5 Things Your Ad Agency Doesn’t Want You to Know (So you keep paying for their fancy espresso machine)

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

1. In the old days, you had no choice but hire an agency to create commercials (big $), then pay them to buy media space (bigger $$). Today, your website is your TV channel, people are tuning out ads, and your web video can be seen 24/7 at cost. Post interesting, engaging content on your site and the right customers will come to you.
2. Google is God. Get religion.
   People search for everything they need things that will solve their problem or take away their pain. What they don’t usually search for is advertising.
3. Today, marketing is about education and less about pizzazz.
   Since people are searching for information on the web, you need to provide it. Example: Take a fraction of the money you were going to spend on an ad and media placement for your new router system and instead make a series of 2 minute videos that show how the router streamlines your data transport or reduces downtime. Interview customers. Show specifics. Then make the titles of the videos and the text that accompanies them match the keywords your target audience is searching for. Reach out to blogs that your customers read, and offer the videos for free as an educational resource. Know-how in the search-based marketing world is sexy. So if you’ve got it, flaunt it.
4. The best marketers are not in the advertising business.
   They’re in the memory business. Regardless of whether you’re working with a traditional ad agency, a PR firm, an interactive agency, or a fizdoodlemangiproper agency, ask yourself one thing: Is what they’re doing sticking in the memory of the right people?
5. I leave it to you to come up with reason number 5, or to shoot my blog post straight to hell with brilliant counterpoints. That’s because, as wonderfully described in the Cluetrain Manifesto, the world has moved away from one way broadcasting and towards conversations. Everything I’ve written here is just the start of a conversation. So, what do you think?