Marketing is cyclical, and that will probably never change. Depending on your location, the time of each cycle may be different, but at some point in every large market, every agency and client partnership goes through the same process: A client realizes how much they are paying agencies, thinks it’s too much, and decides to take things elsewhere.

Whether they take things in-house, or to a nickel and dime shop down the block, we often come full circle with these clients, where in most cases, those companies eventually come back to the agency sector. This is typically when we agency folks get an RFP. Most RFPs are stripped down and simple; they have goals in mind. When you get an RFP from a client who thinks they already know what they need AND how to do it, you have a choice to make; Do you respond with what they expect and agree with their approach? Or, do you interject your own approach, and take on the task of enlightening to a better answer?

We recently received an RFP where the client listed the budget, the approach, financial goals, and a list of deliverables. So, that pretty much left us and the other agencies fighting over who could make prettier pictures. Problem is, success here was going to be judged on numbers. So, no matter how well your agency delivered, if the initial approach supplied by the client was wrong, the agency would still be the one who takes the bullet.

We took a different approach. We didn’t agree with their strategy, so when we went in to present our response, we told them so. We gave them a sound rationale, and then suggested a different way to maximize their dollars and reach their financial goals. We realized that the downside to this approach was that if the client was stubborn about their initial strategy, you may be dead in the water on the pitch. But we were confident enough in our approach that we were willing to take that chance.

In the process of your presentation, you can play this to your advantage. First, while presenting a case for a different approach, you have to know more about the client and the market than the next guy, or you can’t justify your argument. As a result, your team presents a more knowledgeable basis than any other presenting agencies, simply by way of the fact that they wouldn’t be prepared to share that depth for a simple artwork showcase. And then there is the fact that you are gently informing the potential client that they were using the wrong approach. Trust me that will get their attention. If it doesn’t, you can bet that the “more bang for your buck” discussion will get them listening.

In the end, we won the business. To quote the client in reference to our two presenters, “these two guys could run our marketing department.”

How you handle your first project with a client sets a precedent. If you begin with the client trusting your suggestions and decision making, you’ve started a great relationship.

If you gave a potential client a business card in 1996 and it had a Web site listed on it, you were legit. The general consensus would have been your business was on the cutting edge, and it was pushing towards the future. By the early 2000s, if you didn’t have a Web site, you were already years behind. I can’t remember the last time I heard a client say, “Well, we’ve been around for about ten years, we think it’s time for a Web site.”

Those days are long gone; the whole world has a Web site. Netcraft is reporting that as of 2009, the Web now has over 233 million Web sites. So what now? If you already have a Web site, how do you make it better? Redesign it? That ship sailed years ago. We are well past the days of having difficulty finding a company to give you a good looking site; there’s one on every corner. The landscape has changed, and the RFPs we respond to focus all of our attention on strategy. We no longer talk to clients about just their Web site, but instead their Web presence.

So what is Web presence? In a sense, your company’s Web presence covers every single point of mention on the Web. This includes not only what you produce, but also what others produce for you. Between Twitter, Facebook Facebook test (   0 | 0 ) blogs and all of the other avenues of user communication, your Web presence may have grown without you even knowing it.

All of this information is out there, so why not use it to your advantage? Social media allows you to surface this content on your Web site. Let’s say you go to search.twitter.com and search for your company’s name. The results show that there are lots of tweets relating to your company, most positive, some negative, and a few questions from users looking for help. All of this can be used to your advantage.

You can take the search results and surface them on your site. Now when users come to your site they see the good tweets about you! But what about the negative tweets? Well, sign up for a Twitter account and respond to them directly in an effort to change the users’ perspective. More companies are doing things like this every day to create transparency. And for those asking questions, you can respond directly to inquiries. Now your site shows positive tweets, how you respond to the few negative tweets, and how you answer users’ questions.

What other ways can you grow your Web presence?

It always seems that every Nike campaign and accompanying commercial is more impressive than the last. To be honest, I’m a homer for Nike. They are my favorite sports brand as far as the equipment I use, so maybe my thoughts are biased. But products aside, there marketing is simply amazing. As far back as I can remember Air Jordan promos, to the most current Adrian Peterson Combat Pro ad, I always seem to be amazed.

The latest Nike Pro ad:

From the video, graphics, and audio, this promotion is just awesome. I worked in TV for a few years, so I really love top-notch graphics and well directed video.

There is something to be said that your branding is so strong, that you can have promotions like that are this strong, while having no VO, no product mention or no features or product attributes. But still, you can be put in that scenario, and you still have to deliver. Nike better than any company I know of, does a great job of selling simply by being “cool”.

Nike brass does a great job of not only perfectly knowing theit product, but also perfectly knowing their target demographic. In the past ten years, they have not only to continued to dominate sports they have always dominated, but they have slowly bled into sports they once had a smaller stake in. This example uses football as the market that Nike has grown it’s market share in.

As of late Under Armour has made a major move towards Nike in football especially. They also really know their product and market well, but they take a different tact. Nike employs a more sophisticated style while Under Armor employs a very “pump-up” tactic. Both work very well, but I have more respect for the Nike promos as they stretch the creativity further.

Again, kudos to the Nike brass for allowing their agencies of record to take the chances they do and providing us with market leading campaigns.