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Emerging agency trends from 2020

Welcome to the series 2 of Word On The Street! We’ve returned with a whole host of new tips and strategies to help your agency win new business, starting with a very special guest, Head of The Drum Recommends, Cat Hartland. 

In an interesting role reversal, for episode 1, our own Katie Street is quizzed on some of Cat’s stats from The Drum Recommends’ recent survey findings – revealing the trends to watch as we approach the end of 2020 and look towards the new year. And what a turbulent year it’s been…!

Cat also shares post-covid trends in the agency world and reveals the three top things clients look for you to deliver as their brand partner.

This episode covers

  • The benefit of experience on both client and agency-side
  • Simplifying the conversation with clients
  • Understanding client needs
  • Acquiring an honest opinion on an agency
  • Using reviews to improve
  • New trends in the agency landscape

Word on the Street is lucky enough to be sponsored by the wonderful team at Just After Midnight who are experts in uptime. Whatever the issue, whatever the time of day, they are supporting your websites and applications 24/7, while your team sleeps. Get a month of support free at: https://www.justaftermidnight247.com/street

Links & references 

Katie Street: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/

Cat Hartland: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cat-hartland/

The Drum Recommends: https://www.recommendedagencies.com/

The Drum Recommends: https://www.linkedin.com/company/drumrecommends/

Get in touch: [email protected]

Episode highlights 

“I’m naturally curious. And I think one thing that I suppose stems from how I got thrown into all of this as a newbie, not knowing how any of this works, was my curiosity and just wanting to understand how things work from both sides.” – 6:41 – Cat Hartland 

“Of course you’ve got to know how your agency operates, what it does and its values. But I think the real key for any good business developer is actually having a client hat on at all times. That’s not being a yes-man to delivering everything for our clients, but it’s about that understanding of what clients need.” – 8:53 – Cat Hartland

“I think people tend to use buzzwords, whereas really, the best message is the most simplistic one: ‘How can you help me?’, that’s all you need to say! But in order to do that, you do need to understand what’s going on in the market, and what clients need help with.” – 10:45 – Katie Street

“You’ve got to ask yourself ‘Why are we needing new clients all the time?’. Of course it might be genuine reasons like that the agency is grown, and we want to continue to grow. But there’s other situations – the leaky bucket situation – which is always one of those troublesome areas. It’s just going back to ‘Why is it that we’ve got these gaps coming up?’.” – 17:49 – Cat Hartland

“Strategic thinking is generally the top thing that people are looking for. Creativity & innovation, and effectiveness too. Those three things don’t generally change that much. Those are the things that people are really looking for from their agency.” – 20:32 – Cat Hartland

“It’s great for positivity and morale to hear about how your agency’s done well. But my god, find those parts that you can improve on as early as you can, don’t let those mole hills turn into mountains” – 25:21 – Cat Hartland

“It’s the short term activity that people are still focusing on and that’s probably for many, many reasons. One of which is that it’s so unpredictable, we keep changing. Our crystal balls are well and truly smashed!” – 29:28 – Cat Hartland