Want to grow your agency? Fix the blind spot holding you back.

I spent today at the Festival of New Business – Pimento‘s inaugural event for independent agencies – and it was great. My biggest takeaway?

Most agencies are just not good at their own sales and marketing, despite being great at marketing their clients.

For years, many have relied on reputation and referrals. But in a saturated, competitive market with tighter budgets and clients demanding more value, that’s no longer enough. Without the right strategy, process, tools and resource, growth gets harder – and performance suffers.

The bottom line is: if you’re serious about growth, then you have to be serious about all of the above.

Below are some of the best nuggets from the day that capture why:

SCENE SETTING: MARKETING, ROI & AI – Peter Boutros

Average marketing budget is 7.7% of revenue

One thing that all clients want from you: “to bring the passion”, particularly in the world of AI

The age of the “marketing budget” is gone, it is now an “investment budget”. Marketing is now: revenue attribution, business growth and ROI transparency

70% of CEOs now evaluate marketing’s impact based on YoY revenue or margin growth

87% of marketers use AI but only 5% are actually fluent in AI – that’s the opportunities for agencies

Don’t use AI to originate. Use AI to flesh out ideas and build ROI models

Mark Zukerbug: “all of Meta’s ads will be generated by AI by the end of 2026”

THE PROBLEM WITH NEW BUSINESS

There are too many agencies chasing too few clients. It’s more competitive than it’s ever been and budgets are more scrutinised than ever. You’ve got to lead with ROI!

The key thing for agencies now is finding a service that clients actually need as they are increasingly trying to do things in-house themselves

“People love to buy, but they hate to be sold to” – sometimes saying no works

Tangerine, co-CEO: “Why is everyone so obsessed with pitching? Focus on current clients and the one that are going to grow with you”

Ask the clients ASAP early to find out if the pitch is not right for you

It is a fact that agencies who pitch less, win more – both conversion rate and overall monetary value of annual wins

The value of production is descending to zero, but the value of your experience and insight is increasing

Being an independent agency is your USP and that’s your personality and strength as you can sell who you are

When it comes to new business and pipeline, focus on people rather than companies. See who you know and where, as people buy people. Saatchi used to have ‘the canal system’ where you had to drop as many things on people’s boats going up and down the canal as the year went on

Relationships and referrals are the two most important ways of winning new business

Over 50% of new business comes from word of mouth but almost no agencies have a ‘word-of-mouth strategy’

THE POWER OF PROPOSITION

Don’t just focus on proposition but focus on value proposition. What value do you bring to your clients

Remember you are the shiny, fun bit to their everyday norm so don’t use jargon and be like everyone else

You have to be able to defend your proposition and why you are different. This is how you standout

Do not lead with service proposition, e.g. ‘award-winning’ or ‘full-service’

Be provocative with your proposition to create a conversation and get in the room

Don’t be afraid to be polarising – then you can say ‘this pitch is right for us, this isn’t right for us’ or ‘this person is right for us, this person isn’t’

Your proposition is your ‘organisational DNA’. Culture is a huge part of this and you should sell what you have back to your clients

The proposition should allow you to pivot – it should not be too rigid

Sometimes it might not be possible to be different, so focus on being distinct – branding, people, culture, marketing, presentation style etc.

BUILDING A PIPELINE

If you start doing something you have to keep doing it

How can you take sales and marketing seriously with now CRM, team or sales and marketing calendar

Good content is all about opinion – you have to have a pov and passion. Don’t be bland

Focus on creating content on the bottom of the funnel – start with the pain point

Good sales and building a pipeline comes down to discipline, consistency and accountability

Don’t worry about being perfect. Perfection and procrastination are the two biggest killers of sales – put yourself out there and prepare to fail

CRM systems give your business longevity and move it beyond relying on the founder for new business lead generation

If you’re organising events, then think about them as campaigns, e.g., selecting who to invite, call the attendees before, slice and dice content after

If your new business target is 1m and your average deal size is 100k then you need witn 10 clients. If your conversion rate is 50% you need 20 clients to pitch to. If the conversion rate of outreach is 2-4% resulting in an enquiry, then you need to target 1000s of clients!