Speakers

📢 Here are the current speakers we have for this event. We will also hear from you – the event is all about taking part.

How to Optimise Your Agency for Cold Outreach

Agencies are geared up to convert one type of sales lead better than any other: referrals. 

So when it’s time to go looking for new leads in the “much-maligned” cold-channel, they’re rarely set up to convert. 

“Most agencies have creds that convert well for referrals, so everyone convinces themselves that their collateral is in really good shape,” says Steve Fair, co-founder of Sponge New Business. “But it turns out that to convert referrals, you could drop a spider in some ink and let it run around on a page and you’d still win.”

“Cold outreach is much more demanding. And if you can’t communicate what your business can do for a client concisely, you can’t communicate it at all.”

👉 At Pipeline, Steve will take us through how to make your cold outreach more effective, ensuring you leave the session with ideas you can put into play straight away.

He’ll cover the four key areas of marketing collateral:

  1. Website
  2. Email outreach
  3. Social media presence 
  4. Creds deck

“It’s a brutal segment of your prospecting plan,” says Steve. “But there are things you can do to stay in the hunt longer and convert more of your hard-sought opportunities.”

“Working in cold outreach is tough anyway – there’s no easy way. So you only need to find those little 1% advantages here and there.”

If your cold outreach strategy is in need of a refresh (or a jumpstart), don’t miss out on this session, where Steve will share some of the best lead gen advice he’s picked up over 20 years of working in new business.

Insight-Driven Strategies: Which Sectors to Target to Boost Agency Growth

In a constantly shifting advertising landscape, understanding where to focus your efforts is essential for new business success. But it doesn’t have to feel overwhelming.

With so many agencies competing for the same pitch, it’s more important than ever to opt for insight-driven sales strategies – which is where ALF Insight steps in.

👉 At Pipeline – Amanda Rosevear, General Manager of ALF Insight, will share the latest trends in ad spend to help you target the right sectors and channels, and ensure your pitches are more strategic and effective.

Expect insights into key growth areas for you to target, and learn which media channels continue to dominate in which sectors so you can ensure you’re approaching the right brand with the right message.

How We Automate Outbound Sales as a Small Agency

Agencies can’t afford to sit back and wait for leads to roll in. In today’s competitive market, proactive lead generation is non-negotiable. 

But it doesn’t all have to be manual.

In fact, Aleks Certa, founder of The Social Way, automates her agency’s entire sales process – from lead generation to qualification – only stepping in at the final conversion. 

“What works really well is automated webinars and audits,” Aleks explains. “You audit an account in your niche, present the findings, and then offer a free call at the end to further demonstrate your expertise.”

Using a mix of automated webinars, audits, and targeted ads, Aleks has built a scalable system that brings in qualified leads without the constant grind. She leverages easily accessible tools like Meta Business Suite and LinkedIn ads to drive traffic, capture leads, and streamline her agency’s sales pipeline.

However, while it may seem robotic for those that know the behind the scenes – automating most of this process doesn’t remove the human element: “The calls still need to be handled by myself or my team to convert into a piece of business,” says Aleks. 

“But that is the only manual part of the process.”

In this session, Aleks will reveal how she automates her agency’s outbound sales. If you’re looking to streamline your agency’s sales function, Aleks will walk you through the exact strategies and tools her agency uses to bring in qualified leads—without sacrificing the personal touch.

How We’re Using Our LinkedIn CRM to Find Our Dream Clients

Charli Hunt and Chris Wright are no stranger to the challenges of lead generation on LinkedIn. 

After years of navigating the platform, they realised that most of us are missing something critical: a way to genuinely connect with potential clients, not just add to our contact list. 

“The problem with LinkedIn is that you can connect with people all day, but are those connections actually doing anything for you?” Charli explains. “I wanted to build a tool that helps you turn those connections into real relationships, so you can grow your business in a meaningful way.”

So they decided to do something about it – and The Lime One was born.

At Pipeline, Charli and Chris will walk us through their journey in developing The Lime One, a CRM tool designed specifically to help agencies make LinkedIn more than just a numbers game, and what lessons you can take away from it.

By downloading your LinkedIn connections and organising them in a way that allows you to nurture relationships, The Lime One helps you stay on top of who you’re connecting with and how you’re interacting with them.

Using her own business as a case study, Charli has already seen a huge impact: “In just six weeks, I saw my LinkedIn impressions skyrocket from a couple of thousand to over 25,000 a week just by engaging with the right people consistently,” she says. 

“It’s not about spamming people – it’s about being intentional with your outreach and showing up in their conversations.”

If you’re looking for a way to maximise your time on LinkedIn, join us for this practical demo session in which Charli and Chris will show you the ways in which you can engage and follow up with your prospects strategically so that every interaction on LinkedIn brings you closer to building real relationships with potential clients.

DON’T SELL: Why Long Term Relationship Building Always Pays Off

“Everyone’s attitude towards new business is totally wrong,” says Ryan Hall, founder of Friday Solved. “They’re hunting for briefs that don’t exist, expecting to pick apples from trees they haven’t even planted yet.”

In a world of instant gratification, Ryan is championing a different approach to new clients: Don’t Sell.

At his first agency, Ryan spent five years nurturing a relationship with a prospect before landing a multi-million-pound account – something a lot of agencies wouldn’t have the patience for. 

“We were consistent,” recalls Ryan. “And it was worth the consistency. You just treat it appropriately at the right stage and go, ‘I’m gonna turn up; I’m gonna get this one. I’m going to stick with it, and I’m going to show that we can add value.’”

But this wasn’t the only deal that got that level of attention. In fact, nearly every deal in their pipeline got similar treatment. 

What started as a modest £20k strategy project eventually led to redesigning the client’s entire digital customer experience. The payoff was worth the wait.

“Strangers don’t buy from strangers,” he says. “You need to build trust, and that trust turns into relationships, and relationships turn into business.”

But in today’s economic climate, when agencies are coming out of the hardest period they’ve seen, is there still room for such patience?

Ryan believes it’s more crucial than ever.

“The market is going to improve, but let’s be real — it’s going to become competitive,” he warns.

So, how can you get a head start on the slow burn process?

  1. Start now: “Yesterday was the right date to start doing this. And if it wasn’t yesterday, it was the day before.”
  2. Be conscious about pricing: “Brands have been conditioned over the last 18 months. They’ve gotten the same for less, so they’ll want more for their money.”
  3. Stay consistent: “It’s not going to be like this watershed moment where the light comes on. Every market is going to come on in different spaces and speeds.”
  4. Add value, always: “Don’t hunt just for the brief. Turn up and be valuable.”
  5. Don’t Sell: “No one likes to be sold to, so solve problems and work from the inside out. Don’t batter the door down.”

At Pipeline, Ryan will dive deep into the ‘Don’t Sell’ strategy, sharing how agencies can evolve to meet the changing needs of clients, build lasting relationships, and ultimately, win more business.

“How Productising Helped Us Get Bigger Projects”

Danny Somekh had a problem. 

His agency, Huddle Creative, wasn’t getting the level of clientele he wanted.

“We were trying to move away from being a jack of all trades,” admits Danny. “We did branding, design, digital, and content, so we repositioned ourselves to be more around strategic branding.”

But a mere repositioning wasn’t enough to get those bigger clients. Danny realised that to truly stand out and attract the brands they wanted, they had to take a larger step: they needed to transform how they presented their services.

“We started treating our services as if they were physical products,” he explains. “It’s about branding them, giving it a tried and tested process, and making sure all the resources are preloaded. It minimises the risk of scope creep and also gives us more control over the project.”

One of their most successful efforts was productising their brand strategy workshop, which they called the “Huddle Hack”.

“We won a huge project off the back of that,” says Danny. “People found us because of the Huddle Hack, not because of the agency.”

This approach didn’t just make their services more attractive – it gave them more control over their projects. 

Now, Huddle Creative is finding themselves talking to huge clients, and having conversations he couldn’t have imagined having a year ago.

“This morning I was on a discovery call with a prospective client, and they said, ‘We looked at your website, and I just wanted to check that we could afford you’,” he recounts. “And this is a big company, right? We’re talking about a 100k budget.”

“And it’s all because we’ve sharpened our identity; we’re a very B2B focused agency. And when you focus on one thing and you’re more tightly positioned, it’s just much easier to have those fruitful conversations. It becomes very evident that we know what we’re talking about.”

At Pipeline, Danny will share more insights on how productising services can transform your agency’s prospects and help you win bigger clients, as well as why positioning yourself accurately can make all the difference.

“How We Gamified Our Referral Scheme”

If you asked most agencies where they get the majority of their new business from, they’d tell you: “Referrals.”

But if you asked those same agencies how often they ASK for referrals, they’d answer: “Almost never.”

Is it politeness? 
Nervousness? 
Lack of proactivity? 

Whatever the cause, the diagnosis is clear: agencies are notoriously bad at asking for referrals. 

But one agency founder seems to have found a way around it. 

Gavin Willis, founder of Search Seven, has created a unique charity referral initiative: as well as offering financial rewards for referrals, he also donates to a charity of the referrer’s choice each time a new client is brought on board.

“When I started this scheme, the idea was simple: let’s give something back,” Gavin explains. “It’s worked better than I ever could’ve imagined.”

“We’ve got quite a big network of partners, and most of our clients come in directly through partnerships. We actually get more recommendations through our agency partners than we do our clients.”

Here’s how it works:

  1. The referral scheme is gamified as S Club 7%, a football-inspired league where participants compete for top referrer spots.
  2. Referrers earn 7% of revenues from referred clients, with 5% going to them and 2% to a charity of their choice.
  3. In the second year, referrers receive 3%, while 2% continues going to the charity.
  4. Qualified leads earn 1 point, and closed leads earn 3 points, all tracked via a live leaderboard.
  5. The top six referrers every six months are rewarded with a meal, either at a partner event or with Gavin himself.

“It’s a win-win,” he says. “Our referring partners feel great about making a positive impact, and we get to grow our business in a way that aligns with our company’s ethos, and in a fun way.”

While the scheme is mostly marketed to Search Seven’s partnership network, Gavin suggests this works just as well for referral requests from clients too: “We’re winning business from this scheme.”

The most important thing for Gavin, though, is keeping it light-hearted.

“It’s even more fun with partners, because they’re peers,” he says. “It’s a fun way to keep engaged with our partner network. The primary aim is giving our partners a place to get their business seen, and a way we can make a tangible difference as a collective. 

In this session, Gavin will share how this scheme came to life, the challenges he encountered, and how it has positively affected his agency’s business pipeline. If you’re keen to set up an official referral scheme for your agency, but are unsure of how to convince clients to do so, this could give you the answers you need.

Find Your Agency’s Narrative

In a crowded marketplace where agencies all seem to offer the same thing, the ones that stand out are the ones that tell the best stories.

When Joe Daniels founded LEFTFIELD, it was based on a single belief: sell the narrative and the product sells itself.

“If you can get people to buy into your perspective and your approach and way of thinking about things, then they’ll automatically put you first in line when they need that product or service – because you are the one that’s educated them about it in the first place.”

Joe’s career didn’t start with agencies, but with SaaS companies. It was there that he discovered just how bad many businesses are – agencies included – at communicating their value. 

“There are loads of companies doing the same thing, and the differentiation just isn’t there,” Joe explains. “It’s not enough to sell your features—anyone can do that. You need to tell a story that sets you apart.”

In this session, Joe will share practical steps to help your agency avoid the trap of becoming just another service provider. You’ll learn how to craft a narrative that doesn’t just sell your services to the right people—it makes your agency unforgettable.

Agencies Who Are Great at Their Own Marketing

Agencies are often filled to the brim with client work. 

So that begs the question: where do they find the time, energy, and resources to make their own marketing so great?

But more than that, what’s the secret to marketing your agency in such a memorable way?

Is it about crafting a unique brand voice that cuts through the noise, or mastering the art of turning your agency’s expertise into compelling content? Or maybe it’s leveraging cutting-edge tools and platforms to amplify your message? 

At Pipeline, we’ll be joined by three prominent marketing voices in the agency world to get to the heart of how they’ve nailed their own marketing whilst juggling client demands and staying ahead of industry trends.

Meet your panellists:

Dan Knowlton – co-founder & CMO of Knowlton

B2B tends to have a stigma attached to it – one of boredom.

But Dan has shattered this perception with their unique approach to agency marketing.

“We’ve got a whole process where we constantly try and test new styles and formats of content and approaches,” he explains. “Each week, we have a weekly meeting where the marketing team presents to the rest of the team what we’ve been doing and what the results are – kind of like a test and learn.”

“Something that’s working really well for us currently in building awareness is creating content that talks about viral campaigns and why they’re really good or bad, and how we’d improve them.”

It’s all about strategically moving prospects through their marketing funnel.

This isn’t their usual entertaining content, but it is just one piece of the larger puzzle at Knowlton.

“We still base everything we do around the traditional marketing funnel, building awareness, building trust and driving action, building trust and driving action,” says Dan. “How can we basically blow our own trumpet without coming across arrogant and creating content that actually adds value?”

“So we talk a lot about our client campaigns and the results they achieve. Like, ‘This generated millions of views and millions in sales; here’s how we did it; we did this, this, and this.”

Mai Gonzalez Berg – marketing manager at Powerhouse

On the other side of the marketing spectrum, Mai is opting for an educational approach with an integrated tech stack.

“We’ve shifted into a more educational marketing approach,” explains Mai. “At the top of the funnel, we have a lead generation stage where we attract new contacts through different lead magnets. Then, they fall into this lead nurture stage, where they stay for quite a while.”

But this does require a bit more patience. 

“We’ve seen that it takes about six months for leads to actually convert and bring any work in,” she says. “But the leads that come in and convert are of much higher value.”

But perhaps most crucially, Mai is determined to make sure marketing and sales are aligned in their efforts. 

“We’ve got a sales and marketing strategy where everything is integrated,” she says. “No matter the touchpoint, whenever (and wherever) someone engages with us, they see the same kind of topics and content reflected in our cold outreach.”

This holistic approach supercharges Powerhouse’s marketing efforts, giving them the best shot at success and driving agency growth.

Stokely Howard – creative director at Trendy Grandad

What is it that makes your brand unique? If you can figure that out, life in marketing will get easier. 

At least, it did for Stokely.

“Personal brand is definitely number one for us,” he says. “It’s very much about shouting as loud as possible in every single way.”

Stokely’s marketing strategy for Trendy Grandad revolves around four key elements:

  1. Being topical.
  2. Resonating with their target audience.
  3. Adding humour.
  4. Showcasing their proposition. 

“Those are the four things I’m always trying to tick off when I’m creating our content,” he explains. “But it’s mainly about being consistent really, and about sharing the professional side of you as well as the personal.”

“I think it’s also having the mindset that everything you do is content in some way, shape or form. Our ethos is to just film as much as we possibly can; we’re constantly sharing how a storyboard is created, how an edit is done, the timeline, the scripts – we’re constantly educating people about video.”

If you’re curious about the different ways in which you could be marketing your agency, or you just want to improve on what you’re already doing, this discussion could offer you the answers you’re looking for.

Why You Need to Invest in Video Marketing for Your Agency

We now live in a world where user-generated content reigns supreme and short-form video is the king of social media. 

Anyone can create and publish videos now, potentially grabbing the attention of millions of people.

But this puts marketers in a rather precarious position: how do they stand out amongst the crowd and cut through the noise?

And is video marketing really that important?

Short answer: Yes.

At Pipeline, we’re bringing together four voices from different agencies to discuss how they’ve cracked the code of their video marketing and how you can do the same.

Meet your panellists:

Daisy Whitehouse – managing director at Down at the Social

Daisy’s approach to video marketing is refreshingly simple: authenticity trumps production value. Her agency has found success by focusing on genuine, relatable content rather than over-polished productions.

“The question is always, ‘do we have to make really high quality video?’” says Daisy. “And that’s what scares everyone. But as an agency, the best stuff we’ve done has been just us sitting at our desk talking to each other.” 

“Obviously, there are arguments for high production values as well, but because people think it has to be dead fancy, it stops them.”

But it can be difficult when clients don’t understand the importance of search and hopping on social trends.

“Some people just don’t get it,” she says. “They don’t understand how important using things like trending sounds are on TikTok. We have to have quite boring conversations about why it’s so important for discovery.”

“For us, that’s what TikTok’s about: people finding you.”

Domenica Di Lieto – CEO & co-founder of Emerging Communications

Domenica’s journey into video marketing has been a recent but impactful one. 

Early on, she recognised the power of authentic, and even unpolished content on LinkedIn in order to connect with audiences and build trust. In fact, the videos she’s posted have helped to significantly boost their reach and engagement. 

But it’s not just about posting regularly – it’s about providing value, too.

“You can choose to have a huge amount of followers,” says Domenica, “but I’d rather just have a really engaged audience. It’s about giving your audience what they want and not being just about yourself.”

“There’s two types of people on LinkedIn: there are people who post selfies every day, and those who post stuff that helps other people and are much more authentic.”

“I get a lot on my feed,” she continues. “Quite frankly, I’m just not interested unless it’s interesting, so I tend to watch videos more than anything else, and that made me go, ‘Oh God, I better create some’.”

Anthony Leung – founder of Mean Write Hook 

“My whole schtick is about letting you be yourself,” Anthony explains. “I’m going to try and take away any stressors, any pressure, so you can be yourself. And I think that’s key.”

For Anthony, his video marketing approach is centred around authenticity and immediacy, and in a time when trust has never been more important, video is crucial.

He also believes that the way we consume content is changing drastically – and marketers need to be aware of how people consume their content:

“My kids are more inclined to watch a YouTube short than to read a book; they would rather read the subtitles of a video than a book. I feel like that’s where we’re all going.”

Adam Millbank – co-founder of JonesMillbank

Jones Millbank specialises in video production, so who better to ask about video content for agencies and their clients?

“The amount of noise that’s out there, and this constant need for content when it’s just adding to the noise is a problem,” notes Adam. “I think true, creative storytelling and understanding of narrative can cut through that.”

Adam also highlights the value of behind-the-scenes (BTS) content:

“We started doing BTS stuff, and it really works,” he says. “We thought, here’s an opportunity for more client growth and development.”

“There’s this golden opportunity on set, and if you can give your clients some notice to say, ‘Hey, I want you to swing by set. And I’m just going to get a couple of little voxpop type pieces about what we’re here to do.’ Then you can put it alongside the finished article.”

“That content then becomes so valuable.”

At Pipeline, we’ll be delving into why video marketing is so important for your clients and your own brand, as well as learning new ways to really figure out what you could be doing more of in the video space.