Don’t let your marketing sit on the ‘too difficult’ pile – the nature of ‘sustainable marketing’ has shifted in recent years and this is good news for design agencies.
There’s a familiar rhythm in design agencies. New business is quiet, so marketing activity spikes. New business picks up, marketing stops. Delivery gets busy, outreach disappears. The pipeline dips, and the panic returns.
If that sounds familiar, you’re absolutely not alone. But the good news? There’s plenty we can do about it.
Published last autumn, the DBA In Focus Report predicted another tough year. The proportion of member agencies feeling positive about their business fell for the third year running, from 80% in 2022, to 72% in 2023, to 66% in 2024, to 60% in 2025. Confidence is the lowest it’s been since the pandemic. And for the second year in a row, “new business pipeline” was ranked the single biggest risk to agencies across the short, medium and long term.
So no, this isn’t a great year to leave your marketing on the “too difficult” pile, but what’s worth noting, is that the agencies who get this right aren’t doing more. They’re just doing things they can keep doing. That’s a much more achievable bar than it sometimes feels.
I’ll never stop making the point that agency marketing isn’t something you switch on when revenue dips. It’s never too early to begin, and it’s not something that should stop. It needs to be the engine that runs quietly in the background, year-round, identifying new relationships, building awareness, starting conversations, demonstrating your value. It’s how you make sure that when a prospect reaches their point of need, which might be next month, next year, or three years from now, your agency is already on their list.
There’s a related point worth highlighting. The DBA data shows the average agency now generates around three-quarters of its income from existing clients. That’s a wonderful testament to the work you do. It’s also a quiet vulnerability. A reliable base built from a small number of relationships is a lovely thing right up until one of those relationships ends. Gentle, consistent marketing activity is how you stay ahead of that risk, by making sure new relationships are always being built somewhere in the background.
And here’s where it gets genuinely exciting. What “sustainable marketing” looks like has shifted in the last few years, and the shift is good news for agencies. The traditional model of the lone agency principal posting opinion pieces into the LinkedIn void is getting harder to cut through. It’s also exhausting, and most of the people I work with quietly admit they hate doing it.
What’s working better, for a lot of agencies, is more collaborative.
Co-created content. Rather than positioning yourself as the lone expert, convene the conversation. Interview the people your prospects respect. Host the discussion your sector isn’t having. Authority by association is a very different thing, and often a more effective one, than authority by assertion.
Partner marketing. Teaming up with adjacent specialists, perhaps a strategy consultancy, a developer, a PR partner, a researcher, to create something useful together. A panel, a piece of research, a guide, a roundtable. You share the audience, share the load, and you both look more credible by association.
And lastly…
Newsletters. “But no-one reads them!” I hear you cry! And yet, as reported in Up To The Light’s ‘What Clients Think’ Report published earlier this year, 70% of clients expect their agency to produce some sort of regular newsletter or update.
None of this requires you to be the loudest voice in the room. It just requires you to be a useful presence in the rooms that matter to your prospects.
A few things to bear in mind as you think about your own approach.
Be honest about what you’ll actually keep doing. A monthly article you’ll abandon after four months is worth less than a quarterly piece of co-created content you’ll still be producing in two years. Smaller and sustainable beats bigger and burned out, every time.
Measure the right things. Network growth, conversations started, relationships warmed. These are the early indicators that matter. Don’t be too quick to write off an activity just because it didn’t produce a brief in the first month. That’s not what it’s for.
Most of all, try to enjoy it. Looking after the business, and that includes your marketing, isn’t a distraction from the creative work. It’s what protects it, and creates the conditions for it to thrive.
If you’d like some help thinking this through for your own agency, I’m running the DBA’s Marketing your Design Business course online across three 90-minute sessions on 16, 18 and 23 June. We’ll get into the smart, sustainable ways design agencies are building authority and starting the right conversations right now. I’d love to see you there.
How do you cut through the noise and create memorable campaigns? How do you decide which of the myriad of channels and platforms to focus on? And more importantly – how do you measure success?
Over three in-depth sessions, DBA Expert Lucy Mann, of Gunpowder Consulting, will guide you through the building blocks required to elevate your agency marketing. Find out more and book >
Lucy helps agencies optimise their new business performance.
Drawing on 30 years’ new business experience, Lucy works with agencies to create workable new business and marketing strategies and plans, mentors in house new business teams and helps client service teams build deeper, more profitable relationships.
A big believer in using marginal gains to unlock new business paralysis, Lucy is the creator and host of the Small Spark Theory new business podcast.
Lucy is an accredited DBA Expert.