How to Win and Manage Enterprise Clients with Alex Birkett

Gray MacKenzie welcomes Alex Birkett, co-founder of Omniscient Digital, to the Agency Journey podcast. Omniscient Digital is an organic growth agency specializing in SEO and content strategy for B2B brands including SAP, Adobe, and Loom. Alex shares what he has learned about winning, managing, and retaining enterprise-level clients - and why the strategies that work for small and mid-market clients often fall apart when you move upmarket.

Differentiating in a Crowded Agency Market

Alex opens with a perspective on agency differentiation that goes beyond the typical advice about niching down. While specialization matters, he argues that understanding how enterprise buyers make purchasing decisions is equally important. Enterprise procurement is not the same as a founder choosing an agency over a weekend. It involves committee decisions, vendor evaluations, and internal champions who need to justify the selection to their leadership.

To stand out in that process, Omniscient Digital competes on factors beyond price. They position themselves through original research, proprietary data, and a track record with recognizable brands. Alex points out that when your competitors can produce similar deliverables, the differentiator becomes the thinking behind the work - the strategic POV, the unique insights, and the confidence that comes from having done it at scale before.

Omniscient also invests in content that showcases the team’s personality and working style before a prospect ever gets on a sales call. Their podcast, The Long Game, and their newsletter, Field Notes, serve as extended auditions. Prospects who consume that content arrive on calls already understanding how the team thinks, what they value, and what it would be like to work together.

Managing Enterprise Stakeholders

The operational complexity of enterprise clients is one of the biggest adjustments agencies face when moving upmarket. Alex explains that a single engagement might involve a marketing director who manages the day-to-day, a VP who controls the budget, a legal team that reviews every piece of content, and a brand team that enforces guidelines. Each stakeholder has different priorities, different communication preferences, and different definitions of success.

Managing this requires structured communication and clear documentation. Alex recommends establishing early in the engagement who the decision-makers are, what the approval workflow looks like, and how feedback will be consolidated. Without this clarity, agencies end up caught between conflicting direction from different stakeholders - revising work repeatedly and burning margin in the process.

He also highlights the importance of patience in the enterprise sales cycle. Deals can take months to close, and the relationship-building that happens during that time shapes the working dynamic for the entire engagement. Agencies that push too hard on timelines or try to shortcut the evaluation process often lose to competitors who invested in the relationship.

Building a Writer Network With Subject Matter Expertise

One of Omniscient Digital’s competitive advantages is their approach to content production. Rather than hiring generalist writers who research topics from scratch, they build a network of freelance writers who are subject matter experts in the areas they cover.

Alex explains that this approach produces content with genuine insight rather than repackaged search results. A writer who has spent years working in B2B SaaS brings perspectives and examples that a generalist cannot fabricate through research alone. This is especially important for enterprise clients, where the audience is sophisticated enough to spot surface-level content immediately.

Building and managing this network requires significant upfront investment - recruiting writers, evaluating their expertise, establishing quality standards, and maintaining relationships over time. But the resulting content quality becomes a moat that competitors relying on commodity content production cannot easily replicate.

Original Research as a Thought Leadership Moat

Alex expands on the differentiation theme by discussing original research as a strategic investment. Omniscient Digital produces proprietary studies and data analyses that their competitors cannot copy. When you publish original research, you create a source asset that generates backlinks, media mentions, and credibility - all of which compound over time.

For enterprise clients, this matters because their leadership teams want to work with agencies that bring new thinking to the table. An agency that can present original data in a pitch meeting stands out from one that recycles industry benchmarks everyone has already seen.

Alex acknowledges that producing original research requires more time and budget than standard content, but argues that the ROI justifies the investment when you factor in the brand-building and sales enablement value it creates.

Competing With Yourself, Not the Market

Alex closes with a mindset shift that has shaped how he runs Omniscient Digital. Rather than obsessing over competitor moves, he focuses on being the best version of his agency. This means investing in team development, refining internal processes, and delivering work that the team is genuinely proud of.

He argues that competitive anxiety is a distraction for most agencies. The market is large enough that multiple agencies can thrive with similar positioning. What matters more than tracking competitors is building an agency that consistently delivers excellent work, retains great talent, and earns referrals from satisfied clients.

Resources Mentioned

• Alex Birkett on LinkedIn - Co-founder of Omniscient Digital
• Omniscient Digital - Organic growth agency for B2B brands
• Field Notes Newsletter - Omniscient Digital’s newsletter
• The Long Game Podcast - Omniscient Digital’s podcast on content and growth