Observed Signal · Jul 5, 2018 · Market Research · Source: OnlineMarketing.de · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Neutral
HubSpot Study: Agencies Under-Market Themselves
A global HubSpot study finds that more than six in ten agencies (62%) struggle to win new clients, making new business development the top challenge ahead of profitability (41%). Admin tasks (36%), hiring (34%), and cash flow (32%) are also difficult. Leads continue to come mainly from referrals (32%) and private networks (20%), suggesting insufficient scalable self-marketing. The findings urge structured marketing and proactive demand generation, noting 56% would need to invest more in marketing and/or sales, while 39% cite cash flow as a hurdle. Sixty-seven percent of agencies recognize the need to generate new leads, and 71% plan to invest more in lead generation next year. Additional plans include expanding services (50%) and adopting new practices (35%). Critical tools in demand include project management (42%), reporting/analytics (42%), lead generation (39%), and CRM (35%). Gregor Hufenreuter (HubSpot) warns relying on word-of-mouth risks stagnant growth and losing competitive edge.
Industry study highlighting growth implications for agencies; relevant to AdTech/MarTech
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- 62% of agencies struggle to find new clients worldwide.
- 56% say they must invest more in marketing and/or sales.
- Lead sources: referrals 32%, private networks 20%.
- 71% plan to invest more in lead generation next year.
- Top software investments planned: project management 42%, analytics/reporting 42%, lead generation 39%, CRM 35%.
Connected Companies & Entities
1 Entity mappedRelated Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Agencies and brands disagree on service delivery, study finds
New research by The Drum and iResearch Services, presented at The Drum Live, reveals a significant gap between how agencies and brands perceive agency performance. While 77% of agency leaders believe they deliver what brands want, only 23% of brand marketers agree, and 47% actively disagree. The study, based on a global poll of 600 senior marketers (averaging $346M in revenue), also found that over three-quarters of brand marketers expect to bring brand strategy in-house by 2030, whereas less than half of agency leaders agree. Additionally, AI is a growing focus: 59% of brand-side marketers rank deep AI expertise as the most in-demand agency skill, and 71% expect AI to significantly shape workflows by 2030, with 45% predicting a human-AI hybrid model. Despite AI-driven efficiency expectations, 80% of marketers still foresee rising marketing costs by 2030. The Drum Live panel, featuring industry leaders like Michele Rousseau and Ajaz Ahmed, emphasized the need for agencies to challenge briefs and deliver cultural insight.
LinkedIn says don't treat leads as finish in B2B
At LinkedIn's B2Believe event in its new Empire State Building space, executives and practitioners called for a shift from lead-centric B2B marketing to a 'full journey' approach that links signals, targeting, creative, full journey, and measurement. Jae Oh, senior director of product management, revealed that fewer than 10% of upper-funnel audiences make it into bottom-funnel campaigns, urging marketers to connect awareness with demand capture. Research from LinkedIn's B2B Institute with eMarketer showed 77% of marketers say they no longer target individuals, yet only 31% have a playbook for activating audiences down the funnel. Practitioners from Canva, SAP, Mastercard, and others shared examples of aligning marketing and sales on common signals. LinkedIn also outlined a product roadmap focused on cost-per-opportunity targeting, multi-format campaigns, agentic workflows, and incrementality forecasting.
State of Tech Industry 2026: AI Coding Agents Transform Software Engineering
The article, based on a keynote by Gergely Orosz at the LDX3 conference, presents a comprehensive analysis of the tech industry in late 2026. Key trends include the widespread shift to AI coding agents, with most engineers no longer writing code by hand and running 5-10 agents in parallel. Agent-authored PRs on GitHub now exceed human-authored ones, and AI-generated code is leading to a 'golden age' of migrations. The IDE is fading, replaced by CLI-first and agentic environments. Code reviews have become 'theatrical' due to overwhelming volume, and AI-only reviews are rising. Teams are smaller, engineering specializations are blurring, and there is a trend of CTOs resigning to build. Challenges include quality degradation, increased context switching, and infrastructure shortages (GPU, memory, CPU). The article also covers the rise of 'agentic software factories' and custom agent harnesses at major companies, alongside a trend of moving to open AI models to reduce costs.
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