The Agency for Agencies: How Katie Street Helps Agencies Win New Business
Key Takeaways
- Agencies need to move beyond cold-calling lead generation toward sustainable, marketing-driven new business strategies
- The three core content pillars are Attract (insights), Prove It (case studies and proof), and Make It Easy to Buy (clear next steps)
- Marketing automation and lead scoring help agencies identify which prospects are engaged and ready for a conversation
- Measure KPIs around actual client conversions, not just meetings booked - vanity metrics mask real pipeline health
- Agencies should dedicate internal resources to their own marketing rather than treating it as a side project
- Street Agency grew 300% in one year by practicing the same strategies they recommend to clients
- The Tanba membership platform provides affordable agency growth training at scale for agencies that cannot afford full-service support
Gray MacKenzie sits down with Katie Street, founder and managing director of Street Agency, to explore how her company helps agencies solve one of their most persistent challenges - winning new business. Katie also co-founded Tanba (The Agency New Business Academy), hosts the Word on the Street podcast, and serves as a New Business Peer Network Chair for BIMA. Street Agency grew 300% in the prior year and expanded to approximately 14 employees with plans to reach 20 by year-end, proving that the strategies Katie teaches are ones she practices herself.
Rethinking Agency New Business Development
Katie’s central argument is that most agencies approach new business development backward. They default to cold outreach - buying lead lists, hiring SDRs to make calls, and chasing short-term meetings. While these tactics can produce pipeline activity, they rarely build the kind of sustainable, compounding growth that agencies need to thrive long-term.
Street Agency takes a fundamentally different approach, treating agency new business as a marketing challenge rather than a sales problem. The shift in framing changes everything - from the activities the team prioritizes to the metrics they track to the quality of conversations that result. Instead of interrupting prospects who have no context about the agency, the goal is to attract prospects who already understand the agency’s expertise and are predisposed to engage.
This does not mean eliminating outbound entirely. Katie is practical about the role of direct outreach. But she insists that outreach is dramatically more effective when it is supported by a foundation of thought leadership, proof points, and clear positioning that makes the agency recognizable and credible before the first conversation happens.
The Three Content Pillars
Katie breaks down effective agency marketing into three content pillars that work together as a system.
The first pillar is Attract - content that demonstrates expertise and provides genuine insight. This includes blog posts, webinars, podcasts, and industry commentary that address the problems agencies’ target clients face. The goal is not to sell directly but to establish the agency as a knowledgeable, trustworthy voice in their space. Katie notes that 1,200 people regularly sign up for her own monthly webinars, which illustrates the demand for genuinely useful content.
The second pillar is Prove It - case studies, testimonials, client results, and other forms of social proof that validate the agency’s claims. Prospects want to see evidence that an agency can deliver results for businesses like theirs. This content bridges the gap between “interesting thought leader” and “agency I would actually hire.”
The third pillar is Make It Easy to Buy - clear calls to action, straightforward service descriptions, and frictionless pathways for prospects to start a conversation. Many agencies create great awareness content but fail to provide obvious next steps for interested prospects. Katie emphasizes that removing friction from the buying journey is just as important as generating initial interest.
Marketing Automation and Lead Scoring
Once the content engine is running, the next challenge is identifying which prospects are genuinely engaged and ready for a sales conversation. Street Agency uses marketing automation and lead scoring to solve this problem. By tracking engagement signals - content downloads, webinar attendance, email opens, and website visits - the team builds a picture of each prospect’s level of interest and readiness.
This data-driven approach replaces the guesswork that characterizes most agency sales processes. Instead of calling through a cold list and hoping for the best, the sales team focuses on prospects who have demonstrated real engagement. The conversations that result are fundamentally different in quality - warmer, more informed, and far more likely to convert.
Katie also pushes back on common KPI choices. Many agencies measure success by meetings booked, but that metric can be misleading. A full calendar of low-quality meetings is worse than a smaller number of conversations with genuinely qualified prospects. She advocates for measuring actual client conversions and pipeline value as the true indicators of new business health.
Tanba - Democratizing Agency Growth Knowledge
Not every agency can afford a full-service new business partner. Recognizing this gap, Katie co-founded Tanba (The Agency New Business Academy) as a membership platform that provides affordable access to agency growth training, frameworks, and community support. At just 75 pounds per month, Tanba puts structured new business education within reach of smaller agencies.
Before the official launch, 80 beta testers applied to test the platform - a strong signal of demand. Tanba represents Katie’s belief that the fundamental principles of effective new business development are not complicated, but they do require consistent execution and the right frameworks. The membership model allows agencies to learn and implement at their own pace while having access to expert guidance when they need it.