Level Two: Mastering Client Business Strategy

By applying a Client Business Analysis Model, your teams will learn how to conduct a more robust analysis of each client’s business – in far less time. Without this base knowledge in place, they risk becoming tactical order takers with no credibility.

We’ll outline how to understand each client’s business model, unique KPIs (key performance indicators), business and marketing goals, most pressing business needs – and how the client is performing in each of these areas.

Helping to standardize your approach, we’ll address how to collect and organize this intel in a way that captures the key implications for your agency. This will arm your teams with actionable insight, position them as strategic partners, improve the effectiveness of the agency’s work, and lead to more organic growth.

Being able to conduct simple and effective research has become a base skill for all those involved in the development of client strategy – whether or not there is the support of a strategic planning team. However, there are three key challenges: time, budget and skill.

Often, timing is exceptionally tight, with the project being due within just weeks or days. Clients rarely provide enough budget to conduct the depth of research you’d prefer. And, many team members are simply not skilled at conducting effective research.

This training session will address all three. We will outline the most effective methodologies (the skills) to uncover deeper insight in less time and on a smaller budget.  With the goal of accelerating the design and execution of your research, a new framework will be provided. This model will help to confirm the most effective methodologies, plan those approaches, and ensure fresh new insight is uncovered.  We’ll also address how to conduct two of the most fundamental and effective forms of research: intercepts and surveys. These two methodologies remain the most cost-effective and fastest ways to uncover genuine target audience insight – but only when orchestrated correctly.

As clients work to navigate the new realities of commerce, they’re now adapting in real-time to best capture new opportunities as they arise. As a result, they need bigger, more innovative strategic thinking – in far less time.

To that end, this session will outline how to write (and provide feedback on) strategy briefs that are more effectively focused on each client’s business needs, deeper target audience insight and more meaningful results. Applying a more consistent approach, your teams will learn how to achieve this in far less time.

We’ll also take a look at the new research methodologies working to more quickly uncover bigger insights – knowing that most agencies are strapped for time (and budget).

Journey Modeling has become one of the simplest and most profound strategic tools an agency team can master. When used methodically, it reveals new insight into the purchase behavior of each client’s target audience – helping agencies provide work of much greater financial value.

Taken a step further, like the practices of management consulting firms, it becomes a powerful diagnostic tool. Journey Modeling can be used to pinpoint critical challenges, opportunities, and insight for each individual client.

Within this session, participants will be put to work creating a new (or improving upon a current) Journey Model for a client – which is then immediately put to use. Ultimately, the goal is to apply a new method for increasing the agency’s impact, value and fees for every account they work on.