How To Generate Leads for Digital Marketing Agencies

Rethinking lead generation for the digital marketing landscape

Rewind to the beginning of 2020, when COVID lockdowns were keeping everyone inside a lot more than usual. This caused a shift in audience behavior, as people were now consuming more content than ever before. Marketing agencies picked up on this and started producing more content as a result.

When the world began to open up again, audiences followed. People no longer needed to stay cooped up inside their homes, and digital marketing lost its temporary dominance as in-person events, physical meetings, and office work returned.

With changing customer preferences, the effectiveness of certain marketing channels changed as well. Alex Birkett, co-founder of Omniscient Digital, witnessed this firsthand:

“Virtual events went way downhill the last few years. It was the only thing B2B brands could do for a while with the pandemic, and there was hunger for virtual campfires, but as the world opened up, and people's budgets diversified again, a webinar just didn't seem as exciting.”

Beyond the return of live events, 2023 brought us the rise of generative AI, social media upheaval through Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now “X"), market shifts, brutal Google algorithm updates, and more.

Yet, most digital marketing agencies in 2023 were still adhering to best practices for things like cold outreach and content marketing — “best practices” that were developed for a bygone era.

Looking at lead generation in a vacuum simply doesn’t work — when the internet changes, so do the most effective strategies and channels for attracting new business.

Lead generation is affected by macro trends and world events

We like to think that the success of our businesses is something we can control.

But business performance is never isolated from the wider world. And as we plan our lead generation investments, we need to contend with that uncomfortable reality.

As Alex told me:

“When markets were great — ZIRPs and massive valuations and digital transformation — everyone was growing. We all thought it was due to our unique skills and advantages. Then markets truncated, and most companies shrunk or stayed stagnant. I thought we sucked until I talked to a bunch of other agency owners and realized that in this case, the wave matters more than the surfer. Obviously, you still have a lot you can control. But it's nowhere near 100%.”

What drives successful lead generation for marketing agencies?

The common mindset I’ve seen is that every channel is saturated, and there are no new channels to break into. It’s easy to get pessimistic, thinking that standing out is simply impossible.

But you don’t need a brand new or revolutionary approach to generate a sales pipeline for your marketing agency.

My mindset around attracting sales for Kalyna was built on two pretty boring pillars:

Rethinking cold outreach: avoiding ice-cold outreach by warming up leads
Building relationships: combining 1-on-1 interactions and content to build a brand reputation and increase awareness.

This might sound disappointing, but good business often is. Alex emphasized the same thing:

“Sometimes it's the boring stuff that works. For us, that's sales, referrals, network, and some SEO.”

You do not need to reinvent the wheel to stand out. Instead, figure out what works for you as a founder and for your agency as a brand.

I, and the founders I interviewed for this piece, all embrace the concept that all marketing channels are ultimately interconnected to drive lead generation. Any success you see with one channel or campaign will lift your results for other channels and initiatives.

Qualify incoming leads for relevance and fit

But before you race away from your desk to generate as much business as your team can possibly handle, think about what leads you even want coming in.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but unqualified leads are often more trouble than they’re worth.

For example, Chris Gillespie often has to turn away unqualified inbound opportunities coming to Fenwick:

“We get a lot of leads and most do not have what I’ll call the content infrastructure. Worse yet, they want to 'prove success' so they can get results, which I liken to being told to fly a plane but also having to build it first. And it’s very touchy to explain this. To address the problem, we’re launching online courses and a methodology that hopefully prepares these leads so we can be useful and have a great time together.”

Perhaps your agency can also find a way to warm up leads over time not just to increase your close rate, but also to transform those leads into more qualified opportunities.

While we don’t (yet) have an online course from Kalyna Marketing, we qualify our leads through brand marketing. In fact, our entire approach to lead generation is built on branding. We do not see those two as separate.

Even my “cold” sales emails are typically only sent out to individuals and brands who have come into contact with our content before. This approach allows us to cut out a high volume of “ice-cold leads” who are highly unlikely to engage with an agency they don't know at all.

Adapt to a saturated market

The key to building a pipeline of qualified leads is to borrow audiences from more established brands. Don't start from scratch when you can get a head start with the help of others.

Not starting from scratch means finding ways to leverage other people's audiences. Look for opportunities to provide value and collaborate by distributing your content to an already engaged audience. When someone in your audience is particularly active and has an existing audience, you may want to reach out directly. If you can find a way that's mutually beneficial to you and the collaborator, they have a good reason to partner with you.

A year ago, I did exactly this with Rand Fishkin and SparkToro. I was active under Rand’s social media posts and in SparkToro webinars, and then I directly offered to make some content about SparkToro. Those guides were then shared on SparkToro’s social media and newsletter.

For another example, take the very article you’re reading right now! Belkins is giving me a byline, helping both my brand and theirs cross-pollinate our audiences. We then chose to leverage network effects even further by explicitly citing multiple agency founders who have their own audiences. We hope that by doing their perspectives justice, we may inspire those founders to share this piece on their own platforms.

Collaborating to leverage established audiences is crucial for generating leads in a saturated market. Co-marketing not only grants your content an added level of trust but also provides you with social data in the form of engagement and feedback to draw from.

Focus efforts on what matters most

If you want to succeed as a marketing agency, then you need to understand where to focus your time and resources.

Some investments will be more valuable than others, and the reality may not always match typical common wisdom. As Alex found out:

“We realized that a lot of our marketing activities were merely producing “noise” and there was very little signal. For instance, our “build a media company” initiatives like virtual events and even the extent to which we leaned on our podcast clips for social media repurposing — they may have helped us build an “audience,” but when markets became volatile, none of this translated into leads.”

Your definition of success will be unique to your business. Not every marketing agency grows in the same way. For instance, Liam Moroney from Storybook Marketing adopted the following approach:

“We’re not looking at leads and MQLs, and we are not worried about the speed of growth in things like follower count and database growth. What’s more impactful is the steady growth of those metrics, and monitoring the makeup of those people. It’s less helpful to have 20,000 followers of the wrong people compared to 10,000 of the right ones.”

But whatever you might measure, you need to look for which investments are driving the most results for your agency. Don’t expect most of your lead generation strategies to work. As Alex said:

“One thing you learn after years of running experiments is that most changes you make don't actually matter. Or they matter so little that you would have to have an insane sample size to detect them.”

Prepare for the worst

2023 was not the first time that marketing agencies had a tough time, and it certainly won’t be the last.

One way you can make your agency’s lead generation more resilient is to prepare for the worst when things are good. For instance, Ross Hudgens from Siege Media thinks that’s how they maintained profitability:

“We had started building some of those channels before we needed them. I think a lot of agency owners were likely scrambling to generate a pipeline and weren't able to. Thankfully, we had built up some pipeline channels in the past that we turned off due to utilization and capacity to fulfill. But last year we were able to kind of lean into those channels just to make sure that we could see it through in a choppy environment.”

And if the worst does come to pass – make tough choices. Not every bet will pay off, and you have to admit when a risk didn’t pay off. As Alex explained:

“It's my job to be as ruthless and calculating as possible around what is actually important and admitting to myself and the team when we've spent time and money doing things that aren't moving the boat faster.”

Personal and brand reputation for agency lead generation

Before you announce your brand to the world and start booking calls, we need to have a tough conversation.

If you're a salesperson, marketer, or a marketing agency, then prospective buyers assume you to be sleazy and dishonest. Before you can generate leads, close business, or even promote yourself – you must overcome these initial suspicions and earn trust.

Know that the first question in your prospect's mind is, “When is this person going to pitch me?”. Accept that you're guilty until proven innocent, and start the conversation by explaining how you're not going to screw them over.

For example, you can address these common fears around marketing agencies:

You won’t lock clients into your specialized tech stack.
You won't charge for everything upfront and fail to deliver results.
You're not going to withhold the usernames and passwords of their social media accounts when the engagement ends.

Unfortunately, these are all tactics that marketing agencies use to lock clients into working with them.

Be transparent about who you are by treating your public presence as a manifesto. Communicate the principles you live by as a person and a business. What values do you believe in? What exactly constitutes good work or bad work? Are you going for the typical churn-and-burn marketing agency model or are you interested in long-term relationships with clients?

By being clear about your values up front, you create accountability and a reference point for expectations.

To reinforce these values, be open about your views on what good marketing is through your branding and thought leadership content.

As Ross Simmonds, founder of Foundation told me:

“The lead gen strategy that worked the most for us was a blend between prioritizing our customers' pain points and creating valuable content that they would find interesting, and going out and finding our target audience and getting that content in front of them whether it's through email outreach or through social media.”

Most of all, understand that starting a personal brand means standing out from the crowd. Drop the hyper-professional corporate agency facade. Share your opinions and unique qualities to discover who you resonate with.

It may sound hard, but the value of a great reputation is worth it. Take it from Chris:

“If I really think about it, things roared back because of relationships we’d been building for seven years, just quietly doing the best work possible. So perhaps I could have just done nothing. We are the tortoise, for sure, and certainly not the fox.”

Flashy viral tactics may look cool, but a good reputation usually wins the race.

Don’t pretend to be bigger than you are

Part of the reason people have lost trust in marketing agencies is that they often pretend to be more established, more experienced, and larger than they are. That's because the founders feel they need to appear as if they have all the answers.

If your agency consists of one person (you), and you've popped up overnight, accept that you can't hide it from clients.

Instead of pretending you're something you're not, lean into the fact that you're new, small, and agile.

Announce yourself as what you are: “I'm new and here's what I'm doing!”

Not only will prospective clients find this honesty refreshing, but it makes you more trustworthy and stokes curiosity.

Moreover, if you're a smaller, less established agency, your lead generation strategies should differ from those of large agencies with 10+ years of experience.

Liam described a similar mindset:

“Because we are a small agency, and with healthy margins, we don’t need to live a volume game. What has been crucial for us to monitor though are the business metrics — longer contracts, higher contract values, and more sales meetings that are qualified.”

Exercise self-awareness as a professional and as an agency when it comes to your experience level and capabilities. As a result, clients will grant you the trust needed to start a conversation.

The advantages of being smaller and newer

Rethinking lead generation means understanding who you are as a business, where you fit into the current landscape, and reflecting this identity through your branding.

If you're relatively new, or small in your niche, your biggest advantage is your ability to take risks in a strategic way and build brand awareness. Liam described his approach as follows:

“Our business started in 2023, so we only have a calendar year of data. But we have seen incredibly positive growth as we focused our efforts and strategy, especially in the second half of the year. We haven’t focused on lead generation at all with the exception of our newsletter, and instead focused on awareness-building efforts.”

If you're a young innovative agency, market yourself as such through your branding, cold outreach, and lead generation efforts.

Lead generation channels, strategies, and how to leverage them

To understand which channels and strategies to use and how, you first need to understand who you are as an agency and what your goals are.

Whatever channels and strategies might seem dominant today have not always been mainstream. Marketers who have worked in the field for longer often point out that like in fashion, trends in lead generation tend to come back again and again.

Alex observed:

“Some of this makes me think time is a flat circle. Trends come in waves, wash back out, and then come back again in a decade. In 2024, email lists are cool again. IRL events, curated experiences, and even SEO are all cool again.”

So don’t waste time tending to the next trendy channel or framework. Instead, ask yourself these questions before launching a comprehensive lead generation strategy:

How big is your team and what are everyone’s unique strengths and advantages?
Are you currently trying to scale or simply retain your current place in the market?
If you want to scale, are you seeking to become a boutique studio of no more than 20 people, or do you want to be a big operation with 100+ employees and an ever-expanding roster of clients?

You need to be clear on who you are and what you want before generating leads.

For example, if you want to stay small, scaling up may not mean more clients and employees. Instead, it would mean improving your impact on the client's business and your prices. Questions that follow such a change could be:

What results are we currently producing?
How efficient is our process?
What would justify charging more for the same projects?

Once you're clear about your path, take an omnichannel approach to lead generation and marketing. Here are some pieces that your approach could include:

Building a personal brand
LinkedIn and social media
Content marketing
SEO
Guest posting
Podcast and event appearances
Email newsletters
Review platforms and directories
Paid ads
Referrals
Communities
Sales and direct outreach

Building a personal brand

People don't trust companies anymore — they trust people.

The faceless “team accounts” and company pages that attempt to sound authoritative as if they are Wikipedia or McKinsey aren’t going to resonate.

Most brands’ content is indistinguishable from their competitors. And you can spot brands who use AI to create content from a mile away: generative AI like ChatGPT uses an authoritative tone by default, providing responses that start with, “This is the best...”

Not everything can be “the best,” and your audience is tired of hearing it.

If you're trying to generate leads by flooding your chosen channels with anonymous information and link-sharing, then you've already lost. If you want to generate leads for your marketing agency, it starts with a face (maybe yours!) and a name that's backed by a recognized brand.

I grew Kalyna Marketing largely on the power of my personal brand. I am decently well-known in my niche, have a couple thousand social media followers, and get invited to industry conferences, podcasts, and webinars. As a result, when I send people connection requests or emails they often already know who I am. So my offer, even if it may have been rejected by someone else, tends to get considered more carefully.

Liam told me that he’s had a similar experience:

“For us, our individual personal brands are a dominant factor in the awareness of the Storybook brand, which is of course incredibly valuable for inbounds and referrals. We have no desire to lose the connection of us as people to the brand, but we are beginning very intentional efforts to market Storybook as its own entity so that it can stand as a brand in its own right to people outside our own influence networks.”

LinkedIn and social media

Views on social media differ a fair bit between founders. I swear by it as a primary source of leads. Alex, on the other hand, hasn’t seen the same impact:

“I'm always skeptical that organic social actually moves the needle like we need it to. I sort of have faith that it does, and I can sometimes see prospects engaging with my content, so I'm sure it nudges people to a decision or helps build trust. But I think the value of organic social, especially LinkedIn, is probably overrated for the vast majority of marketers and agency owners.”

But if you choose to be active on LinkedIn or any other social media platform, think of it as your primary content distribution channel. For you, that could mean posts, long-form content, ad campaigns, or direct messages for cold outreach.

However, you need more than just a company page serving as a billboard and overview for your business. This is especially true when it comes time to scale.

Lead generation on LinkedIn comes from personal pages. You need a dedicated face, thought leader, or personality to evangelize your brand. The best choice for this role is likely your CEO or some other executive, but you should find someone who enjoys putting themselves out there and is willing to learn.

Other individuals within your organization can operate as support. Each person should have their own LinkedIn strategy, personality, and experiences that are unique, but tie back to the overall agency strategy.

The exact importance of LinkedIn within your lead generation approach is up to you. For us at Kalyna Marketing, it’s a lot like what Liam described:

“Content on LinkedIn has been the backbone of our strategy even before the business started.”

Content marketing

Think of content as relationship-building at scale.

Creating content is a lot like networking with people one-on-one, except you get the power to interact with hundreds or thousands of people at once. Each person is perceiving your ideas and making a judgment of whether they want to interact with you again.

Smart content marketing can lift the rest of your lead generation efforts. At its best, content helps to alleviate the need for a team of salespeople conducting outreach at all times.

But for content to build trust, it needs to be seen by someone. You also need a strategy on how to distribute your content. To narrow down your choices, consider which channels may be:

Easiest for you to scale?
Best for enabling your sales team?
Currently used by your clients for their own marketing and sales goals?
Serving multiple purposes or are ideal for cross-promotion?
Hosting content that resonates with your client base?
Best for the type of content you produce (long-form, video, etc.)?

As Ross Simmonds, the master of content distribution, said to me:

“Our biggest lesson in terms of lead generation was the importance of doubling down on what works. Our business has grown significantly on the back of leadership content and ensuring that those content assets are distributed to the right ICP. Ensuring that we did that consistently was key for us driving leads.”

The questions of what type of content to produce and which channels you should use could be answered by a simple Venn diagram that illustrates a cross-over between “things you're good at,” and “places your audience goes.”

Prioritizing Content for Lead Generation

Want to know what content to create for lead generation? Prioritize what works both for your brand and for your audience.

SEO

You can use SEO both as a way to generate leads and as an indicator of whether your other marketing efforts are working.

If you want to attract new people to your brand via SEO, then remember: Google is looking for helpful and original content.

Recent data from Zyppy found that the #1 and #2 on-page SEO practices that correlate with increased rankings are:

First-person pronouns
First-hand experiences

Google wants to see content from specific individuals who are part of a company operating in the relevant industry with experience in topics that they discuss. That’s why here, on the Belkins blog, you can see both the writer and the subject-matter expert for any given blog post. (Or, in cases like this one, the writer and SME might be the same person.)

To succeed in search, your messaging, branding, and user experience should be geared toward providing helpful content and making human users feel satisfied with their search results.

You may also find success with a unique strategy that nobody else has tried. For example, Siege Media acquired a contrast ratio tool for their website. This tool is helpful and often used by the same audience who may wish to hire their services, as website publishers and designers tend to work closely with SEO.

Siege Media Contrast Ratio Tool

Screenshot of Siege Media’s contrast ratio tool

The results were impressive, as Ross Hudgens told me:

“We redirected the contrast ratio tool to our website and that did contribute to some authority building for us and is a unique strategy. It's hard to replicate. You need to find something that is relevant to your business to do this. This was something we already used, but had a lot of links to it that were relevant and I think those really contributed to some overall SEO success for us.”

Then, to see if your other lead generation efforts are bringing results, you can look at how often people search for your brand and associated terms. This is how Liam describes his process:

“On a monthly basis, we monitor things like branded keywords, which are a helpful way to gauge if our efforts are having people look to see who we are.”

Guest posting

Guest posting is, in fact, still relevant.

I’ve seen the impact of guest posts first-hand: the only reason Belkins hired my agency to write content (like this piece!) was because their SEO lead, Eugene Zatiychuk, read one of my Search Engine Land pieces.

Guest posting in specialized publications is not only worth the operational costs it takes to produce the content, but can also bring transformational growth. Many of the founders quoted in this piece have written their fair share of guest posts: Ross Simmonds hosted Moz’s Whiteboard Friday, Alex wrote for Semrush, Liam writes for MarTech, etc.

Don't get hung up on whether publications are paying you for your content or not. Strategically leverage guest posting efforts for lead generation. Share unique insights and professional opinions that will resonate with your target audience, and you’ll make connections worth their weight in gold.

But beware, not all guest posting opportunities will work out. Sometimes, even the same website or publication can lose its value, as Ross Simmonds experienced for himself:

“Once upon a time, there was a highly valuable site called Skillshare that drove a ton of leads for our business. Since the multiple acquisitions, it's no longer consistently driving value for us and I think it's due to the fact that our audience has simply moved away from that channel into other places.”

Podcast and event appearances

You can go one step further than guest posting with other types of guest appearances like speaking on podcasts, going to conferences, and appearing at events.

For example, Liam sees these appearances as key to Storybook’s lead generation:

“We also are focusing on marketing opportunities — speaking engagements, and podcast appearances, which might seem like vanity but are a good way to make sure we’re keeping the drumbeat of the brand out there. We have seen incredible referrals through appearances on other shows. Content is what keeps us top of mind but participation is what finds us new audiences in a very concentrated way.”

And a guest appearance can lead to other promotional opportunities later on. For instance, Alex Birkett and I met because I was a guest on Omniscient’s podcast. Now, he’s sent me referrals, and I invited him to join me at SaaSOpen, where he met multiple potential leads.

Email newsletters

Sending out a regular newsletter takes the relationship-building power of regular content and amplifies it many times over.

Every single agency on this list has a newsletter, and most of us swear by them. Sending out regular emails to our audiences lets us build trust, remain top of mind, and create long-term connections.

You can think of newsletters as a slow-burn lead generation channel. You probably won’t get any sales calls days after sending an email, but eventually, you’ll notice that prospects are frequently referencing your newsletters once they do reach out.

Review platforms and directories

Review platforms are a more common play for established agencies. For example, Siege Media is listed both on Clutch and G2.

But as Ross Hudgens told me, they don’t see reviews as a standalone strategy. Instead, it’s part of a larger multichannel approach:

“We kind of had a mix of strategies between paid ads, continuing to do inbound marketing, generating reviews, and leveraging those.”

Many of the agencies I've referenced use paid ads.

They tend to see advertising as a boost to their other marketing efforts, especially given the natural fluctuation of social media algorithms. As Liam told me:

“Sustainability through LinkedIn alone does not feel like a responsible path, and we’re planning to start advertising this year.”

But you shouldn’t think of paid ads as a necessity. I do not use paid ads for generating leads at all, and Kalyna Marketing is doing just fine.

As always, the effectiveness of paid advertising as a channel depends on the rest of your marketing mix.

Referrals

Referrals have been key to Kalyna Marketing’s growth. I started growing my agency by aggressively expanding my network.

Alex sees referrals as core to Omniscient’s success in 2023:

“The strategy that helped carry us through was the strategy that helped get us started in the first place: having a strong reputation and a good professional network.”

You can also turn referrals into a sustainable channel by incentivizing them in a formal program. As Ross Hudgens described:

“Our referral program was productive for us to get people to send us leads and get a percentage of that deal in exchange.”

Word of caution — investing too heavily in referrals without supporting your lead generation through other channels can also harm your agency when times get tough. As Chris found out:

“We’ve been all-referral for years so when the bottom dropped out — money got expensive, companies fired their marketers, and big clients wanted to renegotiate — we honestly didn’t have the sales or marketing muscle anymore. We were caught flat-footed.”

Communities

I’m a big fan of communities for lead generation.

Communities, especially Slack communities, served as the foundation for my lead generation, relationship building, and referrals.

The general rule of thumb is that those you help most are usually those who send you the most referrals. This is why it's essential to produce the highest quality of work and generate the best possible results for your clients.

Playing the long game by building and maintaining relationships over the years requires a dedication to consistently high-quality work for your client base.

💡 And if you’d like to leverage the power of communities for yourself, consider joining the BLKNS Community for B2B sales and marketing professionals.

Sales and direct outreach

We wouldn’t be publishing a piece about lead generation on the Belkins blog if direct sales and outreach didn’t have a role to play in lead generation for marketing agencies.

Sales are effective, and every agency featured here invests in direct outreach to some degree. I tend to send my pitches out via LinkedIn DMs, many others prefer email.

But in any case, direct outreach requires a lot of effort. As Alex told me:

“Sales also continued to work. When we lost a few big clients early in 2023, we three founders went into full hustle and grind mode, emailing, networking, etc. our way to balance our revenue back out.”

But as you plan your outreach, consider the circumstances in which it will be received. Your email won’t be the only one in your prospect’s inbox - and you will need to make it stand out. As Dmytro Sokhach, co-founder of Editorial.Link explained:

“Most agencies try to make a sale immediately without understanding the client's pain points. For example, every day I receive 1–2 emails where they offer us lead generation services, without showing any case studies but promising to add 5-10 new clients each month. However, I am confident they don't even visit my website. Therefore, success lies in targeted segmentation, identifying decision-makers, carefully planning a series of emails, rather than trying to sell from the first email.”

If you’d like to increase your odds of success, you can partner with a lead generation agency like Belkins. In fact, at least one agency quoted here is a happy customer! (But we’ll leave their identity secret because that’s more fun.)

Lead generation for digital marketing agencies in 2024 and beyond

The biggest lesson from 2023 is that what worked is what always works. Good business fundamentals, relationship-building, great quality work, and a focus on what drives results.

Take it from Liam:

“Our strategy takes a lot of faith, but when we look at the last 12 months it has proven itself time and time again.”

If your current approach isn’t working, consider some small pivots that fit within your core business model. For example, Chris told me:

“We switched to improving our offering — we launched a content “subscription” that’s become the primary way we now do business — and said yes to smaller clients that previously we might not have.”

In 2024 and beyond, use the same principles that helped me and my agency friends survive the year before: qualify incoming leads, adapt to a saturated market, focus investments, prepare for the worst, and diversify your lead generation channels.

Good luck!

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Hire Belkins: If you want to discuss your current business goals and how we can potentially help you achieve them, contact us.
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How to generate leads for digital marketing agencies

Marketing agencies & founders featured