Agency pitching: How to optimize your process with GWI

Life’s a pitch. Especially if you’re an agency on a mission to secure your next big client. 

Whether you’re trying to win or retain existing business, it all comes down to whipping up the perfect pitch – and this is where GWI’s intuitive market research platform comes into play. You can spend weeks researching, planning, and strategizing but if you don’t have all the ingredients you need, it’s not going to come out right. That’s why we’re here with the recipe to perfecting the pitch process.   

Don’t get us wrong, we know there’s a lot that goes into the process but the main ingredient is simple: real consumer insights you can rely on.

Using deep consumer data you can’t find anywhere else to back up every pitch is how you win big.  

If you’re ready to get cooking, look no further. Here’s your guide to overcoming media planning challenges and closing high stakes deals. Think of this as a menu you can pick and pull your favorite tips from when you want to tell compelling stories that keep clients coming back.  

Do you want the secret sauce to winning pitches? Here we go. 

Your guide to winning agency pitches and new business with GWI 

1. Challenges of pitching for agencies
2. The agency pitching process with GWI
3. Agency pitch example with GWI
4. GWI in action: The pitching process with Zenith

Let’s talk about the challenges of pitching for agencies 

It takes guts to pitch. For every time you’ve put your hard work, creativity, and reputation on the line – we applaud you. It’s a tough job.

Making it easier for you to save time and money while cutting down on stress is our calling. Our mission to help humans everywhere better understand each other begins with understanding what’s stopping you from winning pitches.  

We zero in on the challenges you face to find solutions that actually make a difference. 

Here’s just a taste of what agencies are up against:  

1. Short turnarounds with little time for ideation  

Coming up with a good creative idea is kind of like making bread. The perfect mix of ingredients must be kneaded, everything needs adequate time to rest, and it must be fully-baked before it’s packaged. 

In a perfect world, you’d have all the time to make your bread and come up with your ideas, but things move really fast in the marketing world. After pouring in endless hours and resources, it’s hard to imagine all that effort – and non-billable pitching hours – not paying off at the end of the pitching process.

We can put you back in the driver’s seat by helping to cut down on wasted hours researching and strategizing. You’ll have on-demand access to audience insights so you can get the data quickly, create winning pitches in less time, and uncover something exciting about your client’s audience that they’d never guess. 

To keep up with the breakneck pace, we’ve made sure you’ve the tools you need to work just as quickly with instant charts and instant audience insights powered by deep consumer data. 

2. Burnout from excessive pitching 

Blink twice if you’re burnt out from late nights and the endless hamster wheel of pitching. Now raise your hand if you want a way to cut down on the stress. Now do the hokey pokey (just kidding). 

Back-to-back pitching is an extreme sport. It takes loads of preparation and it’s easy for your creative spark to flatline after stepping up to the plate again and again.

One way to get your inspiration back on track is with fresh data. With insights at your fingertips, you can showcase your insider knowledge, bring untapped audience truths to your client’s attention, and drive data storytelling with an undeniable “wow” factor.

The best part is you don’t need to be a data whizz to use GWI. 

Don’t have time to start from scratch? You don’t have to. We’ve got prebuilt audiences and dashboards ready to go that you can easily export and share with your team so you don’t have to recreate the wheel every time.  

3. Lack of details in the brief 

Forget looking for a needle in a haystack – try getting to the bottom of a complicated brief from a potential client that has a hard time articulating exactly what they’re looking for. 

With GWI, you’ll be able to fill in the blanks with the latest data from 52 markets and 250k profiling points. From demographics and income, to interests and behaviors, you can go global or local and get consumer insights that answer all the questions your client really needs to know. 

How to use GWI during your agency pitching process  

1. Research the client and set the scene 

Your first order of business is to show you understand their audience in a way no one else does. You’ll do that by finding as many details as possible. 

You can use instant insights for a quick snapshot of the audience you’re targeting, or build out your audience in full using over 250k attributes covering things like who they are, where they live, what they do, and more. 

You can also dive into one of our exclusive reports that zero in on the latest trends in every industry from social media to social issues. 

2. Personalize the findings

Zoom in on what matters most to your client to find an audience that’s on the same page when it comes to objective or core pillars. Depending on your client’s needs, you want to be the expert on their audience when it comes to things like who uses which platform most, what motivates them to shop, or what they want from brands.  

You’ll be able to explore what really resonates with them, or what interests them outside of the obvious stuff so you can analyze your findings and move to the next step.  

3. Use these insights to map your strategy 

With this pitch-defining data, you can start building your game plan and show the client that you know what audience they should target next including:

• Who are they?
• How will you reach them? 
• What kind of content will resonate? 
• What drives them?

This is where you can shine with unusual insights, unique demographics, or any other data that not only shocks and delights your client, but really shows them that your bulletproof plan is backed by actionable audience insights.

4. Hit the ground running 

When you win the pitch, you can get straight to turning data into action with all your insights ready and waiting. Save audiences for later and collate your findings in a dashboard so you can hop right back into the flow. 

Let’s set the scene with an example of agency pitching with GWI

Imagine your next potential client is an up-and-coming luxury beverage brand that wants to really stand out from the crowd. 

Your ultimate goal is to prove that you’re the creative agency for them with an industry-leading pitch that highlights your exceptional brand storytelling. In fact, you’re a triple threat with GWI: you’re the Bruce Lee of briefs, the Sherlock Holmes of insights, and the Shakespeare of data storytelling. You’re the full package. 

You know that to really win over this client, you’ll need a pitch that shows  you understand their audience better than anyone else – even them. But first, you have to prove that you can walk the walk, not just talk the talk. In other words, it’s time to impress.

From your market research with GWI, you discover an insight that blows your client’s assumptions out of the water: Gen Z and millennials accounted for all of the luxury goods market’s growth last year. Who knew?

But now you want to hone in even further to show your client that your pitch is not just precise, but laser-focused. 

With a little digging, you not only discover that 66% of Gen Z live with their parents but that they’re also purchasing luxury goods three to five years earlier than millennials did at their age. With more freedom to fund their expensive tastes, you know Gen Z are the ones to watch. Now you can introduce your client to the new audience they never knew they had with a pitch that proves you know what you’re talking about. 

GWI in action 

Zenith, the self-described “ROI Agency”, turned to GWI when they wanted to identify new engagement opportunities in the digital space. We helped them get market-specific insight with global consistency by taking an in-depth look at social media usage and engagement across a wide variety of audiences and demographics.

The result? With GWI’s help, Zenith was able to:

• Win key client pitches with exclusive insights they couldn’t find elsewhere
• Use consumer data to drive revenue for the agency 
• Create opportunities for increased engagement
• Improve efficiency with a single-sourced data solution

According to Rikkert Van Loo, brands and insight manager at Zenith Optimedia Belgium, “GWI provides essential data that no one else can offer in a platform that’s so easy to use.”

Overcoming the challenges of the agency pitching process  

We’re here to help you perfect your pitching process. Our intuitive platform gives you the power to become the expert on your client’s audience thanks to targeted insights that prove you really know what consumers want. 

We want you to hit more home runs, more often. How? With deep data that optimizes your agency pitch process, saves time, and boosts ROI. Oh, and makes it impossible for your clients to say no. 

Ready for your big yes? Let’s talk.