Are B2B Agencies Stuck in Their Own System?

It’s 2025. Yet many B2B marketing agencies still seem stuck in 2010. Strategy decks of 200 pages, weeks of post-it-fuelled brainstorms, endless presentations with no clear outcome — all while today’s businesses need the exact opposite: speed, clarity, and tangible impact. The world has changed. Clients no longer want theatre — they want results. No more drawn-out processes that drag on for months, but actions that make a difference tomorrow.

Does strategy still need to be a book?

Strategy is essential. It lays the foundations, sharpens your positioning, and helps you truly stand out from the competition. Without strategy, you're flying blind. But that doesn’t mean it needs to be a 200-page document. A strategy only becomes valuable when it drives movement. When it sharpens choices. When it leads directly to action.

In today’s fast-paced environment, everything revolves around agility: testing, learning, optimising — in short cycles. No more bulky reports, but clear insights and smart tactics that you can act on immediately. Strategy isn’t the final product. It’s the engine that powers everything else — and keeps it moving.

From all-in to all-over-the-place

Many agencies position themselves as ‘full-service’ or ‘360°’. But under the hood, it’s often a patchwork. Expertise is scattered, availability is limited, and the right people are rarely accessible when they’re actually needed. Internally, schedules are shuffled, profiles are patched together, and roles are improvised — while the client just wants progress. The result? Clients have to adjust to the agency’s structure instead of the other way around.

Learning curves are fine – just not at the client's expense

Here’s the reality: many client teams are staffed with juniors who are still learning on the job. That’s fine — everyone starts somewhere. But too often these young profiles are expected to carry strategic projects without proper guidance or sparring partners. Clients expect seniority and direction, but get vagueness and delays. Meanwhile, they’re paying full price — not for proven expertise, but for a structure that primarily serves the agency’s own business model. Experience is being replaced by energy. But that’s not the same as delivering impact.

Who dares to question the model itself?

The traditional agency setup — partner, account manager, strategist, creative, paid specialist — is starting to crack. The internal machine keeps running, but often without truly considering whether the structure still fits today’s needs.

The market demands agility. Transparency. A single point of contact who understands where the business is going — and gets it done. No meetings for the sake of meetings. No creativity without context. No strategy without execution.

The client sees through it

Clients are less and less convinced. The reports, the meetings, the agency shows — they sense when the work is more about the agency than about their business. So they start looking elsewhere: smaller teams with focus, external experts with experience, and models built not on billable hours, but on performance.

They want sprints that actually work:

– Strategic quick scans that define priorities within days

– Growth sprints that test, learn and adjust over a few weeks

– Content engines built for relevance and rhythm, not over-briefed creative decks

– Campaign builds that deliver test results and optimisations, fast

– Lead generation models driven by conversion, collaboration and data

– In-house consulting, where senior experts work side-by-side with the client — not watching from the sidelines

These are the formats that move things forward. That eliminate waste. And most of all: that prove marketing doesn’t have to be slow or bloated — but smart, fast, and results-driven.

Conclusion: the traditional agency model no longer fits the real world. It’s time to let it go.

The client is awake. The market has changed. And only those who are truly willing to embrace that change have a future in B2B marketing.