September 23, 2026
September 24, 2026
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Ask most business owners what they want from their marketing and the answer is more: more reach, more leads, more enquiries. It's an understandable instinct. A full inbox feels like safety.
It also hides a cost. Every poor-fit enquiry takes a call, a proposal and a polite no, and the clients who slip through anyway tend to be the ones who haggle, drift and leave. Reach is cheap to buy and expensive to service.
We asked a group of business owners, most of them running marketing companies, one question: what's one way of getting customers you stopped this year, and what replaced it? Ten of the answers point the same way. They gave up reach on purpose, and got better clients for it. One closed an entire arm of his agency. One stopped taking clients altogether.
Three of the ten cut back on social media, for different reasons and to different degrees.
Danyon runs an SEO business, and he didn't quit social media so much as stop feeding it. His referral clients were simply easier to win, so that's where the effort went.
I stopped doing as much social media, because I was getting more clients from referrals. The referral clients converted a lot easier, so instead I put more emphasis on how to get more referrals from current clients rather than improving my social media presence.
Danyon, Elective SEO
There's research behind the instinct. A study in the Journal of Marketing tracked around 10,000 customers of a German bank for almost three years and found that referred customers were worth at least 16% more than similar customers who arrived another way. A bank isn't an agency, but the pattern will be familiar to anyone who has compared a referred client with one who found them through an ad.
Notice the second half of Danyon's answer. He didn't wait for referrals. He worked out how to get more of them from the clients he already had.
Greg Monaco, who runs a branding business, made the same trade. Where Danyon talks about getting more referrals, Greg talks about where his attention goes.
I stopped chasing attention on social media and started investing more intentionally in the relationships I already had. Going deeper with past clients and trusted contacts has produced better conversations, warmer introductions, and more qualified opportunities than trying to constantly win over a new audience.
Greg Monaco, Monaco Brands
Past clients are the most overlooked list most businesses have. They already know what you're like to work with, which is the hardest thing to get across to a stranger. A simple habit is enough to start: each week, get back in touch with two people you've worked with before, with no pitch attached.
Heidi Medina went furthest of the three and took the platforms out of her strategy. Her complaint is that the feed, now full of AI-generated noise, decides which of her contacts she gets to see.
One of my biggest changes this year involves social media. The platforms have become so noisy with unfiltered AI slop that they increasingly disconnect us from the networks many of us spent years building. They're optimised for attention, not connection, and in a service business connection is what gets clients. So I cut the platforms out of the strategy entirely. Instead of hoping the right people surface in my feed, I identify exactly who they are out of thousands of connections, buyers and the people who can connect me to buyers, build a cultivated list, and go straight to them. Comments, DMs, emails, calls, and events they're actually attending. It's grown clients, referrals, and collabs, without me seeing my social feed unless I want to.
Heidi Medina, Conversation Strategist, talktoheidi.com
This is more work per contact and far less work overall. If you have a few thousand connections, only a small share of them are buyers or can introduce you to buyers. A short list of names you contact on purpose will do more than a feed you hope they're watching.
Robin made a similar move himself. He stopped posting on social media at the end of 2022 and writes about what took its place in how to get clients for a coaching business: partnerships, in-person relationships and a book.
Lead volume is the easiest marketing number to grow and one of the least useful. Two of the ten stopped chasing it.
Mark Baldwin's agency moved away from broad lead generation this year because the enquiries it produced were so often a poor fit.
One thing we've moved away from this year is chasing volume through broad, low-intent lead generation, as it often produced enquiries that were a poor fit. We've replaced that with a stronger focus on referrals, reputation and high-intent search visibility, which has resulted in fewer wasted conversations and better-quality prospective customers.
Mark Baldwin, Managing Director, Baldwin Digital
The logic holds up against how buyers behave. In 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report, which collected nearly 4,000 responses, 94% of B2B buyers said their team had ranked its shortlist in order of preference before engaging with a single seller. By the time a good prospect gets in touch, they already have a favourite. Reputation and referrals are how you become it. Broad lead generation mostly reaches people who haven't started looking.
A quick way to test this in your own business is to take last quarter's enquiries and mark each one as won, lost or never a fit. If the third group is the biggest, that's where your time is going.
Ann Smarty reached the same conclusion about a single channel. She has always won customers through her personal brand, tried Google Ads from time to time, and this year gave up on them.
The only way I've always gotten customers was through my personal brand. I did try Google Ads now and then, and this year I've completely given up on it. Don't get me wrong. I am sure it is a valid tactic for many businesses. But what I have found is that this method was driving leads that were not warm enough to justify the budget and the effort. If customers are coming through my newsletter or social media posts, they are better educated on the topic and are also familiar with my brand. These are much more motivating to talk to, and the conversions are much better than any other method.
Ann Smarty, Co-Founder, Smarty Marketing
She is careful not to write off paid search for everyone, and that's the right reading. The question to ask of any paid channel is how much a lead already knows about you when they arrive. Someone who has read your newsletter for six months needs one conversation. Someone who clicked an ad needs the whole case made from the beginning, and you're paying for the privilege.
Three answers are about the offer itself. Each business made itself smaller in some way, and each reports better results. They're in good company. Promethean Research's 2026 survey of 119 digital agency leaders found that agencies that reduced their services grew 13% on average and posted 30% net margins.
Amit Raj closed the done-for-you side of The Links Guy, which is about as far as narrowing an offer can go. What's left teaches people to do the work themselves.
I actually narrowed the offer, in order to get the customers I wanted. I stopped pitching for done-for-you link building retainers and closed that arm of the business, and replaced it with free content, an email newsletter and a course that teaches people to build the links themselves. My social presence and newsletter sells nothing, but brings in qualified enquiries, with an easier lift than when I had the agency side.
Amit Raj, Founder, The Links Guy
The detail worth copying is that his content and newsletter sell nothing. They exist to be useful, and the enquiries that arrive are already qualified because the reader has seen how he thinks. If you've ever resented writing proposals for people who wanted the cheapest option, this is the opposite position to be in.
Caroline Macdonald describes OggaDoon as having been a generalist tech-for-good agency. This year it chose a sector, and the choice wasn't a rushed one.
After a period of reflection and consideration, OggaDoon pivoted into a niche, cyber security. Having gained substantial performance and success, and looking at how that market is growing rapidly, it made common and business sense. Although very early days, we are already seeing the benefits with tailored inbounds that have value.
Caroline Macdonald, Founder, OggaDoon
It's early, as she says, so treat this as a direction and not a result. The mechanism is sound, though. A buyer in cyber security who finds an agency that only works in cyber security has very little left to check. Robin's piece on niching your market, product and price goes through the three ways to do it, and makes the point that a label as broad as SMEs doesn't count as a niche.
Anna Crosby's change was to the format of what she sells. She moved away from offers that were meant to bring in customers on their own.
I stopped relying on evergreen, self-serve offers to bring in customers on their own. Instead, I've been adding more live support, personal access, and high-touch ways to work with me, and those human-centred offers are getting people buying again.
Anna Crosby, Email Marketing Consultant, Geni Collective
Evergreen, self-serve products are attractive because they scale without you. That is also their weakness when buyers can get generic material anywhere. If a self-serve offer of yours has gone quiet, try adding a live element before you discount it: a monthly call, direct access, a review of the buyer's own work.
One answer comes from outside the agency world, and it belongs here because the problem is the same one agencies face with cheaper competitors. Hollywood Mirrors sells online in a market where factories now sell straight to the customer.
What we have focused on this year is product design. We moved beyond commodity status, introducing our own designs to stand out in a market saturated with Chinese factories selling directly. We positioned our brand as a premium design-led product rather than competing on price.
Adam Watson, Director, Hollywood Mirrors
Adam isn't alone in feeling the squeeze. Simon-Kucher's Global Pricing Study 2025, a survey of more than 2,200 business leaders, found 64% of companies reporting higher price pressure, up from 57% in 2021, with low-price competition the most-cited reason.
You can't win on price against someone with lower costs than you, and trying trains your customers to wait for the discount. What you can do is make something they can't buy from the cheaper seller. For Adam that was his own designs. For a service business it might be a method, a guarantee or a named specialism. Robin covers the product side in premium pricing that works.
Stephen Twomey's answer is the most extreme of the ten, and it's included because it shows where this line of thinking can lead.
We have essentially stopped taking marketing clients. MasterMindSEO has essentially become the marketing arm for my company's Venture Marketing plays. It's like a Shark Tank scenario: my company deploys capital, and resources (including marketing) to help grow brands that we have an ownership stake in. We stopped trying to build other people's businesses through marketing, and decided to build our own brands. So we said goodbye to customers and hello to partnerships.
Stephen Twomey, Founder, MasterMindSEO
Very few agencies will do this, and it needs capital that most don't have. There's a smaller version open to almost anyone, though. If you're good enough at marketing to grow a client's business, you could take one engagement a year on a revenue share, or put the same skills into a product of your own. Either way you end up with at least one income stream that doesn't depend on winning the next client.
Cutting reach is frightening when the mortgage depends on next month's enquiries, so don't do it blind.
Robin went through a version of this with his own coaching practice. In October 2018 he went from more than twenty one-to-one clients down to twelve. The twelve agreed fee increases and revenue stayed the same. He tells the story in his piece on the 80/20 rule and your client list.
Every one of these ten gave something up: reach, a service line, a price point, in one case the whole idea of having clients. None of them describes it as a loss. What they describe is fewer wasted conversations, enquiries that arrive already qualified, and people buying again.
Stephen Twomey sums up his own version as goodbye to customers and hello to partnerships. Yours will be less dramatic. It might be one platform you stop posting on, one service you stop selling, or one kind of client you stop saying yes to.
Start with the list of your ten best clients. The answer to what you should stop doing is often already in it. If pricing is the part you're least sure about, Robin's books are a good next read.
Research in the Journal of Marketing, tracking around 10,000 bank customers over almost three years, found referred customers were worth at least 16% more than similar customers who arrived another way. The pattern is familiar to anyone comparing a referral against an ad-driven lead.
Because it mostly reaches people who have not started looking. 6sense found 94% of B2B buyers had already ranked a shortlist before speaking to any seller, so reputation and referrals matter more than volume at the point a good prospect makes contact.
Promethean Research's 2026 survey of 119 digital agency leaders found agencies that reduced their services grew 13% on average and posted 30% net margins. Narrowing makes a business easier to choose.
Do it in steps. List your ten best clients and note where each came from so you know which sources to protect, ask for referrals on a schedule rather than waiting, then remove one service at a time and watch enquiries over a quarter.
Stop competing on price and make something they cannot sell. Simon-Kucher found 64% of companies reporting higher price pressure, with low-price competition the most-cited reason. For a product business that might be original design; for a service business, a method, a guarantee or a named specialism.
