Building Thought Leadership in Agencies

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Which growth drivers are fueling your agency right now? For today’s featured guest, the answer is clear: thought leadership. It’s the single biggest driver consistently bringing his agency the best opportunities. While it can be difficult to separate genuine impact from vanity metrics, the deliberate effort to position both himself and his agency as industry experts has proven invaluable for growth.

But building that kind of authority doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intentional work—stepping onto stages at conferences, showing up in interviews and podcasts, and, just as importantly, encouraging your team to create and share content of their own. In this conversation, he breaks down the strategies that help expand thought leadership beyond the founder, and why agency leaders must remember: expertise is a long game, one that compounds over time to deliver lasting results.

Chris Long is the VP of Marketing at Go Fish Digital, a full-service digital marketing agency specializing in SEO, paid media, and content marketing. Over the past 3–4 years, Chris has been leading the charge on marketing and sales for the agency, driving new business growth and experimenting with different channels to see what really works. Spoiler alert: it’s not just ads or conferences—it’s something much bigger.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Thought leadership as your agency’s best growth lever.

• Scaling thought leadership beyond the founder.

• Building the right systems to encourage your team to create content.

• Why Content ROI takes patience.

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The Growth Lever Most Agencies Ignore: Thought Leadership

Recently, Chris has taken an experimental approach to his agency’s growth, testing growth drivers like Google ads, LinkedIn ads, and conferences, and found that thought leadership consistently stood as the biggest growth drivers; one that couldn’t be replicated. Forget chasing the latest ad hack or praying your next conference booth delivers ROI—what’s consistently driven their biggest, best deals has been showing up as experts in their space.

However, thought leadership is hard to measure. It often looks like vanity metrics—views, impressions, shares. But when you zoom out, it’s the stuff that actually moves the needle. The more the agency doubled down on creating content, sharing insights, and putting their expertise out there, the more deals they closed. Not just more deals but better ones, with stronger close rates.

If you’re still waiting for the perfect ad funnel to save your pipeline, you might be missing the obvious. Start building your authority in public. Share your wins. Share what you know. Because thought leadership compounds, and that trust is what gets prospects off the fence.

Why Expertise is the Foundation

You can’t fake thought leadership. It all starts with real expertise. In Chris’ words, “the reason someone’s going to choose an agency, especially as you start to sell larger deals, is they have to be convinced you’re an expert in something.”

That doesn’t mean you need to be the everything agency. In fact, the opposite. It could be as narrow as being “the best B2B or SaaS web dev shop.” The point is: prospects need to believe you’ve mastered your corner of the world. That foundation comes from who you hire, the culture you build, and how you innovate—whether that’s through proprietary tools, processes, or just being damn good at your craft.

In the case of Go Fish, that expertise showed up in real wins (like when their founders innovated on Geico’s site and saw traffic spike 2,000%). Those moments of innovation fueled content, which positioned the agency as leaders. And that cycle of expertise, innovation, and thought leadership became a growth engine.

Scaling Thought Leadership Beyond the Founder

In the early days, thought leadership was usually founder-driven. You’re the face, the credibility, the spark. But as Chris points out, that won’t scale. At a certain point, you need the team creating and sharing insights too.

For them, that meant encouraging everyone to post, write case studies, and share wins. Sometimes it was as simple as, “Hey, we crushed conversions on this client’s landing page—let’s write about it.” By empowering their team, they kept thought leadership flowing, even as the founders had less time for it.

Thought leadership can’t be a one-man show forever. As an agency grows, the founders have less time to spend on the day-to-day operations. If you want authority to scale with your agency, bake it into your culture. Train your team to see insights worth sharing. Make content creation part of the job, not an afterthought.

The Biggest Mistake: Not Sharing at All

So what do most agencies get wrong? They don’t share anything.

Too many people assume, “Everything valuable has already been said.” Or they think their insights aren’t groundbreaking enough. But as Chris points out, “What’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to everyone else.”

That’s why simpley sharing SEO best practices on LinkedIn got him traction. What he thought was “table stakes” turned out to be news to his audience. And the more he shared, the more inbound leads followed.

If you’re holding back because you don’t think your perspective matters, think again. Your experience has value—even if it feels basic to you.

Building Systems for Thought Leadership

If you want your team to start sharing their knowledge, you have to get intentional. At Go Fish, they didn’t just hope employees would write content—they built systems:

• Every new hire had to write two blog posts a year.

• They tracked contributions in their project management system.

• They created two career tracks: one managerial, one based on thought leadership as an individual contributor.

That last part is huge. By tying thought leadership part of promotions and career growth, they gave employees a real incentive to contribute. Chris himself went from manager (which he admits wasn’t his strong suit) to a senior role via the thought leadership track.

The lesson here is that if you want consistent content, make it part of how you hire, measure, and promote. Don’t just “encourage” thought leadership—bake it into the agency’s DNA.

The Evolution of Content: From Blogs to Video

Back in the early 2010s, blogs were king. One of Go Fish’s founders wrote a massive guide on reputation management on the Moz blog that spun up an entire new agency vertical. That was the play then.

Today, however, the game has shifted. According to Chris, video on LinkedIn and Twitter is where the biggest impact happens now. Video humanizes your agency. It takes the mystery away for prospects who are wondering: “Who would I be working with? Are they innovative? Do I trust them?”

Webinars have also proven effective—letting people go deeper on topics, showcase expertise, and generate leads from long-form content. But the principle stays the same: meet people where they are, with content that builds authority.

The Patience Tax: Why Content ROI Takes Years

With content creation, you can’t expect results in six months.

Here’s the brutal truth: content is a long game. To do content you can’t think even on seeing results in six months. It may take years. Chris has gotten clients that thought about him when they needed an agency because they saw him speak at a conference two years prior. ROI doesn’t always show up on a quarterly P&L—it compounds over years.

The same goes for video content. Rarely does someone listen to one episode and instantly buy. Instead, they binge for months or years before making a move. That’s why consistency matters more than intensity. As Chris said: “I post every day, whether I feel inspired or not. It’s about the habit.”

If you’re evaluating content success after three or six months, you’re cutting yourself off too early. Play the two-year game. The deals waiting for you are bigger than the “quick wins” most agencies chase.

Consistency compounds. Virality is a bonus, not the goal.

Strong Opinions and Deep Dives Win Attention

So what type of content catches people’s attention? On social media, where everyone seems to be shouting the same advice over and over, you can’t be afraid to stand out.

Take a stance. Neutral content gets ignored. As Chris points out: “Strong takes do well because people either comment to agree or argue. Either way, the algorithm loves it.”

Go deep. Technical, niche content might feel too in-the-weeds, but it builds trust. Posts dissecting patents, experiments, or tools often outperform fluff. You may not think that really long niche content could do well, but people will absolutely watch a three-hour tutorial that proves a creator’s expertise—and will come out trusting them more.

This is the heart of thought leadership: demonstrating expertise in public. Clients don’t want generalists. They want to see you know your stuff, inside and out.

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