Digital Marketing Leads: 7 Places Agencies Find Them

Digital marketing leads are businesses that might hire an agency for services such as SEO, ads or a new website. Agencies get them from seven sources, which range from referrals and their own content to bought lists and outbound. The seven differ in speed, in cost and in who chooses the client.

What are digital marketing leads?

The phrase has two meanings, and search results mix them.

For a business owner, a digital marketing lead is a person who found the business online and left a way to be contacted. A form, a call from the website and a direct message all count.

For an agency, digital marketing leads are the businesses that could become its clients. This post is written from that side.

If you run a local business and want more leads from your own marketing, start with your website. Every ad, every search result and every social post sends people there, so a weak site wastes what you spend on the rest.

Where do agencies get digital marketing leads?

Digital marketing agency leads come from seven sources. The times and costs in this table are my own estimates and will differ by market.

Only one of the seven sources lets you choose who you talk to. That is the case for outbound, and it is also why outbound takes the most care.

1. Referrals

A happy client tells a friend. Referrals are the easiest leads to close, because trust arrives with them. You cannot schedule them, and they tend to look like the clients you already have. Ask for one at a fixed moment, such as the day a new site goes live.

2. Your own content and SEO

You publish pages that answer what your buyers search for, and some readers get in touch. It starts slowly and keeps working once it does. It also shows that you can do for yourself what you sell to others.

3. Partners

Printers, IT firms, accountants and web hosts serve the same owners and get asked about marketing. So do agencies that lack your specialty. Agree on a referral fee or a white-label rate in writing.

4. Directories and marketplaces

Agency directories such as Clutch and freelance marketplaces such as Upwork list providers for buyers who are already looking. The buyer compares several providers side by side, so expect to compete on price and reviews.

5. Paid ads

Search and social ads put you in front of owners this week. You pay for the click whether or not the owner is a fit. The lead also cools fast if nobody calls back the same day.

6. Bought lead lists

Some vendors sell lists of businesses said to want marketing help. Ask how each lead was collected and how many other agencies receive the same row. A lead sold to five agencies means five calls to one tired owner.

7. Outbound

You choose the businesses and contact them first, by letter, email, LinkedIn or phone. You set the volume and the quality yourself. The weakness is the cold start. In Backlinko's 2019 study of 12 million outreach emails, only 8.5% got any reply (Backlinko). That study covered every kind of outreach, link requests included. Who you write to moves that number, as our own test below shows.

SEO agencies have their own version of this list in our post on SEO leads. The full system for every agency type is in our guide to agency lead generation.

Which leads are worth the most?

The leads worth the most have a problem you can see from outside and can fix. For most agencies that problem sits on the prospect's own website.

A weak website is public, easy to check and expensive for its owner. It also shows that the owner once paid for marketing. A business with no web presence has shown nothing of the kind.

We tested the idea with 3,570 cold emails. We first scored 20,000 Dutch company websites, then wrote to three groups.

Choosing the weakest sites made a positive reply about 3.2 times as likely. The gap between B and C was not statistically significant (p = 0.238). The whole test cost €242.25, which came to €5.15 per positive reply in the two selected groups.

The limits matter. The companies were Dutch and the channel was email only. The method is in our write-up of the test.

How do you qualify a lead in two minutes?

Run four checks on the business before you write a word. Together they take about two minutes, by my own timing.

1. Open the site on your phone. Count the seconds until the main content shows. Google's mark for a good page is 2.5 seconds or less (web.dev).
2. Look for the next step. Can you call, book or ask for a quote from the first screen?
3. Search the service and the town. Note whether the business appears and who ranks above it.
4. Look for signs of spending. A sponsored result, a wrapped van or a busy social page shows that the owner invests in being found.

A business that fails checks 1 to 3 and passes check 4 is the lead you want. It has a budget and a visible problem. Our post on lead qualification covers what to ask once the owner replies.

Two minutes a business is fine for 50. For 5,000 it is about 167 hours, which is why agencies hand this step to software. Leadodo is in that category. Twip, its AI, scores every website in a search out of 100 across 10 domains, and sites that score below 40 form the shortlist.

What does outbound to those leads look like?

Start with a posted letter that names one finding from the prospect's site. Then follow up by email and LinkedIn over about four weeks.

The letter goes first because fewer marketers use the mailbox. In the ANA's Response Rate Report 2021, which counted 581 qualified responses, 82% of respondents used email and 38% used direct mail (ANA). Our guide explains why the letter goes first.

In Leadodo, your Outbound Machine runs six steps over 19 working days. A letter arrives on day 1. Emails follow on days 4, 7 and 11, and LinkedIn steps on days 15 and 19. The sequence stops for a business the moment it replies, and you send under your own name.

For one service sold to one kind of business, see how to sell websites to local businesses.

Questions

What is a lead in digital marketing?

A lead is a person or business that has shown interest in what you sell and can be contacted. In digital marketing the interest usually shows as a form, a call, a download or a reply. A name on a bought list is a contact. It becomes a lead when the business responds.

How to get digital marketing clients when you have no case studies?

Show your thinking on the prospect's own business. One specific finding from their website proves more than a wall of logos. Add two demo projects for your chosen trade, labeled as demos, and ask your first client for permission to share the results.

Should an agency buy leads?

Buy a small batch as a test, and only from a seller who says how the leads were collected and how many agencies receive each one. Track the cost per booked call against your other sources. Shared leads go to whoever calls first.

How many leads does an agency need each month?

Work backward from clients. Divide the clients you want by your close rate, then by the share of leads that take a call. As an illustration, 2 new clients a month at a 25% close rate needs 8 calls. If one lead in four takes a call, that is 32 leads. These rates are made up to show the arithmetic, so use your own.

Are inbound leads better than outbound leads?

Each has a strength. Inbound leads arrive with a need, so they are often easier to close. Outbound leads are chosen by you, so they fit better. Most agencies need both. Inbound takes months to build, and outbound fills the months before it does.

Is it legal to send cold email to businesses in the US?

Yes, when each message follows the CAN-SPAM Act, which has no exception for business-to-business email. The FTC's guide lists the requirements. They include a valid postal address and an opt-out that you honor within 10 business days. This is not legal advice.

---

Next step. Leadodo finds the businesses and scores their websites. Your Outbound Machine then writes to the ones with the weakest sites, under your name. See the features.