Agency New Business: You're Ghosting Your Own Prospects
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Agency New Business: You’re Ghosting Your Own Prospects

One of the most frustrating challenges in agency new business?

When prospects go dark

Always tough, and agencies tend to get worried or even desperate when it’s been a few days or weeks, understandably so.

(I’ve written several posts arond it, here’s one that might be helpful: Prospect Ghosting You? Use this ghosting schedule to follow up.)

You can’t get anxious (easy for me to say I know) and when you do reach back out, find something of value to further the conversation so it’s not just a generic check-in.

Something interesting about going dark that’s not often talked about though:

Agencies go dark with their own prospects

Usually without meaning to, but excellent opportunities are lost this way.

For the same reasons agencies work with us (predominantly lack of time for a consistent process because clients have to come first) we realized we often needed to take the reins (where it made sense) after those first meetings.

And you can’t let the fact that you’re slammed cause a promising prospect to fall through the cracks.

It most often happens with those prospects who have a need, but it’s several weeks or months away.

Agency New Business: You're Ghosting Your Own Prospects

How to Follow Up With Prospects Without the Generic Check-In

Don’t just send a generic “just checking in” or “touching base” email.

It tells a prospect that you need something from them, which gives them very little reason to reply.

The agencies that successfully stay top of mind in the interim between meetings bring something helpful.

That could be industry content, a quick breakdown of a campaign you just wrapped up, or an observation about their vertical and the market.

Doesn’t need to be a major production: a brief note with a link to a relevant case study or a trade article keeps the relationship warm without putting pressure on them.

It helps to look at this approach less as a standard follow-up and more as a way to keep a conversation going.

Tactical Steps to Keep Prospects Engaged

Before that first meeting ends, respectfully ask for a second, as well as a timeline if possible.

Immediately afterwards, set calendar reminders for yourself and take a few minutes to craft a meaningful email or send a thank you via snail mail.

Don’t pester them, but stay consistent in your reach-outs.

Especially if there’s new work to tout, awards won, or content around their vertical you’ve written, and the prospect will see what working with you looks like, making them feel better and better about you before you’ve started working together.

Everybody’s busy, and it stinks when a prospect goes dark-don’t do the same.

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Generative Engine Optimization for Agencies: What Google's Official Guide Changes (and What It Confirms)
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Generative Engine Optimization for Agencies: What Google’s Official Guide Changes (and What It Confirms)

Are you sick of hearing about GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) yet?

It’s been touted as the replacement for SEO, the future of search, and depending on which article you read, either the most important thing your agency needs to adopt right now or another overhyped term that will fade out in six months.

In August 2025, I published our first take on generative engine optimization for agencies and what it means for business development strategy (GEO Explained: What It Means for Your Business Development Strategy)

Since then, Google (finally) published its own official guide on optimizing for generative AI search, and it’s worth revisiting what I laid in light of what Google is now telling us directly.

Some of it confirms what we (and the broader SEO community) had been saying and some of it pushes back on tactics circulating as GEO best practices.

All of it’s useful for agencies trying to figure out what to implement for business development purposes.

So here’s the updated picture.

First: What Google’s Official Guide Says

Google released its AI optimization guide in May 2026, and the headline is pleasingly specific in this case:

SEO best practices continue to be relevant because generative AI features on Google Search are rooted in its core search ranking and quality systems.

In other words, Google isn’t treating GEO as a separate discipline.

From Google’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and is still SEO.

So the good news for agencies, if you’ve been putting best practices in place for you site, you don’t need a drastic do-over.

The foundation you’ve built through good content, clean site architecture, and expertise is the same foundation that positions you in AI-generated results.

Google’s guide also spends time on what not to do, which is the important stuff.

What You Can Stop Worrying About

Several tactics have been floating around as essential GEO practice, but Google is direct that they’re not.

LLMS.txt files and special AI markup. You may have seen recommendations to create llms.txt files or add new machine-readable formatting specifically for AI crawlers.

Google says you don’t need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in generative AI search.

“Chunking” your content. The idea that you need to break content into tiny, digestible pieces for AI to parse it seems to be conventional wisdom at this point.

Google’s guidance is there’s no requirement to break content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it, as their systems are able to understand the nuance of multiple topics on a page.

So as always, write for your readers, not for a parser.

Rewriting content specifically for AI systems. You don’t need to write in a specific way for generative AI search.

AI systems can understand synonyms and general meanings of what someone is seeking, in order to connect them with content that might not use the same precise words.

You don’t need a separate AI content layer on top of your existing strategy.

Pursuing mentions and citations across the web. Brand mentions as a GEO signal are discussed a lot.

Google notes that seeking inauthentic mentions across the web isn’t as helpful as it might seem, as core ranking systems focus on high-quality content while other systems block spam.

Earned mentions from legitimate coverage and thought leadership still matter, so don’t manufacture them.

Overfocusing on structured data. Schema markup is still worth using for rich results eligibility, but structured data isn’t required for generative AI search, and there’s no special schema.org markup you need to add.

What Google Says You Should Do

Google’s guidance is fairly straightforward: if you’ve been creating solid, value-added content for a while, their recommendations will sound very familiar.

  1. Create non-commodity content. This is the clearest priority in the guide. Google’s AI systems look at a variety of sources, so having a unique viewpoint that stands out is helpful. A first-hand review provides a unique perspective based on personal experience, whereas a summary of existing content simply restates information already available elsewhere. For agencies, this means your POV pieces, case study breakdowns, and experience-backed takes are key content topics.
  2. Keep your technical foundation clean. To appear in generative AI features on Google Search, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, fulfilling the search technical requirements. Fast load times, crawlable pages, no duplicate content issues, and proper canonical tags are still mandatory.
  3. Images and video earn real estate. Generative AI search features can bring in relevant images and video, which means more opportunities for a website to appear beyond page links. If you’re publishing thought leadership without supporting visuals, consider adding them.
  4. Write for people, organize for people. Google recommends organizing content with paragraphs, sections, and headings that provide a clear structure to navigate, writing for a human audience and making sure content is well written and easy to follow. The conversational, structured approach that works for readers also works for AI, not the other way around.
  5. AI agents are an emerging consideration. This is newer territory. AI agents are autonomous systems that can perform tasks on behalf of people, and browser agents may access your website to gather data they need to complete tasks, such as analyzing visual renderings, inspecting the DOM structure, and interpreting the accessibility tree. Semantic HTML and good accessibility practices are becoming relevant beyond screen reader compliance.

Generative Engine Optimization for Agencies: What Google's Official Guide Changes (and What It Confirms)

What This Means for Your Agency’s Business Development Strategy

Google’s guide is written broadly, so I want to narrow the focus down to what it means for your agency and your pipeline.

Your thought leadership content is your GEO strategy. If you’ve been consistently publishing original perspectives on your agency’s area of expertise, you’re already positioned better than most firms. Continue to make sure that content is built on real experience and results, not recycled. Google’s systems are apparently getting increasingly better at distinguishing the two.

Audit what you own, not just what you publish. Take a look at your website through the lens of someone who has never heard of your firm and is asking an AI to recommend agencies in your specialty. Would your content accurately represent what you do and who you do it for? Make sure the expertise your team has is visible and clearly articulated online. Run a few queries in ChatGPT or Perplexity about your niche and see what comes up.

Original case studies and POV pieces outperform topic volume. The temptation in content marketing is to cover every angle of a topic to capture more search queries. Google is explicitly warning against this approach for AI search. A high quantity of pages doesn’t make a website higher quality or more relevant to users, and Google’s AI systems have improved their ability to understand the relevance of pages. One well-developed case study that shows how you solved a specific problem for a specific client type will do more for you than ten thin posts covering adjacent keywords.

Bring this into client conversations. If your agency handles SEO, content strategy, or digital for clients (or even if it doesn’t), Google’s guide is a great way to add value to your clients’ world. It provide further credibility and a way to explain AI search visibility in a way that’s grounded in something official.

Track your AI search visibility, but set reasonable expectations. Knowing whether and how your content shows up in AI-generated results still requires manual spot-checking across tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode.

Consistent, periodic queries around your agency’s specialty and differentiators will tell you more than any single tool at the moment.

This will inevitably change, but currently human review is the most reliable method.

Don’t let the acronyms distract you (or your clients). Whether it’s currently going by GEO, AEO, or just SEO in an AI era, the work is largely the same. Clean site, original expertise, well-organized content, and consistent publishing.

The agencies showing up in AI-generated recommendations are the ones that have built a body of work around what they’re expert in and where they have the right to win.

Final Thought

It’s helpful to finally hear from Google on how they handle this.  (At least for this month).

It confirms what we (RSW/US) have built for years: helpful, specific, expertise-driven content, which thankfully is the right long-term play regardless of how the search landscape changes.

For agencies thinking about how to position themselves in a market where prospects are increasingly using AI tools to research and shortlist firms before ever making contact, the question isn’t how to game AI search, but whether the expertise your firm has is visible, specific, and clearly yours.

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Wright-Patt Credit Union Finds Its Agency Partner - How a Disciplined Search Led to Cactus
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Wright-Patt Credit Union Finds Its Agency Partner: How a Disciplined Search Led to Cactus

RSW/AgencySearch recently had the opportunity to run the agency search for Wright-Patt Credit Union, one of the top credit unions in the country.

WPCU was looking for a new full-service agency partner that could move their business forward.

The official winner was announced recently via MediaPost: Wright-Patt Credit Union Banks On Cactus As AOR

Really excited for the Cactus team on this one.

How the Agency Search Worked: From 100+ Agencies to One Right Fit

  • Started with 100+ agency sites, all with credit union experience
  • Identified the best 30 of the bunch
  • Narrowed to 15 through pre-qualifying questions
  • Interviewed the 15, cut the list to 7

Any of those 7 could have made for a strong partner, which is how an effective search should work.

All 7 received an RFP.

From there, it came down to 3 finalists, each of whom got a one-on-one Q&A and chemistry call directly with the Wright-Patt team.

The 3 were then given a Challenge Document laying out the expectations for the final pitch, traveled to Dayton to make their case, and when it was over, Cactus had won the day.

Wright-Patt Credit Union Finds Its Agency Partner - How a Disciplined Search Led to Cactus

What Cactus Will Be Doing for Wright-Patt Credit Union

They’ll be handling brand strategy and positioning, campaigns across TV, video, radio, OOH, social, display, and search, plus media planning and buying.

The fit feels right on both sides of the table.

What the Client and Agency Had to Say

Joe Conrad, CEO of Cactus, put it well:

Wright-Patt Credit Union has built a stellar reputation with its members as a reliable, trusted financial partner since 1932.

Our job is simple: We just need to let people in Ohio know that not only can they bank at Wright-Patt Credit Union, but it is the clear choice if they want a banking partner that puts their needs first.

Tracy Szarzi-Fors, SVP of Marketing at WPCU, added:

We selected Cactus at an important milestone in our nearly 100-year history because they share our values and brought a clear point of view on how to move our brand forward,” added Tracy Szarzi-Fors, senior vice president, marketing at Wright-Patt Credit Union.

“Our identity is rooted in the people-helping-people philosophy, and we wanted to express that in a more bold, confident way.

Why This Search Worked

A well-defined search scope, a cooperative client, and agencies that took the process seriously.

That combination doesn’t always come together, but when it does, you get a result like this.

RSW/AgencySearch has been connecting marketers with the right agencies for 15 years, and searches like this one are exactly why we do it.

 

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Knoodle Founder's Hour-Mark-Sneider
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Building a Sustainable Agency Growth Engine: Insights from Mark Sneider

Most marketing agencies are experts at managing their clients’ brands, but they often neglect their own.

It is the classic “cobbler’s children” scenario where client work always takes priority, and internal business development falls by the wayside.

In a recent episode of the Knoodle Founder’s Hour, RSW/US President Mark Sneider sat down with Rosaria Cain to discuss why new business development is such a hurdle for agency principals and how to build a more sustainable outreach engine.


Per Mark:

Ad agencies dislike prospecting.

They get busy serving clients and neglect their own pipeline.

That’s the exact problem RSW/US solves: we help marketing agencies and professional service firms find qualified leads, set meetings, and get prospects as close to close as possible.

We don’t just book meetings, we help nurture prospects until the client can win them.

3 principles that make RSW work:

  2. Multi‑channel + consistency: phone, email, physical mail, LinkedIn: use multiple channels and stay persistent. Some prospects take years to respond; consistency pays off.

Key Highlights from this episode: Why Ad Agencies Hate Going After New Business (And How to Fix It)

The Myth of the Dead Cold Call

There is a common belief that reaching out via phone is a thing of the past; however, the data suggests otherwise.

While email deliverability becomes more difficult, the phone remains a reliable way to break through the noise.

Mark explains that success comes from a multi-channel approach, using a mix of phone, email, and even physical mail,  helps an agency stand out in an uncluttered environment.

Consistency Over Intensity

One of the biggest pitfalls for agencies is the “stop-and-go” nature of their outreach.

When an account demands attention, prospecting usually stops.

This lack of consistency creates a feast-or-famine cycle that’s hard to break.

Mark emphasizes that a dedicated resource must stay focused on the “hunt” every day, regardless of how busy the rest of the agency becomes with current deliverables.

Leveraging AI Without Losing the Human Touch

AI is changing how agencies handle prospecting, particularly in list-building and meeting preparation.

While these tools increase productivity, they’ve also led to a marketplace crowded with over-promises.

The key is using technology to work smarter while maintaining the strategic thinking that a “doer” agency simply cannot replicate.

High-level strategy is what separates a partner from a mere vendor in the eyes of a prospect.

Finding the Right New Business Talent

The role of a New Business Director is notoriously difficult, requiring resilience and a specific “hunter” mentality.

Mark shares that his hiring criteria shifted over time to prioritize strong sales experience first, followed by marketing knowledge.

Supporting these individuals within a collaborative, non-competitive culture is essential to surviving the high rejection rates inherent in the role.

Navigating Market Uncertainty

When the economy feels unpredictable, many marketers overreact by pulling back.

Agencies can stay ahead by focusing on strategic program development and consistent outreach.

Instead of going into “full sales mode,” the most effective strategy is to provide continuous value.

It’s about playing the long game and staying visible even when the market seems quiet.

The Power of Giving Away Your Best Thinking

The ultimate differentiator in a crowded industry is the willingness to provide strategic counsel before a contract is even signed.

Mark references the legacy of Leo Burnett to highlight that bringing constant value to a client’s life is the only way to sustain a long-term reputation.

When you offer insights that help a prospect solve a problem, you move from being a salesperson to a trusted advisor.

Build a supportive culture; we’re a team that helps each other, not a boiler room.

And when markets tighten, companies still need new business.

Stay predictable in your execution, reach more prospects, and keep bringing value. That resilience matters.

A cultural operating line Mark shares with every hire:

Bring constant, added value.” If your offering can be reduced to a commodity, you’ll be competing on price or noise. Help clients win with thinking, not just tactics.
Whether you’re an agency founder, a sales professional, or an entrepreneur navigating market shifts, this episode focuses on resilience, smart prospecting, and building meaningful business connections.
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The RSW/US First Meeting Blueprint: 20+ Multi-Channel Tactics for Agency Growth
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How to Get Your First Meeting with a Prospect: 20+ Practical Tips for Ad Agencies, PR Firms & Marketing Services Companies

Breaking Through: The RSW/US First Meeting Blueprint

Getting a first meeting with a prospect is one of the hardest business development challenges an agency faces consistently.

Most agencies get their new business from referrals and repeat clients, which is great when it’s happening, but not a growth strategy.

At some point, you have to break into new relationships, and that means figuring out how to reach people who don’t know you yet and have no particular reason to respond.

The RSW/US First Meeting Blueprint is a practical, channel-by-channel collection of tips built around what actually works in today’s outreach environment.

Scroll all the way down download it.

The RSW/US First Meeting Blueprint: 20+ Multi-Channel Tactics for Agency Growth

Bonus: Watch the Full Day 2 Conference Session

The Blueprint provides the framework, while this session adds the essential texture. At our annual conference, veteran New Business Directors Brandon Buttrey and Chad Dills detailed the RSW/US approach to securing first meetings.

With a combined 19 years of daily experience across diverse categories, they cover mistakes to avoid and tactics that work today. The session includes:

  • Tactical Training: Strategies for physical mail, email cadence, and opening lines.

  • Expert Q&A: Insights on AI tools, LinkedIn, video brochures, and cell phone outreach.

  • Navigational Help: Key timestamps below allow you to jump to specific segments or share them with your team.

Jump to What Matters Most

  • 03:26:00 Topic Selection – Why “first meeting with a cold prospect” matters
  • 05:05:00 Defining the Cold‑Prospect Challenge
  • 08:00:00 Prospecting Pain: Loneliness & the grind of cold outreach
  • 08:41:00 Why Prospecting is Hard Now – saturation, AI‑flood, noise
  • 10:26:00 RSW Outreach Framework – Mail, email, phone & creative tactics
  • 11:16:00 Physical Mailer Deep‑Dive – why it works and how to use it
  • 14:22:00 Physical Mailer Benefits & Real‑world examples
  • 17:23:00 Mailers as Conversation Starters – “Did you get it?”
  • 19:24:00 Creating Effective Mailers – teamwork, batch size, bright envelopes, intro note
  • 22:36:00 7 Practical Mailer Tips (overview)
  • 24:30:00 Email Outreach Best Practices – research, AI‑assist, 80% rule, brevity
  • 33:14:00 Crafting a Strong Call‑to‑Action in Cold Emails
  • 36:15:00 Email Deliverability – avoid links, PDFs, signatures in first blast
  • 38:17:00 Plain‑Text vs. Rich‑Media Emails – when to use each
  • 40:47:00 Phone‑Call Outreach – why it still matters & intro video
  • 45:01:00 Phone‑Call Script & Practice – write, rehearse, voice‑mail tip
  • 48:40:00 Optimal Call Timing – best windows & days of the week
  • 51:19:00 Phone‑Call Block Scheduling – 2‑hour focused calling session
  • 52:02:00 Marketer Feedback on Outreach Methods – what works & what doesn’t
  • 01:01:02 Phone‑Call Start Script Exercise – write your opening line
  • 01:01:20 Creative Outreach Ideas – Loom videos, QR‑codes, gift boxes

A Note on What You’ll watch

A live poll during this session revealed that 52% of attendees rarely use physical mail, and 70% have never called a prospect.

While these channels are challenging, sticking only to common methods leads to average results.

Our directors speak candidly about the difficulty of the “hunt,” from days with no responses to the mental shift required for cell phone outreach.

This session demonstrates how staying consistent across multiple channels helps agencies reach prospects that others miss—the same work we perform for our clients daily.

Is Your Firm Getting in Front of the Prospects That Need What You Do?

RSW/US can help you get in front of the right decision-makers.

We build the program, generate the right meetings, and help move opportunities forward.

Want to see exactly what’s included in a full program? Explore Our Offerings

Want to understand how we work day-to-day? See Our Process

Have questions before you reach out? Read Our FAQ

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Your Agency Has a LinkedIn Newsletter. Now What? A Business Development Strategy That Works

I get a fair amount of agency LinkedIn newsletter invitations, which is great because it means these agencies are working to stay visible, but are these newsletters succeeding as business development tools?

For agencies, LinkedIn newsletters should function as a long-term business development and prospect nurturing tool, not just another content channel.

However, from conversations I’ve had, this typically happens: an invitation arrives from the agency to their prospects, a few issues are delivered, and then it falls off. (Like many internal agency new business efforts.)

No follow-up and no attempt to turn subscriber engagement into actual business development conversations.

LinkedIn newsletters are effective when integrated into a larger strategy, but treated as a standalone task, they can be just another content checkbox.

“Look, we’re doing it! Wait, we have to do it again?”

In this post, I’ll cover why most agency LinkedIn newsletters fail, what agencies misunderstand about the platform, and how to use LinkedIn newsletters as part of a real business development strategy.

Why LinkedIn Newsletters Matter for Agency Business Development

To give the above header some credence, I pulled some initial numbers.

  • LinkedIn newsletter engagement has increased 47% year-over-year.

  • Consistent newsletters achieve open rates between 35% and 40%.

  • And this one’s important: these articles are indexed by Google and perform differently than standard posts. LinkedIn newsletters are hosted on the Pulse sub-domain, which generates 4.2 million monthly organic visits from search engines. Because LinkedIn has a domain authority of 99/100, your articles can rank for industry keywords and appear in Google AI Overviews far more effectively than a standalone agency website.

What Most Agencies Get Wrong With LinkedIn Newsletters

After receiving more of these invitations than I can remember, a few patterns stand out:

  1. Generic content with no point of view:

    I see these newsletters read like they were written by a committee determined to offend no one. Not that your goal is to literally offend, of course, but if your competitors could put their logo on your content and no one would notice, you’ve got to work on your distinctive voice, which comes from your expertise.

  2. No follow-up strategy.

    This is a missed opportunity. Someone subscribes and typically there’s no follow up.  Especially if it’s a prospect, make a connection and thank them, and get them on your “warmer” list.

  3. No clear call to action.

    Every issue should nudge the reader toward something. Not a hard sell, but agencies don’t sell themselves enough.

  4. Inconsistent cadence.

    You’ll lose, or be ignored by, subscribers who signed up for weekly content and get three issues in a row followed by a two-month silence. To be up front, I struggle with this part, but it needs to happen.

Your Agency Has a LinkedIn Newsletter. Now What A Business Development Strategy That Works

LinkedIn Newsletter Best Practices That Drive New Business

Don’t just publish; use the tool to drive revenue:

Use it as a warm touchpoint in a longer sequence.

A newsletter isn’t a closer, it’s a nurture tool, and agencies often don’t have the patience to stick with it because they treat it like it should be a closer.  It’s a long game.

Use your newsletter as a “warm” reason to reach out to an active prospect, providing value.

Instead of a cold “just checking in” email, it gives you a reason to reach out.

You can say: “I wrote something last week I thought you’d find useful , did you catch it?”

Subject lines should earn the open.

Your title is your subject line, so keep that in mind, just as you do with any sales email.

Stay away from titles like “Our Latest Thinking”.

Use specifics, like “Agency New Business in Q3: What the Data Says.”.

Publish on a consistent schedule, weekly if you can sustain it.

Among the top 100 LinkedIn newsletters by subscriber count, 59% publish weekly.

That can be tough, so if that’s just not feasible, try to aim for twice a month.

Engage with new subscribers directly.

While they often don’t show you specifics, LinkedIn’s analytics do show you who your newest subscribers are, with a direct option to follow, connect, or message them.

Don’t ignore that!

Tie your newsletter to your broader BD prospecting sequence.

If you’re reaching out to a prospect and they’re already a subscriber, you have social proof and a conversation starter built in.

If they’re not yet a subscriber, the newsletter can be part of how you introduce your thinking.

Things You Probably Don’t Know About LinkedIn Newsletters

A lot of the tactical advice out there misses some important mechanics.

Newsletters bypass the algorithm.

Unlike regular posts that only reach about 5-7% of your followers, newsletters go straight to the inbox and trigger an in-app notification for every subscriber.

When you publish your first issue, LinkedIn automatically invites all your connections and followers to subscribe.

This is something you probably know, but just in case, when you launch your newsletter, LinkedIn invites all your existing connections to subscribe for you.

Anonymized Data

Good old LinkedIn doesn’t like to share: you can see demographics like job titles and seniority (e.g., if 40% of your readers are VPs), but LinkedIn won’t give you their individual email addresses or names in a report.

To see who is actually biting, you have to track comments or use UTM parameters on your links to see which companies are hitting your site.

Newsletter articles are Google-indexed.

I said it already, but it’s worth repeating: Your issues can show up in organic search results, which means a well-crafted issue on a relevant keyword can attract people entirely outside your LinkedIn network.

This is essentially free SEO that most agencies aren’t thinking about.

You Don’t Own The Audience

You cannot export your subscriber list (Booo!).

You own the content, but LinkedIn owns the relationship.

What I’ve Learned from Running My Own

I’ve been publishing Taking Care of Business for a while now, 107 issues in.

We have a tight team at RSW that writes content for business development of our own, and I write a fair amount of it, so it only makes sense to publish that everywhere.

I want to stress this: if you’re already pushing out a newsletter to prospects, push it out via LinkedIn newsletter as well.

Don’t be concerned a prospect may get it twice, as good as it may be, they probably didn’t get to it on the first pass.

What I’ve really learned is, you can’t just push out content on one channel.

I can definitively point to agency partners who engaged with me through my LinkedIn newsletter but that happened because they also get our RSW/US emailed newsletter, direct mail from me, and reach outs across email, phone, and LinkedIn.

You can sign up for the RSW/US newsletter here BTW.

FAQ: LinkedIn Newsletters for Agencies

Are LinkedIn newsletters effective for agency business development?

Yes, but only when they’re part of a broader business development strategy. A LinkedIn newsletter works best as a long-term nurture tool that keeps your agency visible with prospects over time, rather than as a standalone lead-generation tactic.

How often should agencies publish a LinkedIn newsletter?

Weekly is ideal if you can sustain the quality and consistency. If not, publishing twice a month on a reliable schedule is better than posting inconsistently and disappearing for long stretches.

Do LinkedIn newsletters help with SEO?

Yes. LinkedIn newsletter articles are indexed by Google and can rank in search results because they live on LinkedIn’s high-authority domain. That gives agencies an opportunity to appear for industry-related keywords and potentially surface in AI-generated search results as well.

Can you export LinkedIn newsletter subscribers?

No. LinkedIn owns the subscriber relationship, which means you can view subscriber analytics inside the platform, but you cannot export a subscriber email list directly.

What’s the biggest mistake agencies make with LinkedIn newsletters?

Treating the newsletter like a standalone content task instead of integrating it into a broader prospecting and relationship-building process. The agencies that see results use newsletters to support outreach, follow-up, and ongoing visibility with prospects.

The Bottom Line on LinkedIn Newsletters for Agency Business Development

A LinkedIn newsletter, used strategically, is a BD tool that compounds over time, and the platform’s notification infrastructure means your content gets delivered.

Will it carry the weight for your entire BD strategy? No it will not, but you can’t expect it to.

Create a simple strategy around it, because LinkedIn is a lot of noise these days, but with a plan for multiple touchpoints, it can be an effective tool.

And if you’re not already subscribed to Taking Care of Business, I’d be glad to have you. It’s where I write about agency new business, prospecting, and what’s working out there.

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Navigating Prospect Decision Fatigue 
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Navigating Prospect Decision Fatigue 

Seeing some decision fatigue with prospects lately.  

Not across the board, the activity and interest is still there, but that air of general uncertainty kind of hangs over everything,   

And that’s making some small and mid-sized agencies stand still.  

Standing still won’t service your business in the long run.  

As an agency CEO told me just this week, if you want to compete, you have to move. And we’re moving. 

Decision Fatigue or not, you still have to stay in front of your prospects because it will be too late when they’re ready and you’re not in front of them, or they forgot about you. 

You can’t let prospect indecision dictate your momentum.  

Your clients need guidance, especially as they watch larger companies struggle to make the math work. 

The High Cost of the Automated Future

Take our good old friend, AI, for example. 

Look at these notes from Axios: 

Uber’s chief technology officer already blew through his full 2026 AI budget due to token costs, according to The Information. 

If companies with the largest IT budgets are blowing through 2026 funds already, the automated future isn’t a certain fix.

Human labor and specialized expertise are proving to be the more cost-efficient, stable bet.  

So while giant holding companies are beholden to shareholders and quarterly earnings, small and mid-sized firms have the flexibility to offer stable solutions without worrying about fluctuating token margins. 

You can highlight that your human expertise (combined with your tech stack) is a fixed, predictable investment. While the tech giants are trying to figure out how to pass those costs onto their clients, you can provide a stable partnership that respects a budget. 

 

Breaking Out of the Pipeline-Filling Dross

Michael Farmer described the state of creative work in his C-Suite Blues Substack: 

Directing the creative agencies to develop thousands of low-cost adaptations to fill the media channel pipelines. Today, only 15% of agency creative deliverables involve original ad creation. The bulk of creative agency work — 85% of all deliverables — are adaptations for digital, social and programmatic media. This is hardly the stuff that creates brand equity and creates loyal customers. It’s pipeline-filling dross.

That 85% is the pipeline-filling dross that AI is designed to churn out, but it doesn’t build brands.  

Large agencies are stuck in that context because they have to feed the machine.  

They aren’t as nimble as you, and they’re beholden to a model that prioritizes volume over value.  

Using Agility as Your Primary Asset

You have the room to focus on the work that creates brand equity, the work AI can’t replicate and that big agencies are too distracted to prioritize.  

While, as you know, large agencies have layers of bureaucracy to justify their overhead, you can use your size to make decisions and implement changes for clients in days, not months.  

Your agility is an asset. 

Prospects are looking for partners who feel safe to sign with.  

Your ability to provide direct, human accountability is a differentiator against a big agency’s automated factory.  

Decision fatigue happens when there’s too much information and not enough insight, and there’s a crap-ton of information out there right now. 

You can position your agency to show prospects (and clients) an actionable path. 

Big firms are currently struggling with tech costs and the pressure to prove ROI.  

That’s your opening to lead prospects through their fatigue and information overload. 

 Don’t let their hesitation keep you parked. If you want to compete, you have to move.

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Your New Business Director Isn’t a Silver Bullet

Let’s get rid of a persistent myth in the industry: hiring a New Business Director (NBD) is not  a silver bullet that will change things overnight.

It’s a cycle: leadership brings in someone and expects them to reverse years of stagnant outreach or weak positioning through sheer willpower.

The Illusion of the Agency Savior

Too often, before a new business lead has finished setting up the CRM, leadership expects them to turn everything around overnight.

Your prospects may think linearly about how an agency fits their world, but you can’t afford that kind of thinking with your internal talent.

If you treat your NBD like a one-person fix, you’re not just setting them up for potential failure, you’re walking away from your own responsibility to build a culture of growth.

Taking the New Business Blinders Off

There’s no overnight sensation in agency business development.

Agency growth is a long-term, high-discipline game. (We answered a bunch of questions here we usually get about our biz dev here if you’re curious.)

Don’t expect high-value wins to close until the six-to-twelve-month mark.

Your sales cycle might be shorter depending on your niche, but starting with any other expectation creates a pressure cooker where your NBD is forced to chase bad-fit leads just to hit a number.

Your New Business Director Isn't a Silver Bullet

AI is fun!

Four Ways You’re Sabotaging Your New Business Director

To give your new business lead a real shot, stop hamstringing them with old agency habits that treat the role like a catch-all.

  1. The Fragmentation of Focus:

    Your NBD has to stay focused on the hunt. That means no account management duties, no “helping out” on client projects. That kills the momentum you hired them to create.

  2. The RFP Quagmire:

    If your lead is spending half their day on RFPs, your outbound strategy will fall behind. Inbound and outbound require different mental gears.

  3. Distinctive Positioning Over Generic Appeal:

    You can’t hand an NBD a generic full-service deck and expect results. Work with them on positioning that’s distinctive and rooted in language that solves real business problems.

  4. The Need for Internal Shielding:

    Creative departments and business development often work at cross-purposes. It’s your job to protect your NBD and make sure they have the internal support and priority they need to win.

The bottom line is that a New Business Director is an engine, not a foundation.

If you provide them with sharp positioning, protected time, and realistic milestones, they’ll build a pipeline that sustains the firm for years.

But if you sit back and wait for them to perform magic in a vacuum, you’ll be right back here in twelve months looking for their replacement.

Success requires a shared firm-wide commitment to the process, and that starts with how you set them up on day one.

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The RSWUS Agency Identity Guide 5 Pillars of Effective Positioning and 10 Rules for AI Search Success
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The RSW/US Agency Identity Guide: 5 Pillars of Effective Positioning and 10 Rules for AI Search Success

Agency brand positioning for AI search is no longer optional.

If your positioning is vague, you are invisible to both the algorithms and the humans making the decisions.

This RSW/US Agency Identity Guide keeps things simple.

We dive into the five core elements you need to make your brand stand out, from defining your audience with precision to identifying the archetype that sets you apart.

You’ll learn how to identify what your agency “owns” and how to build a personality that carries through everything you say and do.

By establishing these pillars, you create a foundation that helps prospects understand exactly why they should believe in your expertise.

The RSWUS Agency Identity Guide 5 Pillars of Effective Positioning and 10 Rules for AI Search Success

10 Rules for Improving Your Agency’s AI Search Performance

In this guide, we’ve also included ten actionable ways to optimize how AI search engines read and represent your agency.

We cover:

  • Refining your homepage language to ensure your archetype is clear rather than vague.
  • Restructuring your case studies to serve as proof of your positioning.
  • Updating how you talk about your services to build “semantic confidence” through consistent terminology.

These practices move beyond simple keyword counting to help you build “interpretive confidence”, so AI tools understand what your agency is for and who it serves.

This guide is a vital addition to your business development strategy because it ensures your agency is not just found, but correctly categorized and recommended byAI.

How RSW/US Helps Agencies Turn Better Positioning Into Better Pipeline

At RSW/US, we specialize in helping agencies, marketing services, and PR firms find their footing in this shifting market.

We provide the strategic outsourced business development and lead generation services you need to break through, reach the right decision-makers, and get closer to closing business.

Is Your Firm Getting in Front of the Prospects That Need What You Do?

RSW/US can help you get in front of the right decision-makers.

We build the program, generate the right meetings, and help move opportunities forward.

Want to see exactly what’s included in a full program? Explore Our Offerings

Want to understand how we work day-to-day? See Our Process

Have questions before you reach out? Read Our FAQ

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Low Cost Shortfalls – 5 Keys to a Successful Outsourced Sales Program

All things critical to smart outsourced new business outreach

I just completed a series of short videos that talk about all the things critical to have when bringing on a service to manage your outsourced new business development effort.

At LAUNCH, RSW’s lower cost outsourced new business program, we do it all when the others simply don’t.

There are five critical factors that have to be considered when creating or employing an outsourced new business/lead generation program.  And unfortunately, you can’ t just pick and choose from this list, you need them all.

Smart planning & strategy setting at start of outreach effort

You can’t just jump in and hope an outsourced program works.  If you bring a firm on board, they need to understand you, your company, your ICPs, and your positioning.  With LAUNCH, we spend the time upfront doing all of this.  We dive into your work, we identify a compelling and unique positioning, and we get to know you and how to best work with you.

Quality lists as foundation

Pulling down lists using an SIC code or taking an existing list and using it for prospecting can not only be time-consuming, but it can be down-right wrong.  Too often when we get lists for clients wanting us to use the list for our prospecting, much of it is old and inaccurate.  And even the best list resources in the world are going to give you things in lists that simply don’t make sense.  Defining your list building criteria upfront and cleaning lists to insure their accuracy is going to make your outsourced new business program so much more positive.  Understand what your outsourced provider is going to do/use. How are they going to avoid reaching out to your clients?  All questions that need to be answered before any work is don’t.

Right tech and intel tools

Tech and intel tools don’t need fancy names like WINMO to be effective.  In fact, with AI entrance into the market, tools like WINMO simply aren’t necessary anymore.  And no sense locking yourself into one single platform to get the insights and to arm yourself with the power to run a great program.  What is key is making sure your outsourced new business firm has invested in tools to give you the edge you’re going to need.  At LAUNCH, we don’t employ one single platform, we invest in many to help the SDRs representing our clients, stay 1/2 a step ahead.

Setting expectations properly

We’ve all seen it. The emails with the promises that far exceed reality. We also see new business directors inside organizations that fail to set expectations properly and as a result, management gets frustrated and eventually the relationship ends.  The average tenure of an internal NBD is less than 2 years.  The tenure of our staff at RSW/US and LAUNCH is close to 9 year…something we’re very proud of.  Part of what drives that is the way in which we set expectations.  We don’t exaggerate.  We don’t inflate.  We tell it like it is and remain transparent throughout the life of the program. Keep a skeptical eye on anyone with the big promises.  OK to give them a try, but the likelihood is they will fail to deliver.

Multi-channel approach

And the last thing any outsourced program (or internal program) needs to employ is a multi-channel approach to outreach.  It’s what we do here at RSW and LAUNCH and it works.  One just never knows what a prospect is gong to be most receptive to – what channel is going to find its way into his brain space.  Platforms are busy and can be confusing – so bettering your chances by going at it with many and with volume is going to be the way you win. There are plenty of programs out there that forgot that humans actually exist and can do a good job prospecting. Not here at LAUNCH – we’re an all U.S. based team of tenured Sales Development Reps that operate as if they look like their client’s company and their job is to find qualified leads and set meetings – and when asked do some follow-up to help move the prospect along.

LAUNCH – The Better Way to Lower Cost Outsourced New Business

So…if you’re struggling to maintain an effective flow of outreach.

Hired a new business person on, inside, and they have not been successful?

Not just ready yet to engage with more of a full-service program, like RSW/US?

Do you need to fill what is looking like a pretty baron pipeline.

LAUNCH just might be your solution.

Give us a shout (513-293-6785)

Or drop us a line (mark@rswus.com)

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