How advertising agencies can demonstrate their differentiation by defining their Intellectual Capital. With IC agencies can create credibility and relevant content to engage the right growth prospects.

1. 2nd of 7 Essentials for
Accelerated 2015 Agency Growth
Intellectual Capital to Fuel Agency
Differentiation, Credibility, & Content
© 2014 Linkergy LLC. All Rights Reserved

2. We’re all inundated with media and messages about “branded content” and “content
marketing”. As an agency leader, you’ve surely implemented these types of programs
for clients, using their intellectual capital as the foundation. But what about your own
agency’s IC? Is it the foundation for your branded content? Are you using it to
promote your positioning to the game changer prospects? How are you
demonstrating the credibility they are looking for in an agency partner?
Agencies, like brands, need to demonstrate their value and relevance to potential
customers. As noted agency consultant Michael Gass said recently: “The agencies that
get their content marketing platforms in place will have a huge advantage over those
that continue to push their self-promotional marketing messages – which prospects
continue to block out.”
This white paper will discuss why intellectual capital is critical to agency growth, and
provide thought starters for developing an IC platform for your agency.
Intellectual capital is considered an asset, and can broadly be defined as the
collection of all informational resources a company has at its disposal that
can be used to drive profits, gain new customers, create new products, or
otherwise improve the business.
Agency Growth Planning Page 2
Why does IC matter?
Well-deployed intellectual capital can dramatically increase awareness of your agency
and create interest in learning more about you; attract new clients; and strengthen
current client relationships. It accelerates the first 3 stages of the prospects buying
process:
Awareness Educate Evaluate Trial
90% of buying process 10%

3. For the first part (attraction and interest) it’s a
fact that the buying process of your
prospective clients begins long before an RFP
or initial meeting, and well before they are
even willing to give you a try. Your agency
needs to give them what they need – a unique
POV - during the first 90% of the process, so
that the last 10% is easy, quick, and results in
a new business win.
Recent studies support this for B2B and B2C
buyers alike:
 57% read content marketing titles at
least 1x month;
 80% believe that content should be
central to marketing programs
(including their own);
 80% appreciate learning about a
company through custom content.
In his noted TED Talk, Simon Sinek says that
customers flock to brands that lead with WHY
they exist (not what and how) – which applies
to your agency just as it does to your clients.
But so many agencies lead with the what
(here are our services: digital, creative, social,
strategy) and try to gain prospect interest by
dissecting the how (our unique process, blah
blah blah – and yes, they all sound pretty
much the same), rather than wowing the
prospect with their smarts about the unique
POV and positioning of the agency.
One of our favorite examples
of taking IC all the way is the
tremendous exposure that
DGWB agency has gotten
from their Values Institute
research and work. Initially
created to help define and
differentiate the agency’s
positioning, the IC platform
has taken on a life of its own
with a dedicated annual
summit, in-house research
team, and alignment with
brands that share the POV of
agency leader Mike Weisman.
Mike and DGWB are seen as
the experts in shared values
and how brands can tap into
the ones most important to
their customers. For more
details click here:
Agency Growth Planning Page 3

4. Agency Growth Planning Series Overview
The Agency Growth Planning Series outlines the 5 key elements of a successful program
to accelerate new business growth. Other whitepapers in the series include:
Part 2 Intellectual Capital & Content Marketing - Ensure that you have the right
Intellectual Capital and content for credibility, thought leadership, and successful
marketing campaigns.
Part 3 Inbound Marketing – Creating awareness with potential customers requires
consistent delivery of content, and actively monitoring prospects’ digital behavior to
generate inbound leads.
Part 4 Outbound Lead Generation – Move prospects more quickly to engage with
your agency, with a laser focused outbound sales campaign that generates highly
qualified new business meeting opportunities.
Part 5 Activating Your Plan – Combining the right set of new business strategies into a
clear action plan to kick start and accelerate your 2014 growth plan.
Agency Growth Planning Page 4
Your Intellectual Capital also provides the credibility on why you can claim an
expertise in a specific category. To further enhance it, you might consider
incorporating primary research insights that the agency “paid” for, demonstrating the
agency’s dedication to understanding how brands can be successful in a category.
What to consider when developing IC:
 The perspective of your agency, especially leadership, on relevant topics, for
example:
o Saatchi & Saatchi S - Sustainability practice
o Barkley’s insights on Millennial’s
 What are you experts at?
o B2B Industrial?
o Beverages?
o Higher Education?
 Which categories, demographics, regions, and markets do you know best?
o Spawn – Targeting the Alaskan Adventurer
 Existing content – books, white papers, speeches, presentations.
 Research – existing or fresh – on topics that are most relevant to your game
changer prospects
o Ariad - The PatientConsumer™ Perspective
 Gaps and pain points your game changer prospects are dealing with.
 New technologies that your agency is on the leading edge of:
o House of Kaizen – With their agency “lab” Innovation
 “Guide books” for prospects and clients that will help them make better
decisions and be more successful:
o Possible topic: Pinterest vs. Instagram – which is better for your brand?

5. Agency Growth Planning Page 5
How to leverage agency IC:
Once you have an IC platform, it can provide the base for agency POV and
Thought Leadership. There are many ways to place your agency content to fuel
demand and growth:
 Speaking engagements
 Videos on web site and/or YouTube
 Webinars
 Blog posts
 POV for responses and posts on Twitter and LinkedIn
 E-Books
 Door opening Direct Mail with new prospects
 Create a local or industry conference (See DGWB example)

6. Linkergy White Papers
Part of our "7 Essentials for Accelerated 2015 Agency Growth", the white papers
highlight:
Positioning to Attract the Agency Game Changer – Identify the ideal growth target and
how the agency can uniquely position itself to be credible to prospects.
Inbound Marketing – Creating awareness with potential customers requires
consistent delivery of content and monitoring prospects' digital behavior to generate
inbound leads.
Targeting the Right Customer – Translating IC and profiling your optimal target
verticals/segments, including Stakeholder Mapping for inbound & outbound
messaging.
Content Marketing – Combining the right set of new business strategies into a clear
action plan to kick-start and accelerate your 2015 growth plan.
About Linkergy
Strategic new business is critical to the long term success of every marketing agency.
Understanding how to create a sales pipeline of engaged, high-value prospects enables your
agency to focus on getting the right kinds of clients on the roster. Linkergy’s mission is to develop
and implement customized new business programs to accelerate the growth of our clients.
Linkergy outsource programs are built to provide as much or as little focused new business support
as your agency needs. Services include: Growth & Engagement Strategy; Content & Intellectual
Capital Development; Inbound Marketing; Outbound Lead Generation; and Sales Consulting.
To learn more about how Linkergy can help with your new business growth, please contact us at
(312) 422-0255 or email Janet Vinci at jvinci@linkergy.com.
Agency Growth Planning Page 6