Ignition

What’s the point of preparing a detailed cost estimate if your client doesn’t see the value in the first place? Better to start with the question of perceived value. Price first, cost second. bit.ly/3xiRMdB

Agencies, it’s time to stop remodeling the house and move to a better neighborhood — a community where firms are paid for their heads instead of their hands. More here: bit.ly/3zFWF4g

Agencies devote too much effort to building the best house in a bad neighborhood. Maybe it’s time to move, not just remodel. More here: bit.ly/3zFWF4g

Agency leadership often announces a “restructuring” that results in a new website featuring yet more offerings tacked onto an already overly ambitious service set. But instead of just remodeling the house, how about moving to a better neighborhood? bit.ly/3zFWF4g

The point of progressive pricing strategies isn’t to charge more; it’s to charge differently. bit.ly/3XNtpSn

“Value-based” is a suboptimal way to describe a new approach to pricing because it sounds too subjective. Better to use the term “solution-based.” What we’re really referring to is pricing based on the value to the customer — as in customer-based pricing. bit.ly/3XNtpSn

State-of-the-art pricing starts with WTP: Willingness to Pay. The answer to that question defines the price. bit.ly/3XNtpSn

If you’re in the process of exploring new revenue models, be careful not to confuse “value-based” with “performance-based.” While outcome-based pricing is a form of value-led pricing, it’s not how new pricing strategies should be defined. bit.ly/3XNtpSn

The biggest obstacle to developing an effective positioning strategy for your firm comes not from outside market forces, but rather from inside your head.

Agencies generally have low multiples in the M&A world because it’s so easy to enter and exit the agency business. But a productized business model changes all that, creating inimitable assets that create exponential value. bit.ly/3T7AMkL

Because they are tethered to the hourly rate, agencies as businesses lack the ability to scale; increasing revenue means increasing staff—a form of anti-scaling. bit.ly/3T7AMkL

A productized business model requires agencies to come to grips with the fact that their promise of “full-service, full-funnel, or end-to-end” offerings is untenable and unrealistic. bit.ly/3T7AMkL

The problem with most business strategies is that they claim too much and sacrifice too little.

No firm that plays on a national stage can claim to be a monolithic stand-alone resource for its clients. Rather, the best professional service firms are part of an increasingly complex and interdependent ecosystem of specialized solutions providers. bit.ly/4fA04RZ

"Why Time-Based Billing Doesn’t Work for Agencies," Ignition's Tim Williams' recent interview with Jenny Plant on The Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast bit.ly/3S5rN2P

The real resistance to revenue model transformation isn’t external; it comes from the inside. The resistance is cultural, rooted in an outdated view of what the agency business is supposed to be like. bit.ly/3UcJ6zi

All good agencies ask the question, “What is the objective of this assignment?” Unfortunately, most clients are surprisingly unprepared with a good answer. bit.ly/3LToIiS

Now that AI is demonstrating its ability to accomplish many of the tasks required to deploy a marketing campaign, migrating to a new revenue model is both a strategic and financial imperative. bit.ly/3UcJ6zi

Why are so many agencies just heads-down filling scopes of work pre-defined by their clients? Because neither agencies nor their clients have stopped to decide what constitutes a “valuable” relationship in the first place. bit.ly/46wwvwI

Why do so many well-meaning professionals fall into the “full service” trap? Perhaps they’re worried prospective clients will assume their firm offers only “partial service?” It's a nonsensical waste of words. bit.ly/4fA04RZ

The best way to lower your operating expenses? Focus your business strategy.