Your ideas: the only currency you can control

In this piece, I want to ask you to be thoughtful about the currency that is being used by your clients and their advertising agencies to establish the value of your products. You are being evaluated based on numbers that you cannot control.

We believe very strongly that it doesn’t have to be that way. You have the power to create your own currency. Let me show you what I mean.

If I have a 1 dollar bill and you have a 20 dollar bill, we are using the same currency, but your $20 is more valuable than my $1.

In every medium, there are numbers that clients and advertising agencies use as currency to make it easy to compare your offerings and prices against your competitor’s offerings and prices.

For example, if I have a 1.1 rating and you have a 1.5 rating, we are using the same currency, but your number is more valuable than mine.

As a matter of fact, since your 1.5 ranks higher than my 1.1, a client might not even consider any of my offerings, making my 1.1, in effect, a zero.

The problem is that this numbering system has become the generally accepted way for you to establish your value and, essentially, the only currency you talk about.

Even when these numbers put you at a disadvantage, they are the focus of your conversations, the content of your proposals and you also bake them into your elevator pitches.

But I want to ask you, why would you continue to compete based on numbers you don’t have any control over?

Instead, why not put a marketing idea in that conversation?

A marketing idea creates more value for your clients, more value for you and the best part is, you can control it.

When you present a marketing idea to a client or an agency, you instantly become different from everyone else who comes in touting their numbers.

And you become different in a way that matters because the right idea will actually create a result for the client. The effect is that you position yourself as someone who understands their business and can help them accomplish their marketing objectives.

As we explore this very important topic, you will see how using marketing ideas as currency will earn you a premium over what you could charge touting audience delivery numbers. We have seen premiums as high as 68%!

We want to help you take control of the growth of your business. So, we are going to publish a number of posts that we have written specifically to help you become a source of marketing ideas for your clients.

In the next post, we are going to help you get really clear on what a marketing idea is so you know if you have one.

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