6 best marketing agency lead generation strategies

Marketing agency lead generation: marketing professionals in a meeting

Key takeaways

Leverage and grow your professional network to funnel leads to your business
Showcase your knowledge to potential clients by offering free audits, e-books, and live webinars
Add a lead capture form to your testimonials page and landing pages to convert website visitors

Effective agencies help their clients achieve growth, but they never put their own growth on the back burner. If you want to regularly win new clients, then winning new leads should be a priority. Keeping your sales pipeline filled with high-quality leads is essential for helping your sales team succeed.

Here are six marketing agency lead generation strategies that can help you win new prospects by leveraging your network and your expertise.

1. Offer incentives for referrals

When other professionals back up the quality of your work, you can quickly build trust with potential leads. This is why referral marketing can be a powerful way to drive high-quality leads to your business with minimal time and cost. This marketing strategy encourages your network to promote your agency on your behalf—and all you need to do is provide an incentive.

Examples of effective referral incentives can include gift cards, discounts on your marketing services, or a percentage of revenue you earn from a new account. Once you decide on an offer, promote your new referral program to your email list, social media following, and other members of your network.

2. Network with decision-makers online

When you’re in the business-to-business (B2B) industry, getting in touch with decision-makers as early as possible is key to success. Since you won’t have to rely on a third party to relay information on your behalf, you can control and strengthen the message you’re sending with your B2B lead generation campaign. Plus, working directly with decision-makers helps you save time.

This is why many B2B marketers use LinkedIn to reach outbound leads. You can use this social media marketing channel to research potential customers and determine the best point of contact. Then, you can do direct outreach—perhaps inviting potential leads to a call or a lunch to discuss how you can provide value.

Remember to follow up with potential clients if they don’t respond the first time. Unless your contacts reject your offer, your persistence can help you stand out.

3. Offer free marketing audits

Marketing agency professional taking a call while holding a document

Offering a free consultation before a client commits is a standard practice in the marketing industry. However, your digital marketing agency can stand out by offering more value with a free custom audit.

Marketing audits are comprehensive reports that outline where a business is performing well and where there’s room to improve. Providing an audit gives you a chance to show customers exactly where your company can step in and make improvements.

Your audits don’t have to take a lot of time. You can focus on a specific marketing channel, like social media or email marketing, and automate much of the auditing process with your existing marketing software. For instance, if you use tools like Unamo and BuzzSumo, you can instantly generate content marketing insights to impress potential inbound leads.

Make sure to share your free audit offer on your website and all your marketing channels to increase your reach and speed up your marketing agency lead generation.

4. Share case studies on your website

Businesses will only put their marketing in your hands if they’re confident your agency can produce results. You can give potential clients proof of your work by sharing case studies of your most successful marketing campaigns on your site. Impressive case studies tell an engaging story that often include details such as:

A brief description of the client
The problem your client faced
The solution your agency came up with
The results of the campaign, including exact metrics

Ideally, your case studies should showcase your work across all the industries you serve to attract diverse target audience members. At the end of each case study page, include a lead gen form to capture the contact information of interested website visitors. Be sure to include a persuasive call to action (CTA) to direct their attention to your form.

5. Host a live webinar

Webinars are useful inbound marketing tools that allow your agency to provide value to customers and prove your expertise. When you host a live webinar, you also have the chance to engage with prospects in real time, answer their unique questions, and build a relationship that drives sales.

To plan your first webinar, consider what topics in your realm of expertise would interest your potential clients. For instance, if you mainly work with digital business-to-consumer (B2C) brands, your target market may be interested in influencer marketing tips. Then, you can use a tool like Google Slides or Canva to start building out a professional presentation. You can always use your presentation more than once if it’s still drawing a strong number of attendees.

Require guests to RSVP when promoting your webinar to ensure your event captures leads. Some webinar tools, like Zoom with a paid plan, support registration setup to make your marketing agency lead generation process easier.

6. Create targeted landing pages

While many marketing agencies offer similar sets of services, your agency can stand out by creating landing pages that show how you uniquely cater to clients who need each service. For example, if you offer web design services and serve nonprofits, you can build a landing page that explains how your services can attract donors and streamline the donation process.

When new leads enter your sales funnel from a landing page, you’ll already know what service they’re most interested in. You can log this information into your email marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) software so you can send them targeted marketing campaigns.

Use search engine optimization (SEO) practices, like including relevant keywords in your copy and linking to high-quality sources, to increase your landing page’s visibility and drive more potential leads to your site.

Enhance your marketing agency lead generation

Filling your sales pipeline with your ideal customers is essential to convert new clients and scale your agency. To generate the best leads fast, consider growing and drawing referrals from your professional network. Attract inbound leads who want evidence of your value and expertise by offering free audits, case studies, webinars, and more content that positions your agency as an industry leader. Targeted landing pages can further demonstrate your agency’s unique value to target audience members.

As your marketing agency lead generation efforts start to drive up your sales, you can find new ways to stand out to your target audience using these seven steps for growing your digital marketing agency.