Most digital marketing agencies have to pitch to new clients.

Most of them suck at it.

A few are excellent at it.

In this blog, I’ll tell you:

• What pitching is, and why it’s important (skip this bit by clicking here if you know this already)
• Why most pitches suck (and why the sales team are the worst people to lead a pitch)
• How to pitch well (and why decks are overrated)
• How to make a good pitch deck (including a free template!)

Enough chit chat. Let’s crack on.

1. What is a marketing pitch?

If you’re asking this question, you’re probably right at the start of your agency founding journey. Kudos, and good luck.

A marketing pitch is the first face-to-face meeting you’ll have with a prospective client.

It’s here that you talk about the services you can offer, the costs, and set expectations for timelines.

Most pitches include at least one sales person. Various other senior and delivery staff may also join, depending on the complexity and importance of the prospect.

It’s usually a video or in-person meeting to present a pitch deck. This is just a fancy term for a slideshow.

At the end of the pitch, the prospect is left with a clear idea of your offering and the costs. They can then go away and decide if they want to proceed with your services.

Simple as that.

2. Why most pitches suck.

This mainly comes down to the misalignment of:

a. The things you want the client to know

b. The things the client actually wants to know.

Here are some of the main reasons a pitch will fail:

You brought a generic pitch deck.

If you have “a” pitch deck, you’re doing it wrong.

The deck (and pitch) should always be tailored to the specific needs of that client. If they said they definitely don’t want to do social media marketing, don’t whip up some slides about Meta ads.

Saying that, some of the best pitches I’ve received have been from agencies who chose to leave out the deck altogether. You have more valuable conversations when it’s actually a conversation, instead of a sales lecture.

You didn’t do your research.

Your client questionnaire or pre-pitch call notes should comprehensively cover everything you need to know about a client before pitching. Here’s a list and template for this.

If you come unprepared, expect them to laugh you out of the room. The pitch is NOT the time for fact gathering.

You focus on your services, instead of the benefits.

The client doesn’t care that you use n-gram analysis in your Google Ads to effectively determine new keyword opportunities. That’s absolute gibberish to people who aren’t ads specialists.

Instead, they care that you are going to use their ad spend wisely, focusing on leads generated or return on investment.

These people don’t want marketing services. They want to grow their business. Tell them that you’re going to do that for them.

You didn’t dumb it down.

Most clients don’t understand marketing. They see it as a woo-woo magic land where internet wizards throw money into a black hole and sales come out.

As with the point above, you need to talk on their level. For them, SEO isn’t about optimising pages and building authority to increase your SERP ranks.

Instead, SEO is about making changes on your website and convincing other websites to link to it to encourage search engines to show the website as an option for their visitors.

Make it real. Explain everything like you’re talking to your gran.

You didn’t back yourself up with proof and data.

Let’s face it. Most digital agencies do pretty much the same thing as all the others.

Clients know this, so the only way to differentiate yourself is with data and social proof.

I personally dislike percentages, as they mask reality. A 200% increase sounds amazing until you realise you only went from 10 visitors to 30.

Try using real numbers with real tangible results, such as revenue and leads. Stray away from increases in traffic and other vanity metrics.

Layer in some social proof, if you have any. Screenshots of testimonials on trusted platforms like TrustPilot, Google and Facebook tend to work best.

3. How to pitch your marketing agency properly.

1. Grab a copy of your free onboarding questionnaire here. I recommend setting up a 30-60m discovery call and walking through these questions with the client. If you just send it to them, they’ll put minimum effort into it.
2. Using this data, fill out a client fact sheet. Click the link above for that too!
3. If you want to use a pitch deck, use the info in the client fact sheet to guide the slides you put in.
4. Decide who needs to be in the pitch. I recommend at least one sales person and the head of department for your delivery team. If you’re just starting off, it’ll probably just be you (the founder). If it’s likely to be a very large and significant client, you might as well attend the pitch as well. The founder or MD showing up tells the prospect that they are valued.
5. If the sales team aren’t clued up on marketing, maybe let the head of delivery run the pitch. They will come across more convincingly and be able to add elements from their experience.
6. Break the ice before jumping into the pitch. These are real people and live normal lives. Ask them how their weekend was, talk about the weather and the news. Spend at least 5-10 minutes small talking before you get down to business.
7. Run through your pitch and deck, encouraging them to ask questions at the end only.
8. Allow for at least 30 minutes of questions.
9. Tell them that they don’t need to decide on it right away and that you can send over more information on anything they need.
10. Shake hands with everyone the client brought!

Good luck and happy pitching!