Christian Banach, Agency Growth Strategies
About the podcast: Unlocking Your World of Creativity
Unlocking Your World of Creativity is a podcast hosted by best-selling author and global brand innovator, Mark Stinson.
This is a podcast where diverse guests who share in common being creative professionals from all over the world. They talk about they get inspired, how they organize their ideas and gain confidence to make the connections needed to launch their amazing work.
Our guest: Christian Banach
Christian Banach is an agency owner, sales team leader, and new business director. He has a passion for helping agency leaders to be empowered and approach their future with greater confidence.
Christian’s consulting clients range from Reebok to TD Bank among other multinational level businesses. He believes that regardless of the size of the agency it is possible to do something that unique and different than others. And that’s how he gets clients, by offering unique solutions to the specific problems they may have. It is difficult to be good at everything, but when you specialize in a certain area, you will get bigger companies to seek you out.
His approach to helping them figure out their “one big thing”
When getting clients through word of mouth you may not have a good idea of what type of business they are or what type of client they may be. This creates a situation were they’ve done a lot of different things. So when they get their foot in the door with a client they may have a situation difficult to approach. What an agency does it that it comes up with creative solutions by examining the clients and the problems they come with. They look for commonalities, buckets of work they’ve done, certain types of consumers and targets, and some common themes.
They take those themes and then they find companies that have the same type of theme and engage them in a development stage where they are finally able to reach solutions and find their unique “big thing” to stand out in the market.
How he got there
Christian came to the industry almost by accident. He started by working on concert promotions to pay his way through college. He got to work with Grammy Award-winning artists such as Lady Gaga, Pitbull and T-Pain. Along the way, he was approached by an experimental marketing agency that was looking for some help with more street-type activation strategies. For Christian, it was a very natural transition from doing concert promotions and working with sponsors into that experiential marketing.
Lessons learned along the way
Along the way, when the 2008 recession hit, Christian learned the hard way that promoting his agency through just word of mouth was not enough. He ended up having to hire consultants who provided him with an immense amount of valuable insight. While this help came a little late and Christian had to close his business, he was inspired to go into business and business development a few years later.
This made him learn that even when times are good, you still need to focus on having a predictable pipeline, price sales process, and word of mouth referral as a bonus only.
What the future holds for Christian
Christian really enjoys art and has found himself increasingly trying to explore other creative avenues for himself. He is considering turning the Monday motivation newsletter into a book and be able to not only give some valuable insight to others but especially to his daughter.
Find more about Christian by going to his website www.christianbanach.com and learn more about his agency and what they can do for you.
Don’t forget to tune in for our next guests who will be bringing in even more valuable insight for those looking to make a big name in the business that is "creativity."