Changency - What's Happening In Agencies These Days

It's new - and weird - and all the same.

Author

Tim Kilroy
06 Jun • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

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The Old Ways Are Now “Classics”?

For years, the world of agencies have been obsessed with a really simple formula. You’d create content or ads to drive someone to an opt in page, reward them with some kind of tasty treat (lead magnet, training, etc.) and then put them in a “we swear its not spam” nurture sequence.

And that worked. Really freakin’ well.

Basically, EVERYTHING in lead gen worked. Really freakin’ well.

We’ve all felt the strain of new lead development over the last few years - and with the advent of AI & steroidal marketing automation - lead gen has gotten harder because the market is saturated in every direction. At the same time, the economy has slowed down, and marketers might be a little slower to make moves. And then there is AI, which brings up the “do we even need agencies anymore” discussion.

But There Are Big Changes Afoot

Some folks in the “internet marketer” space have announced things that amount to a refocus. The ever-present Ryan Deiss has announced that he is shutting down Digital Marketer to focus on something newer (he’s been running ads for an AI funnel audit). Fellow agency coach Josh Nelson just announced that his 7 Figure Agency is completely reconfigured because “What worked in 2022 won’t work in 2025.”

So what is making these “big name” folks course correct?

IMHO, part of it is the market saturation in the traditional ways of lead gen, part of it is that these marketers didn’t really have any “secrets” in the first place, they we just successful with really good process thinking and started selling their process over and over to others. At some point, when everyone in the market is leveraging the same few tactics, the tactics become ineffective. All the stuff that was exciting, is now just beige and no one responds. But what does that all this mean

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The Trust Has Been Broken

There has been a lot of trust broken over the years by folks in the agency space. So many were sold an idea that building an agency was easy (I talked about that on the B2B Mindset Podcast with Pete Monfre yesterday), and they provided sub-par service. So many marketers jumped into the “digital goldrush” and hired agencies without being ready to do so…

Those agency and client failures bruised the whole industry.
Post-pandemic economic & political weirdness bruised faith in the future.
AI & automations bruised the idea that expertise is valuable.

In order to overcome all those bruises and failures, agencies need to be thinking differently about their presentation and potential BEFORE the sales process starts. On the Marketing Against the Grain podcast, the lead magnet was declared dead and it is the age of some sort of AI-enhanced thing that builds trust and shows expertise before an expression of interest.

Relevant Utility Is The New Reality

In Blair Enns’ book, The 4 Conversations, he talks eloquently about “the sale before the sale”, which is the stage of awareness before a prospect makes their intentions know. (I talk about this in Flood The Zone - Agency Inner Circle #57 and on Impact Gradient on YouTube.) You need tons of truly unique & valuable content to make an impact that puts you on the short list. (That’s what we help agencies build in GEN+) But we are at the edge of something (and GEN+ is evolving in this direction quickly), where potential clients don’t want something that isn’t specifically relevant to them. They want dynamic, useful PROOF that you are the right partner before they are willing to chat.

You need to bring the goods before you get to a conversation…

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Wait - I Have to Do More To Earn A Sales Focused Conversation?

Maybe not more, but different. More valuable. More personal.

Think about what you deliver BEFORE the sales process as your first engagement with your new client.

This is where AI is a powerhouse, because it can accelerate the relevance and utility so that you can easily provide value. Years ago in the early 2000s, at my SEO agency, we had a FT resource to just do the free SEO audits we offered. That was a huge cost center and a huge amount of stress. But it was specific & relevant to the client - however, it wasn’t terribly useful to clients, but it was the best thing we could offer at the time.

Today, you can generate pretty magical stuff for pennies…and it shows folks EXACTLY how you work and how you think.

A few examples:

  • WTF Agency Assessment: This gives you insight into your profit, growth and agency management benchmarks and tells you what you need to fix. The data collection and benchmarking is automated, so this comes out about 90% complete. The cost of production is under $5.

  • AI TIM: Have a voice chat with an AI version of me. I trained it on all my content and so far it hasn’t said anything stupider than I would. Ask it a hard question and let me know the results. Cost of production - about $0.10/min. (By the way, 11 Labs powers the AI Tim & their new v3 voice model is freaking amazing!)

  • GTM Market Triggers: Mark Colgan from Yellow O (he is a GTM OS advisor) has a really terrific and useful Go To Market Trigger generator that is specific and useful

These things build trust in a way that no static lead magnet, VSL or other “generic” piece of content could provide. Your prospect walks away with actual value, you walk away with a real insight into the prospect so that you can shape your followup approach with relevancy, specificity and an intimacy that hasn’t previously been possible.

Take The Next Step & Embrace Changency

You don’t fix this by optimizing your cold email subject line. You fix it by showing up differently. That means offering value before you’re asked, building relevance that’s impossible to ignore, and acting like the trust is already broken (because it probably is).

This is the moment to stop waiting for the market to return to normal. It won’t.

The agencies that win now are the ones that behave like change is their native language.

Start acting like the future is already here—because for your next best client, it is.

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