Hasta La Creative!

Ad agency executives often huddle in far-flung resorts to spend extended time figuring out new ways to grow their shops. There are no silver bullets, but there are many paths to growth. Here are a few of the common ones: Do great work and promote it; hire a better business development team; treat your agency brand as you would a client (meaning, set aside a budget, create a strategy and hold yourselves accountable for results); develop new services that clients want and for which there is increasing demand; and join better country clubs.

There’s another way to build your shop, and it’s not new, but proven to succeed when done properly — go vertical.

While agencies tend to go wide with their client base, because diversity feeds curiosity and provides economic balance, there is something to be said for building a vertically-integrated strategy. I’ve done this with my agency, specializing in banking and b-to-b. You can, too, and here are three things to consider in order to go deep and create a specialty within your shop:

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