How Agencies Get Thought Leadership Seen by the Right Audience
And how I’m applying it to prompting this very post
Thought leadership and value-led content are powerful—when the right people see them.
Getting most of your engagement from your own team lately?
The issue usually isn’t the content; it’s reach. Even educational content now needs a deliberate distribution system that puts it in front of a small, named buying group within your ICP—the niche buyers it was written for.
Thought leadership and value-led content are the expert’s GTM. They de-risk complex buys, make your how legible, prove your expertise, and broadcast a point of view competitors can’t copy.
The problem today
But today, in order to generate results, agency leaders not only need to create content that adds value to a well-defined ICP and reflects their expertise and perspectives;
they also need to make the right people at about 300 target accounts notice it and engage with it.
What this post covers
What to consider and how peer agencies are tackling distribution (options, trade-offs, when to use what).
How to run it: the emerging trends and the process I’m using to distribute this article—which you can apply to your next post.
What’s changed recently?
The common trap is assuming that if you share expertise for free, the right audience will eventually find it. Even when a piece is rich with first-hand insight, the reality is:
Feeds are saturated; organic reach to non-followers is getting weaker—especially for long-form.
Search is increasingly summarised; fewer clicks make it to your site—historically a key discovery path for thought leadership.
Buyers apply a harsher “what’s in it for me?” filter and bounce faster from anything that isn’t clearly relevant to them.
A simple way to see the system:
Relevance × Delivery × Proof
Relevance — a visible why me, why now.
Delivery — the piece actually reaches those people (not just followers).
Proof — evidence their time pays off (data, method, outcomes).
The “obvious” solution: LinkedIn targeted ads (and where it cracks)
Why teams pick it
You can point ads at exactly the accounts/titles you care about.
Your ICP already lives on LinkedIn.
It’s operationally simple if you already run paid.
Hidden trade-offs for niche, high-ACV plays
List size + ops cost — Matched Audiences need ≥300 matched contacts (emails). In practice, you’ll research ~500+ to be safe.
Budget gravity — For LinkedIn ads to work, you need multi-touch over ~12 weeks; tight enterprise CPMs add up quickly (the last time I launched LinkedIn Targeted Ads, the CPM was £80-£140).
Message flatness — Your uploaded list is for targeting only; the creative/message is the same for everyone. There’s no “you’re receiving this because…” at an individual level.
The absence of a personal reason-why is the most reliable way to be ignored—especially by senior buyers drowning in content and paid outreach.
The rising alternative: Content Promotion with a Clear ‘Why’
Micro-framework
Relevance — Prove the match (topic ↔ role/company signals).
Reason-Why — “You’re receiving this because…” (transparent qualification).
Strategy-first — Be clear about who this is for.
What it is: promoting your piece to qualified ICPs with a clear reason-why it’s relevant to them, tailored to their role/company signals—and showing your work.
What this is not
Not a cold pitch / cold outreach.
Not spray-and-pray outreach. The message must emphasise why this is relevant to this person.
Not pseudo-personalisation (surface-level touches that only sound tailored).
Examples
“Since {{BRAND}} signed {{ATHLETE NAME}}), this benchmark shows which channels move merch and sponsorship KPIs;
“With {{BRAND}} entering Benelux via {{RETAIL PLATFORM}}, this study distils what worked (and didn’t) for recent US FMCG entries—and how they navigated early hurdles.”
You might be thinking
“Sounds interesting in theory—but how do we find companies that fit a narrow definition for this piece? And if we have to write each note manually, won’t it take weeks?”
That’s exactly what comes next - I will show how to build a campaign like that on the example of pushing this article.
Overview of the process I’ll use to research and build messages to put this article in front of the right people
Below is the summary process I use with high-ACV agencies: small, verified cohorts; one URL per company; a one-line reason-why; respectful routes; decisions based on qualified engagement.
(As always) It starts with clarity on who this is for. For this article, my qualification criteria are:
Company type: Agency or service provider with strategic offerings and an expert position (not a commodity vendor).
TL presence & freshness: Recent thought leadership or value-led publications that demonstrate expertise (not internal/stakeholder reports only).
Engagement signal: Ideally, recent publications show limited engagement beyond their own team (room to improve distribution).
In-house roles: Active Marketing, New Business, and Business Development functions—signal that growth isn’t purely referral-driven.
Location: US, UK, Canada, and Western Europe.
Size: 10–200 employees.
Note: Traditional firmographics are the least important criteria; the key qualification happens first.
Tech stack I’m using
LinkedIn Sales Navigator — build the base dataset (UK core licences ~£80/mo).
PhantomBuster — export Sales Navigator lists for processing (from £60/mo).
Clay — enrichment, qualification, message builder (from £149/mo).
OpenAI API — extraction/classification/reason-why drafting.
Smartlead — light sequencing and sends (£40/mo).
Step 1 — Export a tight base list
I start by building a list in Sales Navigator, pulling Advertising/Marketing/Media Production/Design Services accounts in US, UK, Canada, Western Europe, 10–200 people. I export with PhantomBuster and stage it in Clay.
Outcome: an account list with valid company LinkedIn URLs and basic firmographics.
Step 2 — Keep only expert/partner firms (drop vendors)
I only keep agencies that sell strategic services, not just output. To apply AI-powered enrichment and qualification I use Clay (you can also use freckle.io—gentler learning curve, but less powerful).
In Clay, I scrape the homepage/services/about/insights and structure the information so I can run a follow-up qualification and label each company “Strategic Partner” or “Production Vendor”.
Signals I look for: strategy/advisory language, named methods, decision support, outcome-led cases, active thought leadership. I drop menu-only “tactics shop” sites.
Outcome: a qualified list plus structured data I can reference later (“we selected you because…”).
Step 3 — One GTM-serving article per company (date-gated)
I first check how often each company posts TL/educational content.
From there, I select one piece that serves a buyer outcome (positioning, demand/ABM, CRO/SEO, launch, measurement, distribution). I only accept pieces published on or after 2024-09-01. If nothing clears that bar, I skip the company—it’s unlikely this activation will be relevant to them right now.
Outcome: best_gtm_url per company—singular message, no thread-splitting.
Step 4 — Shortlist the people (fewer, better)
I keep roles that can use or sponsor the idea now: Marketing, Growth/New Business, and Strategy/GTM. To do that, I scrape organisational charts for the pre-qualified companies to exclude team that don’t have any of the above roles so that we don’t contact agencies that still heavily rely on referral-based growth.
I apply a simple scoring pass per person and select the contacts from each company for whom this topic will be most relevant.
Outcome: clean recipient_LI_links per company.
Step 5 — Enrich their article
From their chosen piece I pull: author, any client types named, services implied by the content, a one- to two-line value to the reader, and a ≤30-word “why this helps your GTM.”
This step clarifies the role the article plays in their GTM and grounds the reason-why line in evidence.
Outcome: a tiny evidence pack I can reference in one sentence.
Step 6 — Additional qualification and message build
Now that we have a highly curated list of individuals for whom this topic is relevant, here comes the most interesting part:
I use the qualification data from Steps 3–5 to build the messages that explain why this piece is relevant to the selected people.
An example of the final message using this process:
—
Hi Richard,
Thought leadership and value-led content can be highly effective in positioning and selling premium large-format DOOH programmes to media planners and advertisers.
But the problem now is that even if your content provides insights fostering higher attention and long-term profitability, getting the right buyers to notice and engage is the hard part.
I’ve published a short, practical piece on getting thought leadership in front of the exact buying group it was written for: [link]
This should help make pieces like your ‘From streets to strategy: how large format digital OOH outshines online video to redefine media planning’ reach media planners and advertisers
Best regards,
Max
—
Conclusion
The growth challenges in front of agencies have changed; the answers need to change, too. Sending more emails or posting more content alone won’t fix saturated mailboxes / feeds and more skeptical decision makers. But—as with everything—it all rests on two fundamentals: sharp clarity on your agency strategy and an honest map of your client’s preferred buying journey.
If this resonates, subscribe to my Substack. I’m sharing how other agency leaders are navigating the same constraints—plus practical frameworks, prompts and teardown examples you can implement today.