People are keen to know what is really going on in Agency Land. Is it all doom and gloom?
Whilst people are not popping the Champagne corks just yet, the market is reasonably stable. We have over 500 agencies using Traffic and have had two go bust in the last year, one about 9 months ago, and the other about 2 months ago, but they have since reformed as a new company.
Lets be honest, these statistics are alot better than we thought. Some of it maybe that we have a self segmented group who manage their business well with an agency management system, but overall the signs are encouraging. Agencies are not going bust.
Are agencies laying off people? When the October headlines hit last year we saw very little movement in staff numbers. Agencies had legacy work and staff numbers in the main stayed pretty static. From about April to July redundancies seemed rife as the work slowed down and businesses adjusted size to cope with the new world. Recently things seem pretty stable.
We have just launched a business confidence survey, so as soon as we here more we will let you know. Why not take the survey and tell us what you think? http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=1RoJlrI3pct8LzRD43eMrQ_3d_3d
Finally we have just launched a new version of Traffic today that incorporates benchmarking, so as soon as we have enough clients on the system to be statistically meaningful, we will let you know. If you would like a hint as to a quick win, we can suggest you look at markup on 3rd party costs. These range from nil to 40%. If you thing 40% is ridiculous, please don’t shoot the messenger – plenty of agencies charge it.
Jeremy Rudge, Chairman