I run a creative marketing agency startup and we specialize in producing digital media collateral and strategic campaigns. I also had the good fortune of sitting down yesterday with someone who was running a larger more established agency in a similar field. We are actually trying to build a partnership as we clearly have a lot to offer each other.

We also discussed the current landscape and the rising number of entrants that prioritize their content creation skills instead of developing any marketing acumen.

Do you come from a marketing background? What experience do you have in building effective strategies and executing successful marketing campaigns?

Or do you make pretty videos for instagram?

If it’s the latter, you are a content creator and your prospective clients will see you as such no matter how well you veil yourself with tiles like ‘digital marketing agency’. Clients get cold mails from people like this every day and they mostly bin them. Even if they have an express need for a camera guy - which is mostly outsourced to people already within the company’s orbit.

At my meeting yesterday, both of us had gained our experience in big business before going solo. We were strategists and had, through trial and error, built up a resume of noteworthy marketing wins. We also had a deep understanding of our field from a marketing perspective that was grounded in research and a sociological understanding. We were able to draw upon demographics, psychographics and even valuegraphics to explain who by, why and how products in our niche were bought and a good idea of how to turn that knowledge into effective strategy.

Moreover, we prioritized developing a deep understanding of our client’s needs, goals and values and how they aligned with our own. We could articulate what we stood for. We both love our field and the work we do; we genuinely want to support the people we represent and that speaks volumes to clients.

The showreel is just one component in that. Certainly not the most important.

Being unproven is not necessarily going to stop you getting business, but if you are pitching yourself as a marketing agency to marketers in your niche, you need to talk the same language, speak in terms of best practices in the field, read the data and show them you are thinking strategically. If you don’t have examples of strategic wins to fall back on, find campaigns from other agencies that made an impact, that set a benchmark. Break them down, demonstrate you understand why they succeeded and how you could replicate that success for your client. Read the metrics, judge the sentiment, comment on the reach and engagement. Farm whatever data and insights you can.

Remind them that, as you are a marketing agency, you aren’t going to abandon the campaign before the dust settles, you’re in it for the long haul. You were there to set the campaign goals, so you’ll be there to review the metrics and offer strategic insights and improvements. White glove them.

If your clients don’t have a marketing department, then those are the boots you are in a position to fill.

Anyone with an iPhone can make videos and social content, having a cine cam or a drone and a slick showreel doesn’t guarantee you work. Conversely, you look like an extra expense and an expansion of budget that needs a hell of a lot of justification. Company’s have finite resources and if they haven’t already adopted what you’re selling, then you need to have an additional value add, preferable one that can help them integrate what you offer into their existing marketing framework.

Oh, and being able to demonstrate ROI is a must.

Yeah, I should have started with that. Show them how their investment will pay for itself.