This post is by Paul Kent – a Senior Consultant at TrinityP3. Paul has over fifteen years experience in the media and advertising industry in both Europe and Australia. His career has spanned across both the agency and media side of the business giving him valuable insights into changing communications landscape.

So we all know LinkedIn is great for getting a job, snooping on who has just changed jobs and essentially feeling like a connected member of the professional class.

As of November 2012 there were +175 million users on LinkedIn up 58 million from 2011 combining to generate 5 billion searches over the course of the year. Surely they are not all looking for a new job?

Like any Social Media platform LinkedIn takes a little commitment but once up and running it can open up a world of networking opportunity. So here are ’5 (Very) Basic Tips to help you grow your LinkedIn network’.

1. Build Connections

The ‘People You May Know’ feature is a great place to start – any self-respecting LinkedIn veteran is forever scouring this nifty little tab for fresh connections.

Another handy way to build up a pool of potential connections is to ‘make friends with the popular kid’ – those users with 500+ connections. Are they actively engaging with all 500-plus connections? Almost certainly not. However connecting to them provides you with the opportunity to scour their connections and you can connect with anyone of them as you have a second degree connection.

Depending on your industry and objectives for LinkedIn one new connection a day is a good target. LinkedIn allows you to send 3,000 invitations so you should not run out…

2. Be Personable

Even if it someone that you do not know directly, always send a personalised invitation to connect. The standard ‘I would like to add you to my LinkedIn network’ invitation is fine but hardly screams ‘This could be the start of a beautiful friendship’.

Particularly powerful when approaching those you do not know personally is to include in your invitation mention of joint connections, how you believe you can assist each other or how much you have appreciated their posts.

You may not be invited around for a BBQ (do you want to go anyway?) but the personal touch does reflect a genuine desire to connect as opposed to a ‘numbers game’.

3. Stay Consistent

Every time you login to LinkedIn you will generally notice the same faces active – about 1/3rd of members access the site daily – these are the ‘Super Engagers’. They simply love the site for its ability to connect with their chosen network and build their ‘personal brand’.

The general rule-of-thumb is three updates a day. If you can find the time on Facebook to share photos of your sushi lunch then you can probably afford the time to build your professional profile with engaging content.

4. Be Authentic

Following on from the above point – make sure your personal brand is authentic.

If people have connected with you then it is for a reason – justify that decision. There are those users in every network (you know who they are) that take the quantity over quality approach to LinkedIn. Any chance to get their name up to the top they take it – if there is a post on the ‘Mating Habits of Atlantic Salmon’ they repost to their network. All well and good if you work in the fisheries department but relatively useless (and potentially damaging to your brand profile) if your network consists of Telecommunications Executives who wouldn’t know a Salmon from a Shark.

If you repost something make a personal comment about why people should take time out of their busy schedules to read – they will not thank you for wasting their time but they will if the post is of value.

5. Be A Team Player

This is an oldie but a goodie.

LinkedIn groups are increasingly popular forums to engage with peers, thought-leaders and the opinionated. As above, less is more, limit your participation to three to five groups that you can actively participate in by adding value, posting comment and asking questions.

The LinkedIn Group search feature is pretty handy in helping find forums that will interest you and in which you can again build that personal profile. Another short-hand search option is by filtering searches to find out which groups your connections belong to.

So there you go – simple but effective. By building your network on LinkedIn now, you can always draw on it if and when you need it later to get that new job. Unfortunately too many marketers neglect their own personal brand marketing until it is too late.

How reflective of your skills, experience and network is your current LinkedIn profile?

Perhaps a good place to start is to connect with the TrinityP3 consultants you know:

• Anita Zanesco
• Anton Buchner
• Chris Sewell
• Clive Duncan
• Darren Woolley
• Georgia Suttie
• Jodi Randall
• Les Margulis
• Mahesh Enjeti
• Nathan Hodges
• Nick Hand
• Pam O’Connor
• Paul Kent
• Shirley Kirkwood

This post is by Darren Woolley, Founder of TrinityP3. With his background as analytical scientist and creative problem solver, Darren brings unique insights and learnings to the marketing process. He is considered a global thought leader on agency remuneration, search and selection and relationship optimisation.

Advertisers, especially retail advertisers, have had in-house advertising before John Wannamaker was a boy. Usually these in-house facilities are company owned but occasionally they are implanted into the organisation from external suppliers.

The concept of the in-house advertising production facility has become more attractive to a broader range of advertisers in recent years because of:

1. Low cost production technology such as computers, ringers and software
2. The increased speed to market compared to most external suppliers such as agencies
3. The diversification of requirements within marketing and across the organisation

You see, with the fragmentation of media and the move to a more content driven marketing strategy, advertisers are looking for more cost effective and time efficient ways to meet their marketing communication needs.

In-house or out-house? Getting either wrong can drop you in it big time.

Growth in-house

Recent in-house facilities we have reviewed provide services to marketing and beyond within the organisation including:

1. Print production including advertising print and collateral
2. Video production especially rich web content
3. SEO and search marketing services
4. Customer & data analytics
5. Social media management
6. Event management
7. Sales and consumer promotions
8. Copywriting and editorial
9. Internet asset development
10. Mobile phone apps

But these in-house facilities are not always seen for the positives they deliver to the organisation or their marketing stakeholders. Often we are asked to investigate and assess the current arrangements and provide a business case or recommendations for change.

How it goes wrong

The reason is that often these facilities can appear to become a cancer within the organisation, consuming resources, head count and budget and becoming difficult and costly to manage.

The problem invariably stems from the way the in-house facility was established. In most cases the original concept was to provide a limited number of services as a cost effective alternative to using external suppliers.

One or more people were employed, usually externally with an agency or design company background, and immediately the demand on the facility grew. The convenience of having the people doing the work on site is appealing, but not as appealing as the fact the service is funded from an internal budget. The people in the team are eager to please, initially, as they see this as justifying their position and securing their tenure.

The growth is usually organic, with no stated strategy or scope and process is devised on the run. Soon there is a need to manage the process with multiple stakeholders across the company now accessing the services due to the convenience and apparent lack of cost. Either one of the team in the facility steps up or a production person externally is now hired.

If it has not happened already, the original facility owner, usually marketing, demands a new funding process as their budget is paying for all the other stakeholders. So now the facility has multiple owners. Marketing still have the bulk of the work but now they no longer feel they are getting the attention they need, with other stakeholders taking priority.

I guess you can see where this is headed or have experienced this yourself at some stage.

Where it went wrong

The problem is that the facility is not another department or business unit, it is a supplier. This is why external implants rarely have this issue, because they are implemented on a commercial basis. But the problem with the built from the ground out model is that usually at no time was there a clear definition of the purpose, the people or the process.

In-house strategy

What is the purpose of the in-house facility? What is the scope of the work to be undertaken? How much work will there be? What are the potential growth plans? How will ROI be determined? What are the key indicators for success? And how will failure of the process be managed?

These are some of the questions that should have been discussed and defined up front before the first dollar was invested. If not, then like a cancer, it can quickly grow out of control. You need to treat this as you would any commercial arrangement and have a very clear business strategy and business model for the facility you are implementing. The reason this is often overlooked is that the starting process is usually in response to a short term or tactical need, rather than a longer term strategic requirement.

If it hasn’t been undertaken in the past, then the starting point is to retrospectively develop a business plan for the facility with the input of all stakeholders, but not the facility employees themselves, who are often too conflicted with maintaining the status quo.

In-house structure

Interlinked with strategy and purpose is structure and people. Who are the stakeholder users and what are their needs and requirements? Who will be able to interface with the facility and who can not? What specialist resources are required and how many? How will they be structured? How will they be managed?

Because these facilities often grow organically based on company need and internal demand, it appears that the number of heads increases uncontrollably. But often there is no clear justification of the roles and responsibilities of these extra resources. That is because as it grows, increased numbers of stakeholders using the facility are not visible to the current users. Having a clearly articulated structure, with contact points and roles and responsibilities is essential.

In-house process

This is not so much the processes of doing the work. After all you would recruit and do recruit people experienced and skilled in the production type. The processes here are more focused on the management of the facility.

How will the organisation keep track of the number and types of jobs being undertaken to manage workflow and define resource requirements? How will the resources be paid for and how will these be valued? How will you ensure the in-house facility is running more cost effectively than an external supplier option?

While many production people will focus on the workflow to satisfy the immediate needs of the internal user, they often overlook the large requirement of managing the workflow process to ensure the strategic requirements. This is because those strategic requirements were often never defined as success criteria and also because an angry colleague who is waiting for their job is more immediate than the larger issue of delivering a high value, low cost service. But by managing the immediate needs of the stakeholders, they are avoiding the longer term issues which, as we see, rises up eventually.

In-house or outsourced?

The desire to build an in-house production facility is a business decision and should always be based on a sound business plan. The key objectives are either cost reduction, speed to market, greater effectiveness or all three. Convenience is often mentioned by users, but this is too subjective to use as a success criteria.

Once you have made the decision, it is worth looking at suppliers who provide these services implanted into your organisation as primarily it becomes a commercial transaction that is easily assessed and does not have the issues of breaching head counts.

If you decide to build the facility yourself then you need a business plan based on the strategy , structure and processes to ensure that at any time you can assess how well it is performing against your strategic requirements.

We are often called upon to review current in-house facilities to determine how well they are performing against non-existent success criteria. We have therefore become adept at retrospectively developing those strategic criteria through working with the stakeholder users and then measuring the performance against this. Often this issue is that inefficiency has been allowed to develop within the in-house facility because cost and time efficiency were not articulated clearly as a measure of success.

What are your views on having these services in-house or not? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

This post is by Darren Woolley, Founder of TrinityP3. With his background as analytical scientist and creative problem solver, Darren brings unique insights and learnings to the marketing process. He is considered a global thought leader on agency remuneration, search and selection and relationship optimisation.

On November 23 last year I spoke at the AIMIA V21 Digital Summit in Melbourne. The topic I was invited to talk on was “The future of specialist digital agencies”. In a time when everything is digital, what is the purpose or role of a specialist digital agency?

Preparing the talk was interesting as it involved a review of all of the trends we had noticed in the past 2 – 3 years leading us to the current market. But more importantly, it was considering where the future trends are heading, especially overseas in some of the more technically advanced markets, particularly the USA.

The Digital Agency

The big issue is that marketers are generally still viewing digital agencies as simply operating in an extension of the traditional market. That is that digital agencies are often engaged as a ‘digital’ version of their creative agency. This is because for those marketers, digital is seen simply as another media, alongside television, press, radio and OOH.

In these cases, the digital agency is simply a specialist ‘media/channel’ agency like having a television agency or a radio agency or the like. That may seem ridiculous, but it is largely because for these marketers, they see the solution to their creative agency not ‘getting’ digital, is simply to appoint a specialist.

The types of services required at this level is developing display banners, web-landing pages, websites and setting up Facebook brand pages. The primary purpose is to develop communication concepts and publish or broadcast these out into the media hoping to hit the audience. It is a disruption strategy. Some try to extend this into an engagement strategy by calling it storytelling. i.e.. telling the story of the brand / service / company / product.

The fact is that any creative agency worth considering can operate at this level. After all, almost anyone can and do come up with a digital creative idea. Creative agencies have been creating messages in the form of advertisements for more than 100 years. All they need to be able to do this in the digital media is have the production expertise. We have seen many traditional creative agencies either recruiting or acquiring these skills over the past five years.

But this is an incredibly limited marketing view of the opportunities available through technology. And this is where the distinction between a digital agency and a technology agency becomes important.

The Technology Agency

The fact is digital technology provides marketers with much more than simply a way of gaining attention and awareness. You can engage with your audience in a meaningful way moving beyond simply storytelling into providing the audience with utility or usefulness. Technology allows you to capture data on consumer behaviour and it can facilitate your customers telling stories about their experience of the brand and sharing it with others.

But also digital technology, in a business context, is more than just communications. Within a business, digital technology is also driving inventory systems, payroll systems, financial systems, customer database systems and the like. The same technology platform is used to manage the business and not just run the marketing communications.

It is best demonstrated when we look at the implementation of e-commerce in a large organisation. The IT side of the business usually engages one of the big IT consulting firms who usually get the technology right but forget about brand and consumer experience. On the other side you have communication digital agencies who will get the brand expression right and perhaps the customer experience, but often overlook the integration of the financial system, the inventory system, the stock and distribution system, all of which are required to make the e-commerce platform function seamlessly.

This is where a technology agency is required. Someone that can bridge the gap between marketing on one side, responsible for the consumer and IT on the other responsible for the system integrity and security.

Digital agency versus Technology agency

In November 2011 I wrote a post about the need to get strategic business alignment around your digital agencies. This was around the time that a major global consumer goods brand approached TrinityP3 to assist in selecting a ‘digital’ agency. The discussion was around what was required of a digital agency that the marketers roster of creative agencies could not provide.

The fact was that the client had a number of ‘digital’ agencies – some part of a creative agency and some specialists. But there were conflicts between the various agencies and it was not surprising as most of the agencies on the roster, including a sales promotion / retail activation agency saw themselves as ‘digital’.

The problem was not the requirement for a digital agency. They had more than enough of those pumping out digital concepts and ideas. What they really needed was a technology agency that could pull it all together under their global digital guidelines, which were managed locally by IT. But the IT department was understaffed for the continually growing task and also they were not engaged by the marketing department.

By bringing IT into the process, TrintyP3 managed a tender process to select a technology agency with the capabilities to work with marketing and all of their current roster of agencies and IT to ensure the implementation was compliant and met the integrity of the global technology guidelines.

Although all of the rostered agencies put up their hands for the role, they failed on the first step, which was the technology capability to work with IT across all of the platforms the company currently used. In the end, marketing and IT agreed on a suitable technology partner and two years later this agency is successfully managing the ‘digital’ agencies, marketing and IT.

The future of digital agencies?

To talk about digital as ‘new media’ is a misnomer. All agencies will and by now do have digital as some part or all of their offering. So to simply be a digital specialist is to be like every other agency. However, many of the digital specialist agencies have either come from a technology background or built a solid foundation as technology companies. They are uniquely positioned to take this role. And therefore the future of the digital specialist is to be a technology agency. A much broader remit than simply digital communications and one that cannot be easily faked with a few select hirings or buying another digital agency.

This is a guest post by Nick Hand a Senior Consultant at TrinityP3. Nick has over 15 years experience in advertising agency finance and operations. His expertise and knowledge covers the spectrum from large multi-national operations down to the boutique creative shop.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading an article about why Apple decided not to enter the ‘Netbook’ market; you know – those tiny, ultra portable and inexpensive laptops that threatened to take over the personal computing universe, but ultimately disappeared before they barely got started once the iPad and its like entered the market.

It turns out that Apple had already committed to the iPad, but more pertinently, Apple prefers profit over revenue. Through fierce competition, the profit margin on netbooks became so low, that Apple would have to have played the market share game along with every other manufacturer.

But that is something Apple doesn’t do. They are a company that would rather make $10bn from 10% of the market, than make $1bn from having 90% of the market.

So that got me thinking; why do so many agencies prefer revenue over profits?

Nothing Breeds Success Like Success

With a few exceptions, most large advertisers like to be serviced by agencies that service other, similarly large sized advertisers.

New business success in a competitive pitch depends on many factors, but price will be the biggest determinant if capability and fit considerations are equal or thereabouts.

Agencies “buying” a high profile client has been going on since deregulation. Not saying it happens in all cases, but it never ceases to amaze me the number of quick fire wins in succession agencies often experience after news of that initial big win hits the trade forums.

Improve Staff Morale/Agency Reputation

If it is true that success breeds success, so it is also true that a couple of quick client losses in succession can see remaining clients become nervous, and staff become worried.

I defy any agency to come out and say they have never dropped their pants to buy a client to try and stem the tide when faced with this scenario.

Short Term Business View/Focus

One of the great dichotomies of the modern business world is that investors are advised to think long term, but business managers generally think in the short term.

Global Agency management tends to ask for around 20% growth year on year – whether market conditions warrant that or not. In emerging markets this might be fine, but in mature markets like Australia, or North America, or Western Europe this can be a tough ask. The rise of digital media has largely been at the expense of traditional channels, and for an Agency to “sell more widgets” under most current remuneration structures requires more people, and therefore more clients – there are few economies of scale to be had.

More clients generally mean pinching them from someone else, i.e. increasing market share in a market that is barely (if at all) growing. So, the Agency (again) often buys clients cheaply, which for a while fulfils the parent company’s expectations. Then, when things sour (usually the profitable clients scaling back activity & spend and the ‘bought’ – and so unprofitable  - clients scaling up) growth slows or goes backwards, and the incumbent agency management get shown the door. New management comes in, waste 12 months spending money and shaping things the way they want them, and the whole process starts again, all from the same perilous base.

Overheads Become Too Excessive

Many friends come to me for advice on how to budget better. They tell me: “My first job out of Uni paid $30,000 a year, and I had more money left over at the end of the month than I do now, earning 5, 6 or 7 times that!” It’s true – over the years, not withstanding the mortgage and kids, we tend to raise our lifestyle to match our increase in income. It’s also too easy for business to fall into the same trap: a couple of extra Account Directors who only get ¾ utilised; a hip and trendy (read: expensive) new office fit-out to attract the good talent; an investment in two new (senior) digital people of whom “we’re not quite sure yet how to monetise what they offer, but it’s bound to be a goldmine when we do”. And the list goes on.

The bottom line (pardon the pun) is that the beast needs feeding, and chasing cheap revenue is often the only way to stop going backwards.

Improve Standing in The “League Tables” in Various Industry Journals

An agency’s ranking in these probably depends more on the agency CEO having a good PR machine, or a regular golf outing with the editor of said publication. But I imagine there do need to be some revenue wins along the way to lend the whole thing some modicum of credibility – and the bigger the better I guess!!

Unfortunately though, in the long run, agencies and advertisers alike suffer when these scenarios play out. And I know there are more reasons – I just didn’t have time to write them all down!!

I’d be interested to hear why you think agencies go down this path, and what can be done to fix the problem?

This is a guest post by Jon Manning, Founder & Principal Consultant at Sans Prix, a management consulting firm that helps companies monetise the value of their products and services with smarter, value-based pricing strategies.

In my last post, I talked about what Value-Based Pricing is, why companies are adopting it, and why advertising agencies run the risk of “commoditisation hell” by not adopting it. But it would be remiss of me not to tell you how to start your Value-Based Pricing journey.

A couple of years ago, I went on a ride-along with a Sales Rep from one of Australia’s biggest online advertising portals. During the sales pitch, the rep told the advertiser about all the value they were receiving from their advertising: unlimited listings, preferential pricing on enhancement products, page impressions, click-thrus, email enquiries, phone calls, and so on.

 The advertiser silently took all of this in, and then replied, “I hate phone calls!” The sales rep was taken aback. “What do you mean, you hate phone calls? That’s the most qualified lead to your business that we provide”, she said. “I don’t want to be answering my phone at all hours of the day or night. I value email enquiries because I can respond to them when it suits me.”

This (true) story epitomises why the advertising industry has been a laggard in adopting Value-Based Pricing: they haven’t worked out the real value they are offering. Value-Based Pricing starts with understanding value from the customers’ perspective. The Sales Rep thought that phone calls were the most valuable ROI metric. She was wrong, because value is in the eyes of the beholder (the advertiser).

As I mentioned in my last post, there are three ways a vendor can provide value to a client, either by increasing their revenue, reducing their costs, or minimising their risk. The table below provides just a couple of examples in each category for the advertising industry (there are many more):

Sometimes, finding sources of value to monetise requires “out-of-the-box” thinking. Over Thanksgiving last year, Facebook sent a “swat team” to Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville with the specific objective of optimising 50 million mobile ads that Facebook users would see for toys, televisions and other discounted products. According to MarketingWeek, “…Wal-Mart’s senior team were apparently won over by the service they received and the results”.

So how do you monetise advertising services on the basis of value? Here are just three alternatives:

Option 1: Upfront Pricing

One of the best ways to align the price paid with the value received is to ask the advertiser upfront how much they think the solution you offer is worth. Not convinced that pay-what-you-want (PWYW) will work? Ask the owners of HumbleBundle.com, a website that has generated $23mill in payments since launch, utilising a PWYW pricing model.

Option 2: Contingency Pricing

If the advertising solution delivered achieves a satisfactory outcome, the agency’s fee is significantly higher than what it would earn under a normal fee arrangement. But in the case of a below par result, the agency gets paid less, costs only, or in the worst case, nothing.

Like PWYW, this pricing model may appear scary too, something that must have crossed Google’s mind when they realised that if a user doesn’t click on an ad, they wouldn’t get paid.

Option 3: Guaranteed Pricing

This is not a Value-Based Pricing model that agencies should jump to from the go-get, but where an agency has the knowledge and experience to offer an iron-clad guarantee around a satisfactory outcome for a campaign, it can be a highly differentiated, premium priced alternative.

Value-Based Pricing is a process, not a project. Careful consideration needs to be given to which clients it is applied to, and in what magnitude. It won’t happen in the advertising industry overnight…but it will happen!