The value of building a marketing culture in your agency
Most agencies don’t prioritise marketing.
If you run an agency, you’ll know this story. Marketing usually makes the list of priorities and it’s always high up the list, but rarely is actually at the top of it.
Client deadlines come first. Team demands, proposals, pitches, delivery - they all feel more urgent. The agency’s own marketing becomes the thing you’ll “get to when it quietens down.” but in reality, it never does.
The result is pepper grinder marketing - happening in bursts, picked up and put down with immediate results expected. A case study here, a few LinkedIn posts there. Nothing sustained, nothing owned and certainly no consistency or momentum.
But when you look at agencies that have strong, consistent marketing engines (with pipelines to match) they have one thing in common: a marketing culture. I look at close to £20m worth of pipelines a week and the commonality between the most buoyant is a marketing culture across the agency without a single spec of silo’d marketing to be seen.
What a marketing culture actually means.
A marketing culture isn’t just about having a dedicated person, or a plan or a thin commitment to ‘prioritise marketing’.
It’s far more about creating shared ownership and belief in the value of marketing across the whole agency, getting emotional buy-in from the wider team.
It means:
- The leadership team openly champions marketing as a growth lever, not a cost.
- Everyone understands the strategy and goals - they know what the agency is trying to achieve and how.
- People are encouraged (and trusted) to contribute - to post on LinkedIn, write, share, speak, attend events or open doors through their own networks.
It turns “marketing” from a background activity into a collective effort that unites the team and drives a cultural mentality of growth and shared responsibility. To quote Camilla @ JFDI “new business is everyone’s business”.
Everyone else has clarity.
Often the toughest part of marketing isn’t the marketing itself, it’s selling marketing and gaining buy-in from those internally, not just externally. The purpose and remit of a developer is well known. Designers, their contribution is never questioned. Client services, that’s pretty clear about the part they play. But agency marketing? Everyone has an opinion but few truly get it, can quantify it or understand how to measure its effectiveness.
It can feel every other role has purpose and clarity but agency marketing - the metaphorical dark arts no one really understands.
Marketing becomes an internal sell, to battle for resources (time, money and attention) and to pitch for budget and meaningfully ground the value in monthly or quarterly team updates.
Someone - often the founder or marketing leader - is constantly having to defend budgets, prove ROI and convince the rest of the business that it’s worth doing.
And yet when belief in marketing does exist across the agency, everything changes. It unlocks momentum. It gets easier to generate content, to share wins, to tell stories, to build reputation because people actually want to be involved.
If you unlock the safe, the treasures found inside can be priceless.
What happens when you build a marketing culture
Agencies that embed marketing as part of their culture see a tangible lift in marketing effectiveness, often as much as 20–30% more “marketing value” without adding any new spend.
Why? Because marketing stops being confined to one function. It becomes a shared muscle, everyone's collective responsibility.
You start to see:
Team members using their personal networks to drive referrals and introductions.
Designers, developers and client services start writing their own content or co-authoring thought leadership pieces based on their craft, experience or client exposure (the best kind of basis for content!)
People putting their hands up for podcasts, awards or speaking slots.
Internal ideas bubbling up quicker and being executed even faster - because people believe in the purpose behind them.
That collective energy compounds, creating visibility, credibility and consistency, three things every agency needs to grow.
How to start building it
Creating a marketing culture isn’t about adding more meetings or forcing content quotas, nor will it happen overnight so you need to be realistic about it. It’s about alignment, transparency and empowerment and that comes from being championed, prioritised, shared and demonstrated.
A few starting points:
Champion it at the top. If leadership doesn’t treat marketing as business-critical, no one else will.
Share the strategy. Be transparent about your positioning, audiences and goals so people know how to contribute. Don’t underestimate the power and impact of a simple weekly Friday wrap-up of what marketing has looked like this week.
Give permission. Encourage your team to post, share, speak and represent the agency. Not everyone will at first but a few visible examples spark momentum and others will naturally want to get onboard.
Celebrate contributions. Shout out when someone has a great idea, secures a speaking slot, shares an example or writes a post that fits the strategy (even if it doesn’t - educate, don’t berate).
Show impact. Regularly communicate what marketing activity is driving - leads, connections, credibility, conversations so it becomes visible and valued.
The best agencies don’t just do great marketing, they actively believe in it and have a culture of shared responsibility for achieving it.
When everyone understands why it matters and feels ownership of it, marketing stops being a job to defend and becomes a culture to build.
And when that happens, marketing stops competing for attention and it becomes part of your agency’s DNA.