketing department understands the need to frame the problem in the right way for the right step in the buying process. Doing this successfully hinges on how well you understand the target client and their specific problem, but good marketers should be able to make this flex enough to resonate for the right stage.

04 UNIQUE SOLUTION

Defining your difference is about the unique way you solve your target client’s specific problem. By now you should have a clear understanding of this problem, so it’s vital you can name and claim the solution. This combination of problem and solution needs to hold true to the 3D Positioning scores of being distinctive (which you’ll double check as part of the next section), desirable (which you will have assessed in framing the problem) and defensible (which is examined in this section). This problem and solution pairing will be your agency’s difference, so it’s vital it’s been thoroughly researched and considered before deciding. By its nature, differentiation means agency will have a unique solution, but there are some common lenses to see these solutions through…

Unique delivery model

This is the way your work is delivered on the ground. It’s not about an abstract philosophy or mindset at this stage, but rather the logistics and setup around delivering your services. If there’s something unusual or interesting about this, it can work as your layer of difference when added to your positioning (We do X for Y). What counts as unusual or interesting is subjective, but delivering with a standard agency model and structure is neither.

Delivery models that could be considered different (although this is not a hard-and-fast rule) include putting your agency’s staff into a client’s office to deliver work, spinning up remote teams from across the globe based on a project’s requirements, or even operating as an off-shore agency that works white labelled. Coupled with your new positioning, this kind of difference could be strong.

Unique fee structure

This is the distinctive way you’re paid or rewarded for your work, beyond the usual billable hours. This isn’t necessarily about how much you charge, unless it’s radically different and a solution to a major problem. Neither is about how you gather deposits, split payments, or manage the actual transfer of funds as it’s likely these will be relatively standard. It’s more about a specific and unusual model for being remunerated. 

For example, you’re a brand agency and instead of big project fees you decide to operate on a monthly subscription basis. This fee structure is rare in this world, and so could act as a strong and valuable difference for a client who needed ongoing support. Another example would be a digital marketing agency working with direct-to-consumer product brands. Having a pay-per-result structure could be a key differentiating factor that wins you the work you want. And as a last example, some agencies are offering clients an equity or sweat equity model where they take shares in the client business as payment for work delivered. For startups and early stage companies, this can be an exciting and distinctive opportunity that makes one agency a more attractive prospect.

Unique process

This is the steps you go through to deliver your work. Many agencies wrongly believe their process is their difference simply because it’s named something unique or they’ve named each stage differently. Although naming your solution is a vital part of defining your difference, the actual process beneath the name has to be distinctive. For example, if your discovery phase involves deep immersion into the client’s world through spending time in their business then this is different from many agencies. Similarly, if you’re a design agency that invests heavily in data and testing to validate and de-risk your designs, then this could be a differentiated solution. The key is to actually do something radically different as part of the process, not just name or describe it as something radically different. Because you will need to share the details of your process if this is the solution you’re naming and claiming, so if it’s just superficially different clients will notice immediately.

Unique software or technology

Many agencies are reliant on third-party software or tech to deliver their work, however there’s a growing movement toward launching in-house platforms as a way to take more control. Having a digital product or software platform that is the intellectual property of the agency can be a great differentiator. Be aware that using this tech as your key difference can reposition your agency as a tech or SaaS product instead. To remain an agency selling services, you’ll need to make sure your product or platform is merely a tool to deliver your work, not a replacement for the people, experience and expertise you offer.

Remember, the software, product or platform you create needs to solve the specific target client problem you’ve identified from earlier. For example, if your product helps your internal team manage their deadlines then this may be valuable for the agency but potentially less so for a prospective client. The lines of differentiation can become blurred with a piece of software or tech, as it will be different by virtue of it being yours only. However, as with agencies, every piece of software will have competition, so you’ll need to find a key point of difference for the platform or product itself.

Unique guiding principle

This can be a nebulous solution to pin down, and is where many agencies make a differentiation mis-step. This is because it’s tempting to name and claim a weak or vague solution in this category, such as being passionate, results-focused, or transparent. Of course these are solutions to some form of problem but they mostly fall foul of the 3D positioning, being neither distinctive, desirable or defensible. 

Instead, your guiding principle should be a philosophy, ethos, mindset or core belief that’s fundamental to the way your agency operates. It has to underpin every decision, from boardroom to sales to recruitment. For example, a unique philosophy for an SEO agency might be to prioritise and champion creativity as their unique solution to improving search results. Similarly, a performance marketing agency might lead with the unique philosophy that the best performance is powered by brand. In this space, this is a distinctive philosophy that could serve as a powerful differentiator if lived through fully.

Unique category perspective

This is your point of view, opinion, or strongly-held belief about the industry or category you compete in. To work as a difference for your agency, it needs to be a perspective that grabs your target client’s attention, makes them nod along in agreement, and is so distinctive that nobody else in your space could say it without feeling like they’re copying you. Of course, your perspective should be unique to you but there are common themes that can help you find and frame yours. Remember, this shouldn't just be a rant, but rather your unique viewpoint on the industry and how your way is the solution.

One common perspective theme is the old way vs the new way. This is about a seismic shift you feel is happening in your category. This could be caused by any number of reasons, but the key is to name the old or outdated way as well as the new and better way. This naming helps others understand and buy-into your perspective, and the more you can supply evidence to support your claims the better.

Similarly, your perspective may centre around the wrong way vs the right way. This is where you believe there’s bad practice in your category, where unnamed agencies are under-serving their clients for a specific reason. The key here is to not make this a personal attack on any specific competitors (unless you’re truly convinced this strategy is right) but rather against the methodologies and philosophies they wrongly adopt.

And lastly, a useful perspective is your view on the future of your category overall. This perspective needs to offer some form of solution to your target client’s problem. Too many agencies aim to differentiate on perspective but then offer something generic, universal or not solution-focused such as ‘We believe design can change the world’ or ‘Marketing is changing’. Without tying the perspective to something tangible and substantiated, it can come across as shouting or grandstanding without any value beyond being loud.

Unique cultural insight

Culture can be a difficult word to define but in the context of agency differentiation, this solution is about your inside understanding of a specific place, space, region, religion, community and most importantly, its people. It’s about your knowledge of the cultural nuances, being able to offer a client authenticity and sensitivity. For example, you may know a specific country and its people incredibly well. A potential client may want to move into this market but other agencies are unable to offer the cultural insight they need to make it work. The same could work with an online community, such as those who play a particular video game. Again, a client may want to reach this audience but needs your unique insight into this subculture to do it in a way that doesn’t alienate them or leave them seen as an unwanted outsider.

Naming your solution

Once you’ve defined your unique solution to your target client’s specific problem, it can be beneficial to name the solution. This makes it easier to recall, recommend, and refer. Where possible, aim to trademark the solution name so it’s protected from a legal standpoint. Beyond this, a registered trademark symbol can add weight and validity to your unique solution, showing clients you believe in this solution so much you’re willing to invest in protecting it.

This aim is that your named solution should become synonymous with your agency. It should sit at the heart of your marketing and comms, so you stay front of mind when a client is in the market for an agency in your space. The name itself should be as succinct and memorable as possible, while also describing the nature of the solution. While it may be tempting to launch with an abstract brand name for your solution, you’ll have to invest more time in educating your target clients before it gains traction. A simpler name that clarifies the solution will be less sexy, but likely more effective.

Claiming your solution

To convincingly stake your claim to this unique solution, it’s vital you can substantiate it through details and evidence. The mistake many agencies make is to lay claim to a specific solution, but then never go deeper than it being a buzzword or single statement. For example, many agencies lead with the solution that they're ‘strategic’ but then never go on to explain how they’re strategic, how it works, the process, the outcomes, the previous clients and more. Internally everyone’s excited that they’re the strategic agency in their space, but outwardly it’s just a vague concept without any evidence to substantiate their claim.

Whatever your solution is, it needs depth and detail. For example, your own in-house software product needs its own page on your website, and possibly its own micro site. It should have a brand identity and feature screenshots and user testimonials. If your unique solution is a category perspective, you can link to articles that support your viewpoint. You can share posts, statistics or research or that align with your point of view. A guiding principle should be a clear red thread that runs through all your internal and external comms, with a slew of assets that show this isn’t just an empty claim. To really own a unique solution, you have to name and claim it.

Your difference = client problem + unique solution 

Remember, to define your difference you need to hone in on a specific and important target client problem, then offer a specific and distinct solution. Often agencies can be distracted by the solution-building process and end up down various rabbit holes, losing sight of the original problem or looking to solve multiple problems instead. For your difference to really work creatively and commercially, it has to be single-minded. Your target clients are busy, so trying to bombard them with multiple problems and solution pairings will mean none land. For this process, more is not better. Stick to one pair and do your best to validate that they’re the best pair to attract and land the clients you want to target.

You’ve defined your difference, now what?

Having a standout strategy is a great start. No doubt it’s been blood, sweat, and tears just getting to this stage. But a strategy alone isn’t enough to help you land clients. Now you need to communicate it to the world so you can shift perceptions, attract the right people, strengthen your reputation, and increase your revenue. And that takes more than just a few scribbled notes on the back of a napkin, now it’s about mastering your messaging.

VALUE

05 CLIENT BENEFIT

When we analysed 100 agency propositions we found something pretty shocking. 44% of them didn’t offer a single benefit. That’s almost half. And the weirdest thing is that most of these agencies would tell their clients that it’s all about the benefits. If you’re trying to sell anything, whether it’s a service or a product or your profile on a dating app you need to show the benefits of buying. It’s that whole ‘sell the sizzle, not the steak’ kind of thing.

If we had to guess, the reason so many agencies shy away from talking about benefits in their proposition is that it can actually be pretty confusing. There are different types of benefits, different levels of benefits, and if you aren’t careful you end up making generic claims that you can’t even actually live up to. So no wonder agencies choose to say nothing at all. You can’t underdeliver if you don’t overpromise. So in this section we’re going to explore the different types and levels of benefits so that you better understand how to include them in your proposition and messaging.

Get specific with your benefit

The first piece of advice we have is all about being specific. Much like the rest of this book evangelises, the more specific you are, the more you resonate with your target clients. Consider the following benefit: “We help you grow.” Now clearly your clients want to grow their business. That’s really the aim of every business owner in the world. And it’s also the underlying reason for hiring an agency. 

But this benefit is also the most vague benefit you can talk about. It’s so vague that it doesn’t really mean anything. But what if instead you went with something like: “We drive your ideal customers to optimised landing pages.” Now you can see how that’s much more effective. Sure it could do with a little jazzing up but the level of specificity means it’s a benefit that will resonate more with your prospects.

So how do you figure out how specific you need to be? Well luckily we have a pyramid for that...

The benefit pyramid

The benefit pyramid is how we help agencies figure out the best benefit to lead with in their proposition. As you can see from the diagram, there are three levels to the pyramid…

The “Too generic” level

At this level, the benefits are too vague to be of any use to your agency’s proposition. These are things that your prospects kind of take for granted. They’re so high-level that they don’t really tell you much about your particular offer. They can be used interchangeably between any agency, both within and outside of your industry. And as such, they should be avoided.

Common examples include:

• Growth

• Increasing revenue

• More sales

• Improving efficiency

The “Too specific” level

In complete contrast to the previous level, the bottom of the pyramid is for those benefits that are so specific that they won’t resonate enough with your prospects, at least at the proposition level. It’s worth noting that these super-specific benefits are still valuable but should come in further down your messaging, as part of your process or service pages.

The “Sweet spot” level

In-between the two extremes is where you should be aiming for with your leading benefit. This is where you focus on a specific benefit but without the boring detail. It’s high-level enough to impress decision-makers, but also low-level enough to impress your champion. That’s how you can get buy-in across your prospect’s entire organisation.

Using the pyramid

Start with the top. What’s the main, high-level thing that your target clients want to achieve by working with you. There should only be one or two answers to this. Then for each of those ask how you help your clients achieve those. That should show you some of the “sweet spot” benefits. Again, for each of those ask how you specifically provide those benefits. That will give you the bottom of the pyramid which you can use in more specific contexts.

Different types of benefit - emotional, rational, business, personal

As well as different levels of benefit, there are also different types of benefit. We did say it was a little confusing. These different types of benefits all have their pros and cons. The best bet is to use a mixture of these throughout your agency’s messaging. The type you lead with is largely dependent on what will resonate most with your target client, and the kind of offer you’re presenting. Here are the different types…

Rational vs emotional

Rational benefits that make logical sense. They’re connected to tangible things like conversions or time savings. Things that can be measured. In contrast, emotional benefits focus on the mental alleviation of pain points. They’re all about how people feel after working with your agency. Most agencies focus on rational benefits. In fact, this is common in all B2B marketing. It does make sense, as business decisions (such as which agency to hire) are often made more rationally. But don’t discount the value of emotional benefits. You still need your proposition to resonate with your target clients, and sometimes introducing emotional benefits is an effective way of doing that.

Rational: “Stop wasting budget on multiple freelancers”

Emotional: “Avoid the stress of managing multiple freelancers”

Business vs personal

The difference between business and personal benefits often crosses over with the rational vs emotional contrast explored above. Business benefits, as the name suggests, focus on how the organisation benefits from your offer. As a result these are often also the more rational benefits, but not always. Personal benefits are all about how the individual within the organisation benefits. These are usually more emotional, but can also be rational. Whilst most agencies focus on the business benefits, it’s important that you’re talking to the individual decision-maker at the business, and that’s where personal benefits can be useful.

Business: “Align your sales team with the same pitch.”

Personal: “Close more of your prospects with a stronger sales pitch.”

Service vs agency

Most agencies will communicate service benefits to their prospects. These are the benefits of a particular service line or offer. Like, for example, focusing on the benefits of SEO. Not many agencies communicate agency benefits. These are the benefits of working with your agency specifically. This is a common issue. Sure, it makes sense to sell prospects on what you do, but you have to remember that if they’re in the market for SEO, then they already know the benefits of SEO. By including your agency benefits in your proposition, you’re answering the burning question: Why choose you?

Service: “Rank higher on Google with more backlinks.”

Agency: “Our process guarantees more relevant backlinks.”

Benefit vs solution

The section of the Agency Proposition Canvas™ before the Client Benefit is Unique Solution. But one thing that often confuses people when it comes to communicating benefits is the difference between the benefit and the solution. In fairness, they’re very similar and often cross over. But if you can understand the difference then you can harness the power of both.

The easiest way to explain this is that your solution is something you do. Something that happens when clients work with your agency. This could be your service, your approach, your ethos, your tools, or anything that makes up the core of your offer. (See the “Unique Solution” section for more info on this if you haven’t already.) The benefit is what happens as a result of that solution. A good way to see it is using the formula: “We provide SOLUTION so that BENEFIT.”

Solution = We give your agency a stronger proposition

Benefit = Your website will convert more prospects

It’s an important distinction to make because a common mistake with agency propositions is that they provide a solution but fail to turn that into a benefit. For a prospect, it means they read the proposition and are left wondering: “So what?” Whilst it’s really important that you have a clear and compelling Unique Solution, it’s equally as important that you connect that solution to a useful Client Benefit.

Finding your benefits

So now that you better understand the nuances of different levels and types of benefits, how exactly do you go about figuring them out? Well, provided you aren’t radically changing your offer, looking back to previous projects is a good starting point. Think back to some of your most successful projects (ideally the ones with your Target Clients). What were some of the key results that your clients were most pleased about? What benefits did these projects have in common? If, for example, all your successful projects resulted in an uplift in ad CTR, then that’s a useful benefit to use in your messaging.

The other approach is to talk to your clients. You should be doing this for a number of sections on the Agency Proposition Canvas™ to be honest. For this particular section, a useful framework to use when interviewing people is the “Five Whys”. To cut a long story short, the aim here is to ask a client why they needed your service or solution or an agency in the first place. Chances are, they’ll give a fairly high-level answer (like something at the top of the benefit pyramid from earlier). At that point, ask “why?” again. Get them to dig deeper. Do this several times (it doesn’t actually have to be five) and you’ll essentially have constructed a benefit pyramid for that client. Do this for enough clients and patterns will start to emerge. Then it’s a case of choosing the right one to lead with for your proposition.

Choosing your benefit

Getting together a list of benefits is actually the easy part. The hard part is narrowing your focus and choosing one to be the leading benefit in your proposition. This is an exercise in prioritisation. You aren’t going to ignore those other benefits; they’ll pop up lower down in your messaging, on service or approach pages, and even in other marketing material. But your leading benefit will do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to convincing prospects to work with your agency.

Here’s what makes a great leading benefit for your agency:

It’s something clients want

It’s surprising how many agencies forget this. You can have the best benefit in the world, but if prospects don’t see it as valuable, then it’ll fall on deaf ears. This is why having a detailed understanding of your Target Client is important. 

It’s specific (but not too specific)

If you think back to the benefit pyramid, you’ll remember the sweet spot in the middle. That’s where your leading benefit needs to sit. Specific enough that it hits a nerve with your prospects, but not so specific that it bores them to death.

It’s actually obtainable

You might think that the best bet is to promise the world with your Target Client’s dream benefit. But aim too high with it and it becomes unbelievable. You need to make sure your leading benefit is something you can actually provide for your clients.

It’s unique to your agency

Remember when we mentioned the difference between service benefits and agency benefits? Your leading benefit needs to err on the side of agency. This way it helps to differentiate you from your competitor set. That’s why it should be linked directly to your Unique Solution.

06 PROOF POINTS

So you’ve found your unique solution and the client benefits that come from that. Great work. But you aren’t quite done yet. Because if you can’t actually back up those claims with proof then your argument becomes limp and stale. Prospects will see right through it, you’ll burn your reputation, and you’ll be in deep trouble. Which means whilst this next section might sound boring, it’s actually one of the most important parts of the canvas. Without proof you won’t get anywhere.

There are three main things you need to prove about your unique solution: that it’s robust, that you can credibly deliver it, and that it actually produces results. Prove those three things and prospects will see your unique solution as something that can help solve their problems as opposed to just a nice tagline on your website. Your solution needs to be robust, credible, and impactful. And it’s on you to prove it.

In this section you’ll learn the different ways you can prove your unique solution. Don’t feel you need to cram all of these into your proposition and website, but the more you have the better.

Proving your unique solution is robust

A common mistake agency owners make is to come up with a neat-sounding solution, stick a trademark symbol on it, and assume that’s enough to make prospects part with their money. But unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. A solution that isn’t robust is really just a nice piece of messaging. And prospects can see right through it. That’s why you need to go deeper and show that your solution is a real, tangible thing that’s going to help solve your prospects’ problems. Here are some ways you can do exactly that…

Adding depth and detail

When it comes to your unique solution, the more specific you are when explaining it, the stronger your proposition becomes. For example, if an SEO agency boldly claimed that their “RankMind” tool would guarantee a number one ranking on Google, you’d quite rightly want more information before taking their word for it. Buf it that agency followed up with a thorough breakdown of how their tool works, what it does, and how it’s going to help you rank at number one, you’d be much more inclined to believe it.

For your own unique solution, you need to think about what it actually means. How do you live it through on a daily basis? And most importantly, how does it directly result in solving your client’s problem? If you add the right level of depth and detail when it comes to explaining your unique solution, prospects will simply get it. And when they get it they’re more likely to buy.

On the flip side of this is the danger of presenting way too much information at once. This can overwhelm prospects and scare them off. Instead of dumping every single bit of depth and detail at once, say on your homepage, consider drip-feeding it across all of your marketing and sales material. It might be that you should have a high-level explanation on your homepage, a more detailed explanation on a specific page, and then even more detail in your sales deck. You have to find the right balance.

Show the framework / process

A lot of agency owners baulk at the idea of presenting all their precious trade secrets. They’ve spent years crafting their unique process and so the last thing they want to do is give it all away on their website. But here’s the thing: if you’re claiming your brilliant process or framework is at the heart of what you do, then wouldn’t it be insane to not show your prospects what it actually is? You might have the best framework in the world but if you don’t explain it to potential clients then nobody’s going to believe you. 

So the answer is simple: show the damn process. Lay it out step by step so that even a five-year-old kid would understand it. Don’t hide it away behind buzzwords and jargon. Don’t try to be vague so that you don’t have to give away your secret sauce. Just be clear and transparent about how your process or framework actually works. And not only that but link each part of it to how it benefits your clients. That way you’re explaining it and selling it at the same time.

Trademark your IP

Having a proprietary process, framework, or approach can be a great way to differentiate your agency. And while it’s true that you should give away as much of it as possible (see above) it’s also important to protect it. If your proposition does its job and resonates with your target clients, then chances are some of your competitors will notice. It’s likely they’ll try to copy you, including using similar terms and language. In one way this is great, as it means the market’s validating your proposition for you. But it becomes a bit murky and risks you blending in with the others again.

Trademarking is a relatively straightforward process but can give you the protection you need for your unique solution. It’s worth finding a trademark lawyer to guide you through this process. Another positive side effect of trademarking your solution is simply that it carries more weight. Even the free trademark (that little ™ symbol) adds a sense of gravitas to your solution that makes prospects take it that little bit more seriously.

Proving your unique solution is credible

Now that you’ve proven that your solution is robust, that it’s actually something of substance as opposed to a nice-sounding tagline, you need to prove that your agency is actually capable of pulling it off. You need to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge, capabilities, and anything else that supports your claim. Here are some ways of doing that:

Produce first-party research

Pulling together some research and publishing it in a whitepaper is now a common staple in the B2B marketing world. And with good reason - it’s a powerful way to show off your expertise and credibility as well as provide extra value to your prospects. The key is to make sure there’s a clear link between your unique solution and the whitepaper you produce. The idea is that people will trust the whitepaper (provided you’ve done a good job with it) and then that trust will be passed on to both your agency and your unique solution.

A good starting point is to see your unique solution as a hypothesis. You’re claiming that a certain problem exists, and that your solution can solve it. So how can you prove that with research? Note it doesn’t have to be research explicitly about your solution, provided that there’s at least a link. The research could be focused on validating the problem, for example. But ultimately having some cornerstone content like this is a great way of adding credibility to both your agency and your solution.

Thought leadership content

Not quite the same as the whitepaper above but very closely related is thought leadership. Now, this has a bit of a bad rep at the moment. People post any old crap and call it thought leadership. The truth is most thought leadership definitely isn’t leadership, and some of it isn’t even thought. But you aren’t going to make that mistake. Instead, you’re going to use the client problem and unique solution that you defined earlier and use those to create the content pillars for your agency’s thought leadership.

Ultimately, everything you put out on your blog, newsletter, socials, etc. should be geared towards your unique solution in some way. That doesn’t mean just repeating the same message over and over, but it does mean always finding a connection between the content you put out and the solution you’re selling. Do this and you’ll build up a wealth of proof that shows off your expertise and credibility.

Get certified

Certifications can be a bit hit or miss. Chances are, prospects don’t care if their SEO agency did a free Hubspot course on Inbound Marketing 101. They assume that you already had a basic knowledge of that to do a decent job in the first place. But some certifications are worth shouting about. If you’re a Hubspot Platinum Partner, for example, you’ve proven that you can be trusted. By showing off this kind of certification you can harness some second-hand trust from the already-trusted establishments that have given you the certification. Other good examples (depending on your agency) could be security certifications like ISO 27001 or sustainability certifications like BCorp.

Show off your awards

“Award-winning” as a main selling point is never a strong strategy for an agency, but that doesn’t mean that awards are utterly meaningless. In fact, they’re a fantastic way to prove your agency’s credibility. If you pride yourself on your framework for generating creative ad campaigns, then winning a D&AD pencil is clearly proof that your framework actually works. Industry recognition is never a bad thing, so if you get it be sure to show it off.

Hit the press

The PR landscape has changed a lot in the last couple of decades. Gone are the days of flicking through your little black book and hitting the phones. Digital PR is now the norm. The good news is it means there are plenty more opportunities to get some coverage. The bad news is there’s even more competition for that coverage. So lean into your difference and your agency’s story. Utilise some of the other proof points. If you’ve just published a big piece of research, having it validated with press coverage can add even more credibility.

Give your logos pride of place

The good old logo wall is a staple of agency websites. You probably already have one on yours. It’s a really valuable way of giving your agency more credibility. After all, if you go on an agency’s website and they have some amazing logos, then clearly you’d assume that they must be doing something pretty good. 

But you should also consider which logos you choose to put front and centre. You might immediately think it should be the most well-known brands, but consider that if you’re actually mostly targeting challenger startups, that working with established brands may sometimes work against you. It’s also worth noting that if you want to specialise in a certain industry it makes sense that the logos you choose all come from that industry. Anyway the point is, think carefully about which logos you want to show, and what that shows about your agency.

Have other people provide the proof

Word of mouth is still the biggest driver of new business, but that doesn’t mean you can’t force the conversation somewhat. Reviews and testimonials are kind of like a written-down version of word of mouth. It’s ultimately still someone’s thoughts about your agency. And therefore using reviews and testimonials as proof points is a bit of a no-brainer. 

Whilst a lot of agencies already have a few cherry-picked testimonials on their site, a lot of agencies don’t actually go far enough. There really is no better proof of your credibility than what previous clients have said about you. So make sure you always try to get that feedback from them, and then make a song and dance about it.

Proving the unique solution is impactful

Okay so prospects now know that the solution is robust enough and that you’re credible enough to supply it. But what they still don’t know is whether it actually works. Is it going to have the impact that you say it will? If you struggle to prove this, then your whole argument falls apart. Why would prospects invest money into a solution unless they were pretty sure it was going to have the desired effect? Here are a few ways you can prove impact:

Share the results

You’d be amazed how many agencies have nice shiny case studies that don’t actually say what the results of the work were. It’s either because they didn’t measure the results, or they didn’t achieve any. And neither of those is a good excuse. If you truly believe in your solution, then you need to put your money where your mouth is. If you’re going to claim that your agency will improve email signups, then you’d better be sure to measure those. 

If your case studies can provide tangible proof that you made a tangible business impact on your clients, then that’ll go a long way to convincing prospects to work with you. And likely be happy to pay more for the privilege.

Highlight the transformation

Okay, but what if your agency isn’t really in the number-crunching business? If you do logo design, for example, it might be hard to put numbers to that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use that work as proof. Instead, you have to think in terms of before and after. You know how those weight loss ads often have a person looking out of shape and then the same person looking like a greek god 12 weeks later? Well you need to basically take that tactic and apply it to your projects. 

The ‘before’ state needs to be bad. Obviously don’t lie about it but a bit of exaggeration to show how bad it is won’t hurt anyone. It’s not enough to just show it, by the way, you need to explain what wasn’t working about it. If you can back that up with third-party quotes that would be even better. And then of course the ‘after’ state needs to be brilliant. No average work here. The bigger the contrast the better. Finally, explain why that transformation is so game-changing for the client, again incorporating testimonials if possible.

Visualise the numbers

Depending on your audience, simply putting out a load of numbers might not be very effective. In fact, it may put people off if that’s not really how they like to think. If this is the situation you find yourself in, then consider bringing them to life visually. That means creating graphs and charts that illustrate the point you’re trying to make. It helps prospects see at a glance the kind of impact your work has had on your clients.

07 DIRECT COMPETITORS

By its nature, differentiation is concerned with finding distance from a specific competitor set. This means you need to understand who else could be considered a competitor, either directly or indirectly. Many agencies are reluctant to see themselves as part of a competitor set, preferring to believe they’re either unique or that they don’t compete at all. But competition isn’t dictated by what your agency believes, instead it’s driven by your target client and who they consider to be a viable alternative.

The market opportunity is the gap left available by your competitors. It’s a space that’s both available and viable that you can enter and exploit. Finding this market opportunity involves researching competitors and analysing the problems and solutions they focus on. The aim is to make sure none are using the same problem and solution you’re planning to. There must be clear space for you to move into otherwise you’re not different at all, but rather a like-for-like choice. The market opportunity you identify has to be a balance, having no meaningful competition while also having the potential to attract and land high-value clients. But before you start your competitive analysis, it’s good to understand exactly what makes a competitor.

Direct competitors

These are agencies that offer the same services to the same target client as you. These are your most immediate competitors and should form the basis of your differentiation strategy. Because the aim of defining your difference is to make sure clients don’t see your direct competitors as like-for-like alternatives. The idea is that by finding a strategic reason to be chosen over these direct competitors, you tip the balance in your favour.

Indirect competitors

These are agencies that offer the same services to a different target client as you, or vice versa. For example, you may have positioned your agency to deliver Google Ads for tech startups and an indirect competitor may offer Tik Tok ads for tech startups. Rather than being a binary choice between two versions of the same positioning, it becomes a preference choice as to which service is the better choice.

Potential competitors

These are agencies that aren’t currently operating in your space, but you have reason to feel they may at some point. It’s difficult to include these when differentiating, but it’s good to have one eye on the horizon as your competitor set will continually evolve.

Future competitors 

These operate somewhere between potential and direct competition, and are agencies you know will be moving into your competitive set soon. These should be factored into defining your difference, but it may be hard to gather concrete information until the move has taken place.

Replacement competitors

This is when potential clients are exploring a completely different solution to their problem. For example, they may be looking beyond the agency sector entirely and may be considering freelancers, consultants, independent contractors, in-house teams or even artificial intelligence. 

Identifying your agency’s direct competitors

Now you’ve perfected your positioning by defining your target client and service category, you’ll need to identify your competitors in this space. Remember, you always have competition and the set you compete against may well have moved since you’ve worked through this process. Don’t rely on just your past experience or intuition, but attempt to see the market through your target client’s eyes. Ask yourself how they would go about finding an agency to solve their problem, who they might consider, and what criteria they might use to make a decision. Here are some research methods to help identify your agency’s competitive set.

Speak to target clients

Your new business, business development, or sales people bring valuable insights from the front lines. They speak to prospective clients all the time, and often hear the same competitor names crop up as part of their client conversations. Similarly, you might task them with reaching out to your newly-defined target clients to test your potential positioning. During these conversations, your sales team can ask outright who prospects may also be talking to. Some may prefer to not disclose this information, however many will happily.

Speak to previous or current clients

Just as above, you can contact current or previous clients if they’re still examples of target clients. They’ll be much more likely to divulge information as they’ve already worked with you and have a close relationship. Remember, at this stage you’re not asking for an evaluation of your competitors but rather you’re aiming to build a list of who they are.

Talk to your business network

It’s likely you’ve built a network of peers and acquaintances who know your industry or space inside out. These people can be a valuable source of information when it comes to identifying competitors. Simply asking may be enough to be offered relevant names.

Hire a market research firm

Engaging a market research company will be more expensive than undertaking your own first-party research, but the results will likely be more robust. They’ll likely have access to data, focus groups, contact lists and methodologies beyond your means and knowledge. This is the best play if you want deeper validation before you make any strategic changes.

Google results and ads

A simple search of your positioning formula (service for clients) will spotlight others in this space. Be aware that many generalist agencies will run landing pages that appear to position the agency as a direct competitor, when in actuality they span a range of services and clients and this is simply a new business tactic. A trawl through the pages of the search results will help you spot names that rank well, alongside those investing in paid search

Competitor tools

There are competitor monitoring tools out there that can help you quickly find direct competitors. SEO software like Ahrefs or SEMrush conducts keyword analysis and lists competitive websites.

Industry press and listings

Take a look through agency listing sites such as Clutch, or through press and publications such as The Drum, AdWeek, MarketingWeek etc. Many of these will feature and list agencies that may be competitors, plus some run annual awards which is a great way to discover names in your space.

Agency associations

There are a number of professional trade bodies and associations specifically for agencies, and often separated by discipline. Some online research should show you the organisations working in your space, and many will display member names and logos that you might feel are competitors.

Online communities

Agencies are excellent networkers and many contribute to online communities, from private Slack channels to public forums. Again, you’ll need to research online or ask around for ones connected to your specific space but these can not only be great ways to identify competitors but to also build relationships.

Mapping your direct competitor

Using these tools and techniques should give you a much clearer picture of your competitive set. To visualise this, put your agency at the centre and map each competitor’s proximity to you. The closer they are in the visualisation, the closer you feel they are as a competitor. This should help you see the competitive landscape and who you’re directly and indirectly competing with. Now you know who they are, you’ll need to analyse them and identify the market opportunity you can take advantage of.

Analysing your agency’s direct competitors

There’s huge value in analysing and understanding your competitors as deeply as possible. It gives you a clear picture of the market and where there’s opportunities for you to succeed. When it comes to analysing your competitors, there are a few levels and lenses you can use. But remember, to identify the market opportunity for you to exploit you’re looking to answer one key question for each competitor; Why can’t this competitor solve our target client’s specific problem?

Analysing direct competitors using the eight P’s

You’ll most likely recognise the four P’s as classic marketing mix theory; Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. This is a solid starting point for competitor analysis, so go through each close competitor and make notes against all four of these areas. Since its original launch, the theory has added an extra four P’s to analyse; People (target audience), Positioning (service and client), Processes (how the work is delivered), and Performance (the results achieved). Again, if you feel it’s valuable then map your competitors against all eight P’s.

Analysing direct competitors using SWOT analysis

Another classic exercise is the SWOT analysis, where you analyse each competitor’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The first two are pretty self explanatory although you’ll need to be mindful of having confirmation bias. This is where you make judgements or analysis based on your biassed opinion, which is likely to be negative when it comes to competitors. Identifying each competitor’s Opportunities are about understanding their potential areas for success. For example, they may be entering new markets, launching new services, or capitalising on new trends. On the other hand, Threats are about their potential vulnerabilities such as being acquired by another company, key personnel moving or retiring, or being slow to adopt new technologies or practices.

Analysing direct competitors problem and solution pairing

The eight P’s and SWOT analyses are great, but for the purpose of this process you’re ideally looking for the target client problem and solution your competitors focus on. Finding this takes wide and deep research, so be prepared to put in the hard yards. Some competitors will have this information easily accessible, whereas others may have it less visible from the outside.

Their marketing and communications is the goldmine to explore. To find and analyse their problem and solution you’ll need to scan and scour their website, social media, search results, blogs, content, advertising, reviews, sales process, customer service, partnerships, pricing, press releases and more. In essence, you’ll need to immerse yourself in their whole agency and go-to-market proposition.

Defining your market opportunity

By now you should have a much deeper understanding of your competitive set and space. Through your analysis you should be able to see where your competitors overlap, and where they’ve left clear space for you to move into. This space should be where you focus your differentiation, being both available and valuable. Make a note of this market opportunity as a reminder not to be derailed and distracted as you work through this process.

08 COMPETITOR WEAKNESS

Once you’ve identified your closest competitors, you'll need to analyse them to establish their strengths and weaknesses. This process helps you gain a deeper understanding of your immediate competitive landscape and you’ll quickly see where they’re already strong, and where there’s clear space for you to move into.

The aim now is to find a common weakness that most (if not all) of your competitors share. You don’t have to name and shame them publicly. Instead, highlighting a collective competitor weakness is a way to validate that your solution is actually unique. It helps you frame your solution as the only viable option, pointing out that nobody else can deliver it the way you can. A common weakness shared repeatedly sticks in the minds of prospects, and the wider market. 

Competitor SWOT analysis

Yep, a good ol’ fashioned exercise that always helps simplify this stage of the process. Go through each competitor, see each from a prospect’s perspective, them map out answers for each section;

Strengths - the stuff they’re great at. Don’t be tempted to taint them with your own biassed opinion about how they’re not as good as you. Sure, you might hate their CEO or have heard some industry gossip, but the market probably hasn’t. See them with fresh eyes.

Weaknesses - things they’re not great at. Again, it’s easy to max this section out so they look awful. But this isn’t useful as part of this process. Be honest but as fair as you can.

Opportunities - where the market gaps are. Look through the competitors and see if there's an untapped market, idea or territory to explore and exploit. It can just be the seed of an opportunity for now.

Threats - see what’s looming that could impact you. Identify what’s happening in your competitive landscape that could be bad for business. This might be new innovations, industry trends or something completely unexpected. But it’s always better to know now.

Using a competitive weakness to your advantage

A competitive weakness can be framed as a trend, pattern or trait that’s common to all your competitors. This means you’re not calling out anyone specific, but rather honing in on their collective weakness as an overarching concept. The opposite of this is to call out specific competitors and go head-to-head with them, highlighting their specific weaknesses against your unique solution. This can work well but you’ll need to make sure your comparisons aren’t unfairly biassed or based on guesswork. This is a particularly smart strategy when you have one or two main competitors, so you need prospects to understand their specific weaknesses in comparison to your agency.

This common weakness should then become a pivotal part of your proposition, pitches and proposals. It’s a strategic way to highlight the problem others can’t solve effectively, implying their inferiority and presenting your agency as the only viable option. It’s an instant way for people to answer their internal that all-important question of; Why you over the others? 

PROPOSITION STATEMENT (INTERNAL)

Now you need to distil all this brilliant work and big decision-making into one seemingly simple proposition statement. If you’ve followed the advice and stopped hedging your bets, this will be a process of arranging your answers to fill the blanks. For most agencies, this will be a difficult exercise that opens up previous discussions and debates. 

Add your answers to complete the statement below.

We are the only <02 Service Category> agency that helps <01 target clients> who <03 Client Problem> by <04 Unique Solution> so they can <05 Client Benefit>.

Single-minded, not a scattergun statement

The gold standard here is one answer per section. The aim is to have one cohesive line of thought throughout the statement. It shouldn’t mix ideas or strategies. Instead, you’re aiming for a simple sentence that anyone could understand. Of course, some sections might need a bit more explanation, especially if you’ve named a unique solution. But in essence, this should follow a logical line of thought that shows exactly how you’re unique. Because the key word in this statement is ‘only’. If your statement could be applied to any other agency, it’s failed. 

Choose clarity over beauty

This internal proposition statement will inevitably sound clunky. Often it’s a horrendous sentence that’s hard to say. But vitally it makes sense as a strategic line of thinking, even if the grammar is awkward. Don’t be tempted to make it sound sexy, that comes later. Too many agencies get caught on copywriting this internal statement, in the hopes they can polish up a shit idea with shiny words. You can’t. See this as a thought exercise to focus your proposition, not a creative process to show how fancy your poetry skills are.

Share it, test it, and play with it

You’ll inevitably be too close to this internal proposition statement to see it with fresh eyes anymore. So send it to some trusted people and see if they understand the strategic thinking behind it. See it as a hypothesis at this stage, and try it on for size. Similarly, you can share a few variations to gauge how narrow and focused you should go. You might find people are more excited the more specific you go.

Write it up as a strategy one-pager

Once you’re comfortable you’re close to a winning proposition statement, it can be beneficial to write it up into a functional and internal strategy document. Avoid snazzy writing or slickly-designed decks for now, they distract people from the thinking. Instead, create a dull looking word document that answers a few basic questions in the plainest language possible. Use these questions as headers, and answer each one as succinctly as you can so it builds out the detail from your proposition statement.

• What problem do our target clients face?

• Why can’t our competitors solve this problem?

• What’s the gap in the market?

• How will we fill this gap?

• What changes need to happen?

• Why will this work for us?

You’ll be left with a one-page strategy document that makes a clear case for how and why your new proposition is right. This is often harder than it looks as it requires a laser-focus on one line of thinking. The temptation is to use the extra space to add in unnecessary details, claims or superlatives about how great you are. Avoid this. Stay true to all the work you’ve done to create this simple one-page document. If you need to write two or three variations, go for it but keep them all distinct. Do not blend strategies as it weakens them, rather than making them stronger. Again, share your one-pager with people you trust and whose opinion you value. Hear them out but don’t feel you have to change anything based on their feedback. Sometimes people love to pick holes in something, even if it’s actually sound.

Eventually, after endless writing, discussing and arguing you’ll land on a proposition that works. But it’s useless as it is. You can find a million decks on an agency leader’s desktop full of fluffy strategy work that never saw the light of day. Because your strategy and proposition are only valuable once you have the words to tell your story and sell your value. And that’s all about messaging.

WRITING YOUR PROPOSITION (EXTERNAL)

More mess than message

Your agency’s external proposition is what you say to convince the market you’re the right choice. At its most basic, it’s the set of words you use to communicate this. We’re not talking reams here, but rather a concise collection of phrases and paragraphs that sell. Sure, this might sound simple but it’s an area most agencies struggle with at some stage. 

It’s understandable to think that strong messaging is down to how good the copywriting is. But that’s just the final styling. The reality is that great messaging is a strategic process. And all strategy is about making choices about how you’ll win in a specific area. Because you have loads of good things to say about your agency, right? The problem’s more about prioritising which to lead with and which to leave out. It’s the old tennis ball analogy. Throw someone fifteen tennis balls and watch them drop them all. Throw one and they’re much more likely to hold on to it.

So when an agency is in its infancy, they tend to be quite narrow with a focus on one area. This means they lead with one clear message. And lo and behold, they gain traction and grow. But agencies in their later stages suffer from having more people, perspectives and possibilities, and this often leads to uncertainty about what the focus should be. And in turn, off the back of this strategic uncertainty, their messaging hits one or more of these hurdles;

• Trying to encompass too many ideas at once

• Prioritising something other people don’t care about

• Only making sense internally, not externally

You see, messaging is the external expression of your internal proposition, talking to your prospects and persuading them you’re the best choice. This means a weak internal proposition with no meaningful decisions made leads to weak messaging, with strategic cracks that can’t be papered over with poetic copywriting, buzzword-bingo or hyped-up claims full of meaningless adjectives.

Weak messaging manifests itself in a few ways. Often, agencies find that their website doesn’t really work as a sales channel and instead ends up a mild embarrassment. New business people find themselves saying “Ignore the website, it’s being updated soon” to prospects, knowing full well that’s not the case.

Another problem that manifests, is the team tends to use different messaging, rather than the agreed messaging. This leads to messiness and confusion, as you find the CEO says you’re this kind of agency with this kind of benefit, but your account managers all say something different. Internally, this lack of alignment slows down the sales process. And externally, this means the market never really knows what you’re all about.

When the positioning, and therefore the messaging, hasn’t been nailed, agencies tend to rely on claims and cliches as a way to feel they’re still being persuasive. How many times have you seen ‘award-winning’ as the key selling point, or ‘passionate, driven and results-focused’? All admirable traits, but strategically undifferentiated and unlikely to close a client without lots of background work.

Similarly, agencies tend to default back to talking only about themselves, rather than to a prospect. Open up any agency’s website and there's a high chance nearly all of their sentences start with We, Our or Agency X. This kind of messaging is a monologue, a one-way sales pitch, a we-talk-you-listen bludgeoning. This is a symptom of either not knowing who you’re talking to, or not having the empathy to talk to them directly. Neither is great - but they can all be fixed.

Your value proposition

Look, let’s not beat around the bush; most agency value propositions are shit. They’re inward-focused, bloated with buzzwords, and devoid of any meaningful value for the reader. That’s because they’ve been half-baked in a boardroom in between client meetings, pitches, and internal admin. Look, we get it. The Dentist’s kids always have the worst teeth. The Cobbler’s children have bare feet. And the best agencies have the worst value propositions. Such is life. But a strong value proposition is more than just a flowery tagline or a snappy LinkedIn headline. It has a tangible business benefit too, as you’ll see.

So, what actually is a value proposition?

Well, the laser-smart Peep Laja at CXL says “A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered. It’s the primary reason a prospect should buy from you.” Hubspot puts it this way; “Your company’s value proposition is the core of your competitive advantage. It clearly articulates why someone would want to buy from your company instead of a competitor.”

These are great definitions. It’s also worth noting that for most agencies, your value proposition will be the first text clients see when they land on your website. Normally it’s the big headline that hits them straight away, plus some subheader or paragraph copy that goes on to expand and explain more. Of course, you can use a good value proposition elsewhere - but your site is the most common place to leverage it.

So I just need a kickass copywriter to nail our value proposition, right?

Yes and no. Most agencies rush to the writing part, assuming that a proper copywriter will be able to polish their dull ideas with shiny words. It rarely works. Of course, you’ll need some decent writing chops towards the end but a great value proposition isn’t just about style, it’s about strategy. If the aim is to communicate the value clients get from choosing you over the others, then you need to know a lot about two things; your clients and your competitors.

Yeah but value propositions don't really matter, right?

Look, some agencies thrive despite having a dreadful value proposition. It’s not the be-all and end-all. But a strong VP makes life easier for you, as proven by Doug Hall, author of Jump Start Your Business Brain. He did some great research into brands, value propositions, and sales. He analysed around 6000 value propositions, over 1,200,000 customer reactions, across 60,000 data points. That’s some quiet weekends in. This scientific approach spun up some juicy stats. You should really read his book because it’s much more accurate than this sloppy summary, but anyway…

A strong value proposition increases your chances of winning new business

According to Doug’s research, up to 53% if it’s good enough. Now that might sound trivial, but if your agency closed 53% more leads then you’d be grinning ear to ear. Hell, even 23% would be a chunky addition to your bottom line. And all for a few words. Too easy, right? Wrong. There are a few moving parts here; art and science. Let’s start with the latter. Doug broke down the contributing factors into three main categories, paraphrased here because we love alliteration:

Dramatic Difference

Your value proposition has to demonstrate a point of difference from others in your competitive set. Not just a slight rewording or a minor uniqueness, it has to be dramatic. 

Dramatic   Win

Difference   Probability

High   53%

Medium   40%

Low   15%

Too many agencies lead with a value proposition that’s samey or generic. How many sites open with ‘We grow your business’ or ‘Helping brands achieve their goals’. While these are no doubt true, they’re also pretty dull. These kinds of overarching agency statements tend to be ten-a-penny unfortunately. To prospects on the hunt to hire an agency, they’re the kind of safe value proposition that’s easily ignored, and then forgotten.

Even with agencies that have some kind of specialism, they often revert back to the industry norms when it comes to their value proposition. For example, you’re an SEO agency leading with the value proposition that you get clients ranked on page one of Google. This isn’t a dramatic difference from almost any other SEO agency, so it falls flat. So when it comes to having a dramatic difference, there are two layers to look at.

A strategic difference

The most effective way to have a dramatic difference is by defining a distinctive positioning. This means digging deep into your clients, services, processes, approaches, beliefs and more to find something you can lean into. So let’s stick with the SEO agency example. Ranking higher on Google is a claim all will make, so then the differentiation is in how you achieve this. Maybe you have a framework you use, or a philosophy you adopt, or a proven process. Maybe you excel at one specific part of the process and so you can lean into that. Maybe you buck an industry trend or bad habit. Whatever it is, this has to be dramatic enough for prospective clients to care, and different enough that it separates you from the competition. Anything less is a failure.

A stylistic difference

This is the surface layer around how you communicate your dramatic difference. So taking the SEO agency as an example, you might just dial up the language to be more distinctive and dramatic. So rather than ‘We get you ranked higher on Google’ you might say something a bit more dialled up like ‘Outrank your competitors’ or ‘Climb the Google mountain’. And if you’re willing to be really dramatic you could say something like ‘Hit Page One or Die Trying’. This kind of surface-level differentiation is quicker and easier to action, but, as you’d imagine, the gold is in having both a strategic and stylistic difference simultaneously.

Best Benefit

Your value proposition has to tell readers exactly what they’ll achieve or experience as a result of working with you. It has to be the key thing they want, rationally or emotionally.

Best Win

Benefit Probability

High 38%

Medium 26%

Low 13%

This is the ‘value’ part of your value proposition. As with the dramatic difference, the temptation is to lead with the obvious. And while this makes sense as it ‘must’ be what prospects want most, it’s usually generic and rarely resonates with people on a deeper level.  In B2B, the ultimate benefit is nearly always revenue or growth. But this is a generic benefit anyone can claim and so loses its impact. So then the challenge is to find a more specific benefit that’s pitched high enough to be desirable, but not so high it’s universal. Similarly, if you pitch your benefits too low, you risk being too granular, specific and accidentally shrinking your value proposition’s impact.

The benefits to explore here are often around how your agency helps clients drive revenue, create growth or build their brand etc. To find these benefits there are a few things to consider. Firstly, benefits are not features. Most agencies fall foul of selling what they do, the services, the functional stuff. But this isn't what people buy. As the old adage goes; People buy holes, not drills.

Rational benefits

Benefits work on multiple layers. The most immediate layer is rational. This is where prospects make conscious buying decisions based on a logical case. For agencies, this is normally a business case, and includes benefits such as price, speed, scope, returns etc. These rational benefits tend to be common in agency value propositions because they work on the assumption that all prospects make buying decisions like robots, comparing statistics and claims to reach a logical conclusion. This is partly true, but not the whole answer.

10x your Facebook Ads sales

Emotional benefits

This is where most agencies feel their value proposition becomes too touchy-feely and lacks the raw reasoning power of rational benefits. But buying decisions, and the process of building a strong brand, leverage emotions as a subconscious influence. Think about how an individual prospect feels before and after working with you, and explore whether this can be worked into your value proposition. Emotions such as confidence, fear, concern etc. can all have a powerful and valuable influence on prospects, if wielded correctly.  

Avoid the endless worry that your Facebook Ads are wasting money

Experiential benefits

Sometimes the value is in the process as much as the outcome. This covers areas such as convenience, ease of use, guarantees, improved clarity etc. These experiential benefits often bridge the gap between the rational and emotional. The key is to focus on the element(s) that most concern your prospects and to avoid shoehorning in too many benefits at once.

Get ready-to-roll Facebook ads in just one day

Back one single benefit

The temptation is to cram multiple benefits into your value proposition on the assumption that more will sell better. But the opposite is true. Think of benefits as tennis balls. If you throw ten at once, they’ll drop them all. Throw one, two at most, they’ll have a decent chance of catching it.

Clear Credibility

Your value proposition has to be believable. If it’s too lofty and vague it loses credibility, and if there’s nothing to suggest you can actually achieve it then it comes across as empty bravado.

Clear     Win

Credibility   Probability

High   42%

Medium   29%

Low   18%

Any agency can make wild claims about doubling your business or building you a website in 30 minutes. But it has to be believed to be effective. Credibility comes from a few factors, including your agency’s reputation. But when it comes to your value proposition there are a few techniques that can help build trust and believability almost instantly. Credibility is earned rather than just expressed, so your value proposition needs to be substantiated quickly for it to land. Here are a few techniques to build that trust:

Statistics

Add a headline statistic to your value proposition to give it more credibility. Make sure prospects can verify this number somewhere, but avoid using an asterisk as it subconsciously signifies this has a disclaimer somewhere.

Client names / logos

Name-drop some of the brands you’ve worked with in your value proposition. If you’ve created some value for a household name, then tell prospects. Similarly, consider bumping your client logos up so prospects see them just after your value proposition.

Testimonials and quotes

Strip your best testimonials down to punchy one-liners and weave them into your value proposition. If they’re really strong and credible, make them the value proposition itself. Prospects like to know they’re not going first, so use this social proof as reassurance.

Case studies

Drop a link in your value proposition to a stellar case study so clients can easily see how your value proposition is lived through. If this is your biggest trust-builder, then drive prospects to it as soon as possible.

Your brand

A great value proposition on a shoddy website will always leave prospects with a seed of doubt. Similarly, the way your value proposition is written should mirror the level of brand you’re looking to attract. 

Writing your value proposition

Once you’ve got all three elements of your value proposition firing, you need to add a bit of creative flair. Look, clear always beats clever - but aim for both. Here are a few choice cuts about styling your value proposition…

Speak to the reader, not about them

In the example above, the value proposition ends with ‘...for ambitious brands’. As we all know, this is agency code for; Has a big budget and trusts us to use it. It also does nothing to help prospects self-identify to decide if they’re on the right agency website or not. Show me a brand that isn’t ambitious.

Also, talking about ‘brands’ or ‘our clients’ as an abstract third party adds distance between your agency and the prospect reading your value proposition. You need to speak to them one-to-one so it really resonates. The words ‘You’ and ‘Your’ are the keys here. In your value proposition, and in all your comms, you need to speak to the reader as ‘you’. Sometimes this is covered by opening with a verb, in that you’re speaking to them without actually using the word ‘you’.  We found that 88% of agencies use first-person pronouns like We, Us, and Our and just 12% spoke to the reader directly, or with You and Your.

Expand your brand into new overseas markets

Open with a verb

Most agencies think their value proposition should be about their agency, so they start it with the word ‘We’. Google digital or marketing agency and most will be reeling off ‘We do this’ and ‘We do that’. Sure, this is a proposition but it’s delivered in a top-down way that takes power away from the prospect. For example, a common value proposition you’ll see is something like; 

We create campaigns that convert for ambitious brands

As a prospect, of course I want conversions. But it makes me feel like it’s all going to be done for me, with me just sitting idly by the sidelines, frozen out of the process. That instantly puts my back up and gives me the sense that the agency holds all the power here. But prospects want to feel empowered to create the value themselves. The quickest solution here is to remove the word ‘We’. This now makes the first word a verb (a doing word) and is an imperative (nerdy term for a command or action). 

Create campaigns that convert

See how this empowers me as the prospect to be the one driving the conversions. That’s what I want; power, control and glory. Not to be a bystander beholden to an agency.

Styling your value proposition

There are lots of techniques you can use to craft your value proposition so it’s even more memorable. Here’s a rundown of a few styling tips you can try…

Rhyme

This can make your value proposition really fun to read and repeat, making it more memorable. But beware forcing a rhyme just for the sake of it, which is the amateur copywriter’s curse.

More bottom line in much less time

Alliteration

This is where words in your value proposition start with the same sounds. This makes it easier to remember, similar to how politicians create alliterative sound bites that get repeated easily.

Start stepping up your brand’s style

Consonance / Assonance 

This is a technique where the same sounds are repeated in your value proposition to give it a natural flow and rhythm. Consonance is repeating harder consonant sounds, and assonance is repeating vowel sounds. 

Smarter targeting for harder tasking

Anaphora  

An anaphora is when you repeat the same word(s) at the beginning of two or more sentences. This creates a two-part balance between both sentences and this makes it more memorable.

Be bold. Be brilliant.

Epistrope  

Is basically the same as anaphora, but it’s the end words that are the same or similar.

By designers, for designers

Simile

This is a comparison to something else to make it come alive in people’s imagination. So if your value proposition is coming off a bit dry, try a simile to spice it up and add a touch of the unexpected.

Digital marketing as smart as Einstein’s thinking cap

Personification

This is where you take something non-living and give it human traits. It’s a fun way to play with a subject or service in a way that resonates beyond the rational.

Advertising that dances through people’s minds at the right times.

Hyperbole

From the Greek word meaning “excess,” this is a figure of speech that uses extreme exaggeration to make a point or show emphasis. It has to be handled carefully and with charm to not sound like one big boast.

Video production so profitable you’ll be banking billions by Friday

Idioms

An idiom is a well-known phrase. If you can find a way to twist it to work for your agency, you have the advantage of people already knowing and remembering the phrase. This means there’s less cognitive load for them to understand a new sentence, and they’ll enjoy and remember the twist on their expectation.

Because someone’s always in the market for marketing.

Pun

This is a joke that plays on a word or phrase having different possible meanings. Never force a pun at the expense of saying something relevant. It’s too tempting to lose clarity for the sake of cleverness.

SEO: quit being the rank outsider.

Cool, but why should I listen to you guys though?

Well, for some stupid reason, we decided to rewrite a load of agency value propositions for free on a LinkedIn post. Expecting a polite trickle of people we know personally, we were happy to have a crack from a thousand yards out. What we got was hundreds of agencies all eager to see if we were as awful as everybody says we are. Many were not disappointed. Or they were. Maybe both.

So this PDF is the inside scoop on what we found from rewriting that hundred agency value propositions; the good, the bad, and the urgh-this-is-impossible. It’s also backed up by some research we did a few years ago comparing another hundred agency value props. Luckily, the results are pretty much the same as now; generally pretty bad all round with the odd exception.

Here are a few stats we found after comparing a load of agency value propositions. Grim reading ahoy…

56% of agencies have no difference in their value proposition

Some agencies struggle to differentiate themselves in their value propositions, with 56% not including any USP. Instead, there’s just a mish-mash of marketing buzzwords that make all these homepages feel homogenous.

44% of agency value propositions offer NO value

It’s crucial to highlight benefits over features to pique interest and desire. This means over half of the agencies we looked at had a value proposition that was just a proposition. But clients buy what they get as a result, not just what agencies do, which means 56% of agencies reduce their chances of converting clients.

40% of agency value propositions talk only about themselves

Words like “we” and “us” dominate agency value propositions, with user-referencing words like “you” taking the back seat. Using only words like “we” fails to create a point of self-reference for readers, and points to other potential problems in framing value.

Narrative

Right, you have the challenge or change mapped and you have the specific way your agency helps solve or navigate this. But two bullet points or short sentences rarely make an exciting narrative you can position around. So now you need to add the color and character to bring this narrative to life. This process is where the worlds of strategy and copywriting collide, because thinking and writing are two sides of the same coin. Beware anyone who tells you they can exist effectively in silos.

Start with the challenge or change and think how you’d say this to someone you were in a pitch or meeting with. Don’t try to write it straight away, because it often ends up over-written and lacking that visceral, immediate energy that makes it resonate. Speak it out loud (yes, you’ll feel daft) and find the flow of words that are natural, not poetic. This is a great technique for all writing. If you wouldn’t say it like that, don’t write it like that. Speak it in a way that’s unique to you, that’s passionate and stirring, but not an amateur dramatics Shakespeare play. Once you have a rough outline, write that down.

Same with the solutions side. Speak it out loud to a colleague or computer and hear it back. If it sounds salesy, scrap it. If it sounds too slick, scrap it. It should sound like the real you talking to a real person. Not a polished sales script full of stuff no normal person would ever say. Again, write the best version down and don’t overthink it (yet).

What you’re left with will be a rough and ready narrative, bespoke to you, that’s strategically saying the right things, and in the most resonant way. This is a solid starting point for your new narrative positioning. The next step is to edit, hone and copywrite this narrative so it flows nicely while feeling like you. Now, because your narrative is (hopefully) a one-off, it’s impossible to offer specific advice around the writing but here are some general pointers to consider as you go.

We, We, We is a boring monologue

Most agencies write copy where almost every sentence starts with We, Our or Agency X. This is a monologue that nobody really connects with because it’s one-way. Look, we all care about ourselves first and foremost. It’s human nature. So a simple flip from using We everywhere to using You to speak directly to the reader is a game changer. Try it and force yourself to write your new narrative only using You and Your.

Short, medium and long versions

See if you can condense your new narrative down to two sentences. If you can, then that’s a good sign you’ve landed on a positioning that’s strategically strong. But this short-form version probably lacks emotion and passion, so write a medium version that builds it out with more specifics, details and colour. Then finally, push to write a longer-form version that really goes deep. This exercise opens up new ways to express the narrative that you might not hit on otherwise.

Make them feel it, not just read it

Your narrative should paint a picture in people’s minds. They should nod along in agreement with you because you understand exactly what they’re going through. It’s about making them feel heard, understood and aligned. And this means tapping into how they feel now, and how they’ll feel if you solve their challenge or navigate their change. It’s easier to rely on rational copy that appeals to a (mythical) logical buyer, but humans feel more than they think. Make them feel it, not just read it.

Mirror their language

Hopefully you already know the language and vocabulary of your target audience. This normally comes from years of just being around these people, listening to how they speak and subconsciously soaking it up. But sometimes agencies switch to using ‘agency-speak’ that only exists in our weird little corner of the world. It’s worth running your new narrative by a couple of people in the right industry and getting them to sense-check the language - but don’t let them unpick your positioning.

Structuring your narrative

By now, you should have a set of sentences or paragraphs that form your narrative. But you might find that they flow better in a different order. For example, the most common structure  is problem then solution, but some agencies feel uncomfortable leading with negativity. So in this case, you can experiment with reordering the narrative so that you open with the benefits or outcomes, then show how it’s achieved with the solution, and finally build empathy by highlighting the challenge or change.

There isn’t a best or right way here, it’s about what works best to make the narrative as compelling as possible. And remember, compelling really means most likely to persuade and sell - not just tell. Yes it needs to elicit emotion, and have rational appeal, but it also has to drive action. Without this, what you've written is content, not copy.

Think of your narrative as a set of blocks you can move and manipulate. Tools like Miro and Figma are great for wireframing your narrative and bringing in multiple stakeholders. Create a digital playground where people can rewrite, restructure and rethink the narrative in real time. But remember, they’re not there to undo the actual substance and strategy. It’s about presenting the best version of the narrative to position around.

But beware, there is a danger that people play endlessly, and never actually commit to a narrative. To combat this, set clear parameters and timeframes for this stage. Once everyone has contributed their ideas, find a way to make a decision. Remember, there is no robust way to validate this narrative positioning apart from taking it to market. With this in mind, be brave and take the leap with a view to optimising and updating quickly once you get a sense of what the market makes of it. That’s the beauty of narrative over niching.

Presenting your narrative

So, you’ve done the hard yards and followed the process. And now, eventually, you’ve got a narrative positioning that everyone’s fully behind and you’re ready to take to market. So how do you tell the team internally, and then where does it actually go externally? 

Well, there shouldn’t really be two versions of your narrative. It should be the same story, inside and out. This way you limit the potential for people telling their own interpretation of it. Sure, you might want a few extra notes for the internal version to help sales people or account managers make sense of it in specific situations. But again, keep this sparse if needed at all. The aim here is to create a unified ‘party line’ that everyone knows and uses. As soon as one variation gets out, the whole thing can start to unravel.

With this in mind, you need one single source of truth for your positioning narrative. A nicely-designed PDF deck is normally the easiest way to keep everyone aligned. Make it beautiful and simple so people buy into it. A scrappy Google Slides deck with hasty formatting lacks confidence, and people will push back against it. Think of this as your agency’s magnus opus; it’s what you believe in, and what you’re all about (at least for now).

The more investment there is in it as a process and a document, the more galvanizing it’ll be. And that’s the whole point here; one narrative positioning that’s unique to you, that separates you from the rest, that unites your team, and that appeals to the right kind of clients. Sure, it’s just a few words. But with a big impact.

COMMON PROPOSITION MISTAKES

Common agency proposition mistakes

As an agency leader, you’re smart. You think strategically. You work creatively. Hell, you sell this stuff to clients daily. But this doesn’t mean you’re naturally going to nail your agency’s proposition. In fact, you’re probably too close, too emotionally invested, and too busy to get it right.

Nailing your agency’s proposition can be a mind-fuck as well as a minefield. It takes time, energy, and endless internal arguments. We spend an unnatural amount of time thinking about agency propositions, working with all kinds of shops to help them differentiate and communicate their brilliance. And along with this, we see agencies making the same mis-steps and mistakes like these:

The agency name retrofit

Your agency’s called something like Purple Anus, Coffin or Keith Digital. And because you have nothing exciting or different to say, you try to riff off this name and pretend it means something deeply strategic and purposeful. It rarely works and feels forced. If you’re having this conversation in your boardroom right now, stop immediately and call for strategic backup.

The frickin’ obvious statement

‘We believe in the power of marketing to improve businesses’. Whoa, really? Sure, having an opinion is great. But opinions are like assholes; everybody has one and they usually stink. Throwing up generic truisms in a huge font on your homepage might make you feel like a thought leader, but if there’s no thought behind it you’re just another agency shouting meaningless memes into the void.

The people difference

Of course your people are different. Every human is different. They have unique DNA. Claiming your tight-knit team of thinkers, makers and doers (insert any kind of -ers) is what makes you better is a band-aid for being bland. If after all those positioning workshops you’ve come to this as your way to stand out and win, it won’t work unless you’re led by a genuine celebrity whose fame you can leverage. And no, your illustrious leader isn’t famous, however much they try to tell you they are.

The big empty word

Even words have trends. Remember when everyone was disrupting things? Then they were transforming things. Now everyone wants to help clients navigate things. The temptation is to sling it up on your site and enjoy the 15-mins of fame. But the limelight fades fast. Jumping on the bullshit buzzword bandwagon is a clear signal your agency has zero difference over anyone else. If you find yourself filling some new word with missing meaning, you’ve gone down the wrong rabbit hole. Course correct at speed.

The authentic over strategic

Sure, your agency is warm, human, collaborative, non-homicidal and approachable. That’s authentically you. It’s just that it’s authentically dull. Trading on table-stakes about how you’re not a warmongering egomaniac makes people question what you’re actually hiding. Find something strategically stronger. And avoid wasting weeks on fluffy brand workshops about what kind of flower you’d be and which spirit animal most represents you. This stuff is fine for your aunt’s candle business. Let her revel in it.

The decision delegator

You’re the agency leader but your idea of leadership is to pass all the positioning responsibility to middle managers who don’t really want to make these big strategic decisions. Instead you’ve decided to be democratic and run all kinds of awful internal surveys so you can avoid sticking your neck out and committing to something. Your team needs you to step up and take a stand for something. Design by committee is the enemy of effective positioning. 

The big deck energy

Every repositioning process should culminate in a deck with at least 289 slides. Anything less shows a severe lack of strategic clarity. Make sure the first half contains charts and graphs that go upwards. Ask at least 14 rhetorical questions in the middle. Then hit them in the feels with one big word on a monochrome slide that encapsulates everything you’ve been waffling on about. E.g ‘BETTER’ or ‘FORWARD’ or ‘TOGETHER’. The bigger the font the better the idea. In all seriousness, if you need to send your 2gb positioning deck via WeTransfer then you’ve prioritised quantity over quality. Head back to go and do not collect $200.

The past client validator

Positioning is a calculated leap of faith. Sending your new positioning to those old clients isn't going to tell you whether it’s a good move or not. Because these people are biassed, they’ve paid you money already. They’re not new prospects with a fresh agenda. Stop trying to find a way to rationalise and de-risk your repositioning. The fact that you’re looking for external validation is normally a sign you don’t believe in it, which is a bigger problem. This is art and intuition as much as science and insight. Of course, don’t make rash assumptions but looking backwards needn’t dictate how you move forward.

The wrong external expert 

Bringing in some external help for your positioning is a smart play. But following the advice of the wrong person is expensive and exhausting. It’s hard to know who's right before you start working together, but trust your gut when you know they’re the wrong one. When you find yourself disagreeing in your head, gossiping about their ideas, doing the opposite of what they say, or secretly redoing the work yourself, then you know it’s a bad fit. Speak to the team and get a sense of what they think. It’s better to cut ties than waste months on a sunk-cost fallacy.

The underwhelming reveal

You’ve finally unpicked your new positioning. The new messaging’s been crafted. It’s all about to go live on your website. Everyone’s excited. You’ve invested months getting internal buy-in on this big idea. Launch day. You unveil it to the world and… the world doesn’t really understand what the fudge it all means. There’s no fanfare, just a few emails asking what this stuff is about. It’s either tumbleweed or confused questions. If it’s not clear what your positioning is all about, it’s flopped. 

This process isn’t always pretty

Proposition work can be painful, intense, and mind-bending. There are so many gurus out there who’ll tell you to niche or die. You’ll be sold books and courses galore. There are outfits like us who’ll handle the heavy lifting for you. It’s a nebulous and notoriously complex process that lots of agencies start and few finish. And those that do finish often end up with something so wet and weak it’ll do nothing to differentiate them or help them hit the next level. Finding positioning advice and guidance is relatively easy. It’s spotting the pitfalls and problems along the way that’s harder. So if you see yourself in any of these ten above, then there’s been a mis-step along the way.

REWRITING YOUR WEBSITE

Your agency’s website needs to work as hard as you. Its job is to be your 24/7 salesperson, clearly and confidently explaining why your agency is the smart choice. In fact, the only choice. Today, most clients will either discover you through your website, or verify you through it. It’s become more than the simple sales brochure it used to be. The days of showing off a few of your best bits of work are done. Clients demand strategy and substance, not just surface style. Sites that rely on just their best work to close clients are taking a risk. It’s the equivalent of walking into the client’s office, throwing your portfolio on the desk and walking out. Confident, but less compelling to the average client. Those agencies that stay to talk about the client’s problems, showing empathy and clarifying (not just claiming) expertise have a competitive advantage.

Your marketing, ads, SEO and content will often funnel traffic to your website. That’s money being invested getting eyes on your site, but it all means nothing if the site doesn’t light them up. You’re literally paying to be seen, considered and then rejected. Website traffic isn’t an end in itself, it’s about getting clients to contact you. Because, as you know, once you’re in the discussion you’re great at winning them over. It’s generating the right kind of leads that’s needed. And that’s what great website copy and design helps you achieve.

What clients want from your website

Clients are buyers like any other consumer. They’re naturally loss averse and make decisions based on their subconscious and emotions, justifying their choices later with logic. Every client comes with a handful of these subconscious questions about your agency:

What kind of agency are you?

If you’re a digital marketing agency and I want print advertising, tell me now so I can head elsewhere.

What do you actually do?

Doesn’t need to be a list of everything, just give me an easy reference so I know I’m on the right site. 

Who do you work with?

If you specialise in a certain kind of client, tell me. If you want to work with certain kinds of brands, call that out. If you serve everyone, don’t bother saying that – it’s assumed.

What results or outcomes will I get?

This is your value proposition. It’s the promise of the results and their impact on the client’s business, work and life.

Why you, not your competitors?

This is all about selling the benefits of your work, as well as how you're different from other agencies. Sometimes you can call it out directly, sometimes you’ll weave it subtly through your story.

Why should I trust you?

Clients see through empty claims, so quickly signpost them to testimonials, case studies, stats and evidence that you deliver what you say you will. 

Are we a good fit?

Your story, style, personality, brand and design. It all impacts on a subconscious level about whether you’re the right people and agency to choose.

What should I do next?

Don’t leave clients confused or dangling down web page dead-ends. Make it really clear what you want them to do, and what they can expect as the next stage in their journey.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of questions. In fact, you should consider asking previous or current clients about what they were looking for when selecting an agency. The more research and data you can gather about their ambitions and objectives, the more you can leverage these with smart copy.

Your website’s primary goal

Your site isn’t there to just look and sound nice. It should drive a specific and measurable action you want clients to take. That might be as simple as spending more time there (dwell time) or it might be actually enquiring about working with you. Ideally, aim for a clear conversion; Contact page form submission, email newsletter signup, mailing list signup etc. Once you have a goal, you can test and optimise your site to make sure it’s working as well as it can. Without a goal, you’re hitting and hoping. Sure, done well your website will have an impact on your bottom line, but you won’t be able to prove it was the site that had any impact.

How clients actually read your website

We can tell you now, they won’t read every word of your carefully crafted copy. However good it is, however clever or cool, they’ll scan and skim 20-28% of it. On first read, they’re looking for relevant words and phrases that suggest they should read on. If you’ve ever set up Hotjar and watched users interact with your site, you’ll be surprised how they flash through it all, then return to specific pages to get the details. Clients also read your site in a specific eye pattern. It’s basically a big F pattern, reading the top of the page first, from left to right. They work downwards but read less of the width of the screen as they descend. This means you need to consider more than just what you say, but also where you say it. Key takeaway: put your most important messaging highest up, decreasing in importance down the page.

The strategy sells, not the style

Your website copy should be easy to read and understand. Of course, there’ll be specific words, terms and jargon clients will want to see. We’re not suggesting you write your website for a general audience of 6 year olds but that doesn't mean your copy should be complicated. No client was ever offended by clear, plain language. They have been offended by overly cool, clever and incomprehensible language.

Simplifying your language is proven to help increase conversions, in an agency’s case; enquiries from the right kind of clients. Average reading ages for the UK and US hover around 8-11 years old. This means that dense or difficult language will invariably put some clients off. Contrary to what most people think, it’s pretty hard to write consistently for a lower reading age. Sites like HemingwayApp or Readability Test Tool are great ways to make sure you’re not pitching your copy at post-doctorate level.

LAUNCHING YOUR NEW PROPOSITION

Put it all into action 

A strategy is a great starting point, but not worth the paper it’s written on if nothing happens or changes as a result of it. This means it’s imperative that you map out all the major strategic shifts that now need to happen. For example, this might be a strategic shift from serving any client to serving only New York based FMCG brands. Map out the behaviours, actions, and changes that need to happen in order to live your new strategy through. Make people accountable and agree on a deadline for completion. You’d be staggered at the amount of agencies who reach new strategic places that could potentially make them millions in revenue, but who never action them beyond a few decks and docs everyone ignores. 

Sleep on it, share it, but don’t shift it

Once you’ve nailed your standout strategy from top to bottom, you’ll be keen to sense-check it with a few people. Someone will always have a counter opinion about your positioning and differentiation. You’ll always find a dissenting or disapproving voice, on all or part of it. Of course, everyone’s entitled to their view - but strong strategy takes courage and commitment. It’s pretty normal to wake up the next day with a pang of fear about the decisions made. Over the following few days, you might find yourself slowly undoing all the big decisions and watering down the impact of your new positioning. This is fear and is totally normal. If every team member is allowed to make just one ‘small adjustment’ the whole piece will slowly be eroded until you’re back where you started. You’ll roll out a newly-polished but old positioning, and then wonder why it has little or no impact. Yes it's scary, but commit.

Don’t guess, test

So how do you know if your standout strategy is a winner? Well, it’s hard to know until you’ve rolled it out, but there are a few simple tests you can do along the way to make sure you’re on the right track. Use sites like 5 Second Test and Wynter to get feedback on how clear and compelling your positioning really is. Use A/B testing on your website to see what performs better over time. Take this with a small pinch of salt though, as most agency websites don’t get enough traffic to make the data infallible. Testing is great, and can help you get a real feel of what works before going live, but don’t make it everything. You’ll need to lead from the front on this one.

Going all in vs easing in

If you’re transitioning to a new industry, refocusing to specialise in a new service, or making a chunky change of some kind, you might not want to rip your agency apart and rebuild it with this new positioning. With any kind of positioning process, the payoff is rarely instant because it takes time for clients to readjust their mental connections with you. Going all in is easier, because you shut up shop and reopen with your new positioning. This works when you’re new or with little reputation at stake. At this stage, you can pivot 180 and pull it off, without haemorrhaging clients. When you're at a slightly later stage, the risks and rewards are higher. If you’re nervous about the logistics of repositioning, here are a few ways to make it gradual:

Set up a sister agency 

Rather than reposition your whole agency, you could set up an offshoot for your new specialism. This is great because it leaves the parent brand intact, without having to build a new agency from scratch – with zero reputation to leverage. Plus, if clients find out you have a general agency as well, it might weaken your claim to niche expertise. It’s an investment in time and resources to get a second agency off the ground. But it makes for a cleaner proposition and means you can carry on with business as usual with your general agency.

Use website subdomains

Working from your master web domain, you can have infinite subdomains that can be niche-specific. For example, you might run a generalist design agency called www.designagency.com. You could set up niche subdomains with tailored messaging and design for that industry, for example: estateagents.designagency.com or drinksbrand.designagency.com. The beauty of subdomains is that it’s an easy and effective way to test different niches and see what works. Sure, you’ll need to adjust your site for each niche, but it’s a smart first step. You can then run targeted ads and traffic to the subdomain and evaluate the best market to move into.

Create targeted landing pages

You could set up a web page specifically about the service, or for the specific client. Over time, the messaging from this page can start to be reflected across the whole site. This makes the niching more of a process than a switch. That’s good for nervous nichers, but can end in a messy message that lacks the kind of clarity and confidence clients like.

MARKETING YOUR NEW PROPOSITION

Marketing the problem

Marketing your agency could be a book in itself, and so much of the timings and tactics used will be dependent on your industry. But the core idea to take away is that it’s better to frame and market the problem rather than just the solution. Agencies are always so eager to jump to describing their services, process, and case studies. But these are all rational factors that every other agency is trading on. The smarter play is to leverage the target client problem you’ve already identified. 

This problem should be the drum you bang repeatedly. You can frame and explain it in whatever way suits the channel and medium, but it shouldn’t stray too far from this central problem. Because it’s incredibly hard to sell your unique solution if target clients don’t feel they have a problem. Your role as marketer is to make them feel it. Name it, claim it, and market it with visceral imagery and emotive urgency. Twist the knife and unpack all the negatives that come with letting this problem go unsolved.

Mapping problems across the buying journey

The problem should stay consistent but you may find it valuable to flex and reframe it for the different stages of the client journey. For example, you may need to make early stage buyers simply aware that the problem exists at all. Whereas later stage buyers will need to feel the pain of how this specific problem is negatively impacting them. Remember, these aren’t separate problems but rather different angles on the same central issue.

Selling the solution

Now if you’ve correctly honed in on the right problem, you’ll naturally be in the right place to sell your unique solution. Competitors will find it hard to copy you without losing credibility, and you’ll find that the clients that enquire with you are already further through the buying journey. You’ll need to decide on the best formats, channels, and places to market this problem but you’ll quickly find there’s plenty to talk about.

WHEN ALL THIS WORK PAYS OFF

You’ve perfected your positioning by narrowing your target clients and service category. This has given you a clear competitive space to play in. Then you’ve analysed this space to see where there’s a clear market opportunity that’s currently underserved by competitors. And lastly you’ve defined your difference by honing in on your unique solution to this available and valuable problem. Coupled with the messaging to communicate all this to the world, you now have a standout strategy to truly stand out and land clients. Undoubtedly it will have been hard work, time intensive, and at times truly mind-bending. So take the time to think about the positive impact all this work will have on your agency.

Controlling your pipeline, pricing and process

Imagine controlling your pipeline, being able to generate targeted leads through inbound and outbound at any time. Your new positioning and differentiation means you’re no longer hassling prospects or hustling to be heard. Instead, you’re talking to someone specific about how you can solve their important problem. Even if clients aren’t in the market right now, they won’t be offended that you're contacting them because the offer is relevant and valuable. Generalist agencies don’t have this luxury, instead they’re one of multiple agencies making cold approaches that seem untargeted.

Imagine controlling your pricing to command the premium you know you're worth. Forget haggling and discounting to win work, now you know exactly who you serve, you hold the power again. Clients need you as much as you need them. The relationship becomes mutually beneficial rather than one-sided. And because of this you feel confident to raise prices because you’re a specialist in solving their specific problem.

And imagine controlling the process at every stage, from first sales call to final deliverable. Rather than being seen as a supplier that’s pressured to deliver to the client’s deadlines, you can dictate how your solution works and the timescales needed to make it happen. You’re seen as the expert and so clients are more willing to flex to allow you time to solve their problem in your unique way.

Strengthening your reputation

Imagine being famous for solving a problem, resonating with the right people, and building a rock-solid reputation as the go-to agency in your space. This is what happens when agencies invest in perfecting their positioning and defining their difference. They no longer leave their reputation down to luck or personal networks. Instead they have a strong, strategic reason to be known and respected; their evident expertise.

Growing referrals and recommendations

Imagine people being able to easily recall your agency because you have a focused positioning and a clear point of differentiation. Not only will you be front of mind much more, you'll be much easier to refer and recommend. Because generalist agencies with weak positioning and zero difference struggle to get recommendations beyond personal relationships. Whereas well-positioned and highly-differentiated agencies have a clear line of recommendation; anyone who has the specific problem your agency solves.

Driving higher revenue

Expertise is valuable, execution is replaceable. By following this process, you’re making your agency the obvious choice in your specific space. This makes you more in demand and drives pricing upwards, rather than downwards. And because you’re now solving a specific problem for a specific client, you can more easily present the case for how your solution is tied to their return on investment. Similarly, the more you repeat the process for solving this problem, the more efficient your processes become. In turn this drives both revenue and profitability. And who doesn’t want that?

THE TREACLE STORY

Hi, I’m Roland, founder of Treacle, and I’m weirdly obsessed with helping agencies to stand out and succeed. Because agencies like you are the lifeblood of the creative economy. Without them, most brands would resort to the kind of bland and boring marketing that makes the world more depressing.

And it’s not just the agency business I’ve come to love. Part conceptual, part analytical, agency people are a brilliant blend of skills sets. They’re artists and entrepreneurs. They’re visionaries and scientists. They’re relationship builders and reclusive nerds. In short, agency people are my people.

And look, I’m not a die-hard agency person by trade. I’ve not spent decades inside big-name networks. I can’t claim to have had a glittery, award-winning agency career. But there’s something that’s always excited me about the creative process, a group of people finding an idea and turning it into something new and exciting. 

My passion for positioning started on the other side of the agency fence. I was working in creative education and my role was to help young people find creative apprenticeships. After months of aimlessly contacting any creative business, I realised agencies were the ideal business to take on and train young talented creatives. So I spent the best part of a year searching for relevant agencies to contact, and nearly every agency website I came across seemed high on hype but low on actual information.

Having always been a natural writer, I was pretty good at contacting and convincing agencies to take on apprentices. But I couldn’t help but be baffled as to how these businesses could be so good at delivering clear, creative thinking for clients but absolutely awful at doing it for themselves. So I set up Treacle as a side hustle originally, a way for me to maybe pick up some freelance copywriting work to supplement my income. Sometimes I’d speak to an agency who wasn’t looking for a creative apprentice, so I’d ask if they were looking for copy support. It turned out many were.

So I started copywriting on the side, writing for all kinds of agencies and their clients. All the time I was learning the trade and working out the systems, politics and processes each agency used. By the time I had earned the equivalent of my salary in freelance copywriting, I jumped ship. So now newly unemployed and looking for work, I figured the smart play was to contact hundreds of agencies and get myself on their radar.

After sending hundreds of horrible cold emails, I learned what agency owners hate when it comes to comms. Anything long, salesy or pushy landed flat. Short, punchy and sometimes funny fared better. So I wrote a hundred letters to design agencies and had them printed on thick, quality paper. I hand-wrote one hundred black envelopes in gold pen and sent them out. And to my surprise, I secured meetings at some amazing agencies, trading as Treacle even though it was just me. The plan was to present myself as something bigger, and hope it turned out to be true eventually.

So I worked freelance on messaging, copy and tone of voice for all kinds of brands. I sat in exciting strategy meetings and I wrote shitty sales copy for seasonal events. I did big tone of voice projects and I agonised over weird little web pages the world would barely notice. But again, I honed the craft and spent time in a range of agencies. The work seemed to go down well, although now I look back and cringe.

As it turned out, the agencies I was freelancing at invariably were struggling with their own messaging and website copy. Increasingly they were asking me to take on this internal work and I loved it. For once I got to speak to the decision makers, not the account managers. I could probe and push back and it felt collaborative rather than executional. I had a seat at strategy tables I would never normally be invited to, and it opened my eyes to a specific problem agencies have; how to be different and how to communicate this.

More and more of my projects were the agencies themselves, and by the time the roster was two thirds agencies I made a decision. Having read all the positioning advice about niching, narrowing and specialisation, I decided to go all in. Treacle became specialists in messaging for agencies. Suddenly, every marketing choice became much simpler. The cold outreach became relevant rather than intrusive. I began to get recommendations and referrals from one agency to another. 

And over time, I realised that there was always a vital stage before the messaging; the positioning and differentiation. If these weren’t nailed, anything I wrote became subjective and open to anyone’s unsolicited opinion. I had no way to defend my work and the agency leaders would pick it apart and slowly put back their own bland waffle. So the second big decision was to prioritise strategy first, messaging second. This solved a more specific problem and moved Treacle up the value chain.

Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that our work was rudimentary at first. We had the right theory but the process lacked refinement. We adapted and changed things constantly. Sometimes we’d rip it all up and start again. And today, that ethos still exists to some degree. We never assume our positioning and differentiation process is done. It’s a continual work in progress and that’s what’s needed to keep it sharp and relevant as the agency landscape evolves.

Since then we’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing agencies worldwide, from big-name network players to brilliant boutique outfits. And we still love finding who they should work with, what they should deliver, and why they should be chosen. Because agencies like you are vital if we want a world full of colour, character, and creativity. You see, Treacle exists to make sure the best agencies doing the best work earn the recognition and revenue they deserve.

Amazing agencies, like you.