Survey into the effect of the recession and social networking tools on the new business practices of marketing agencies in the UK during 2009.

1. Agency New Business Report 2009 The results of 140 senior agency decision makers, surveyed in June 2009.

3. 27% of agencies say the number of people they employ in an in-house new business function has dropped in the last year. 73% of agencies have at some point used a new business agency. 81% of agency heads are either fairly or very confident that the next six months will be good for them. 60% of agency heads say that that clients are using the recession as an excuse to drive down prices and a similar number (58%) are having to demonstrate ROI more than before the current downturn. 47% of agencies are seeing client use them more on a project by project basis over the last 12 months and 53% are employing fewer people yet 20% of agencies are making more profit! Most agencies bank on clients staying with them for 3 to 5 years and 75% of agencies reckon that a suitable acquisition cost per new client in between 2 and 10% of the clients annual income to them. Agencies not taking to web 2.0? Just 41% of agencies have a blog and 37% of agencies use Twitter yet 58% still see cold-calling as an effective means of gaining new business with just 27% classifying it as being not at all effective as a new business tool, as opposed to 72% and 59% for Twitter and blogging respectively. As usual and as one would have hoped, the most effective means of generating new business still appears t be networking, with a massive 41% of agency heads stating it as being the most effective tool and 46% classifying it as being “ v e ry effective”. Intermediaries meanwhile, scored a very respectable 44% of agency heads classifying them as being either “v e ry” or “T h e most”effective, compared with 18% for cold calling and 42% for PR. PPC, SEO and email marketing were no where near as effective according to our respondents.

35. We hope this has been useful to you. If you’re an agency seeking new clients or a client seeking a new agency, give us a call. +44 (0) 20 7603 2290 Ask to speak to Adam Whittaker if you’re an agency or Sam Reardon Smith if you’re a client. We hope this has been useful to you. If you’re an agency seeking new clients or a client seeking a new agency, give us a call. +44 (0) 20 7603 2290 Ask to speak to Adam Whittaker if you’re an agency or Sam Reardon Smith if you’re a client.