Series Overview

This training series will turn your teams into strategic business partners with your clients – generating more business for the agency.

With the continued shift to project-based work, shrinking budgets and reduced timelines, it has become difficult to provide the same level of strategic impact. At the same time, agency cultures have become reactive, running from one client fire to the next.

More importantly, client’s expectations have spiked. They are demanding deeper consumer insights, strategy that cuts across a growing number of channels, and more immediate business impact. To that end, clients are paying a premium for agencies with a more effective strategic process – one that drives their business forward in a measurable way.

At the core, this program will improve the strategic horsepower of the agency and your client-facing team members. Step-by-step, we break down the entire strategic process. This includes elevating the client brief, research/insight development, internal brief development, presentation of the strategy, and more effectively correlating the agency's work to client business outcomes.

Ultimately, the goal is to provide a level of strategic service that converts more business for the agency – at a premium fee.

To ensure your team best implements the training, they will be put to work with a series of hands on-exercises and brief homework assignments. Bring along an internal brief, research plan and strategic presentation — and measure it against the lessons in this program.

Throughout this program, we’ll cover key steps that include:

1. New Client Expectations for Agency Strategy: Client expectations of agency strategy have spiked, therefore your entire strategic output must address how your insights and strategy will unlock client business growth potential.
    

2. Project Kick-Off Brief/Meeting: Kick-off all client projects in a way that is more efficient for the agency – and better focused on impacting the client’s business in a meaningful way.
    

3. Elevate the Brief: Client Business Measures: Understand how to elevate the quality of the client brief with the goal of providing more effective work and better positioning the agency as a strategic partner.
    

4. Elevate the Brief: P2P Modeling: Leverage Path to Purchase Modeling, also known as Customer Journey Mapping, as a powerful tool to better develop strategies that directly impact the client's business.
    

5. Elevate the Brief: Diagnostics: Leverage a management consulting firm method to more effectively diagnose each client's most significant business and marketing challenges.
    

6. Targeting & Segmentation: Most clients define their target audience too broadly, inhibiting the effectiveness of your work. Learn how sharpening your segmentation will lead to greater business impact for your clients.
    

7. Insights That Improve Business: Knowing you likely don’t have large research budgets and extended timelines, we provide methodologies that uncover bigger insights – quickly and efficiently.
    

8. Research Planning: Learn how to plan your research projects, with the goal of uncovering deep target audience insights (on the smallest budget possible).
    

9. Strategy Brief Development: Apply an evolved approach to writing an internal strategy brief — one that is more focused on deep target insight and client business impact.
    

10. Measurement: Learn how measurement can position the agency as a strategic partner when applied in the right way. Review the key metrics you should be measuring for your clients.
     

11. Client Strategy Presentation: Better present your agency’s recommendation with a method for deck writing that more effectively hooks the client, showcases the agency's strategic horsepower, and sells them on your big strategic thinking.
     

12. Codifying & Training: Scale your new strategic process out across the entire agency by codifying an approach that is fully documented and trained.
     

With a focus on marketing-communications strategy, this program will make your teams more strategically driven, more business-outcome focused, and more efficient.

Who Should Attend?

Book your entire account management and strategy team to join this training program. While the curriculum is geared toward senior and mid-level team members, your more junior executives will also elevate their ability to play a strategic role on your client accounts.

All Sessions