Seal the deal: How audience intelligence can help agency teams win pitches and grow their client base

The rest of 2024, and 2025 are going to be hard on agencies. In 2023 it was no secret that a lot of agencies struggled to win new clients. In fact, new business for agencies fell by 12%. 

This is because brands have been sold so many promises over the years, that if they aren’t 100% certain your agency can get the results they are after, they’ll move on to the next agency that proves that they can.

Brands aren’t just looking at the strategy an agency presents, they are looking at how they get to that strategy and their approach to consumer insights. 

They need to see insights they haven’t seen before. 

Bottom line is, when you pitch a new brand, you don’t have to be the flashiest or even the most creative agency. But you do have to come strapped with the best data and insights your competition doesn’t have. 

So to help you come prepared, we’ve summarized the top audience insights to pull and include in your next pitch deck, to win that client. 

Understanding the power of audience intelligence 

Before any pitch can be created, the agency needs to know the ins-and out’s of the audience, and they need this information fast. 

There’s no time to conduct focus groups, which is why agencies need the help of audience intelligence. 

Audience intelligence is defined as the practice of deeply understanding a target audience by aggregating and analyzing comprehensive data sets. This data or “digital footprints” left by the audience includes interactions on social media platforms, website behavior, and engagements documented in CRM systems.

Audience intelligence is a godsend to agencies for many reasons, but none as strong as the pitch. 

Audience intelligence platforms can pull up and segment any audience in a flash. This segmentation piece is key because it’s what allows agencies to understand these smaller consumer groups on a deeper level - as each needs its own marketing strategy. 

Audiense’s suite of audience intelligence tools were built to give agencies a 360-degree view of who a segment is in terms of their top interests, behaviors, and affinities. 

The deep insights they surface allow agencies to “meet” their client’s target audience and discover who they really are, without ever having to meet them in person. 

And this level of insight, when translated into a marketing strategy in an agency pitch, is what wins clients over. 

Let’s get into it. 

Leveraging audience intelligence to win pitches

No matter what your agency chooses to include in your pitch deck, there are four key insights or sections that every winning pitch deck has. And as we explore each one, we will show you how Audiense does the work for you. 

The target audience’s needs and pain points 

Beyond being able to tell the client who their audience is, what they are like, and which segments exist, Audiense can highlight the top needs and pain points of that audience. These are the building blocks of the next section, marketing strategy. 

It also zeroes in on what matters most. For example, you might discover that your client’s largest audience segment is made of women aged 32-36, who identify as vegan and love cooking, are raising their children screen-free, and are busy climbing the corporate ladder. Great, so what?

Audiense adds the extra layer of “aha” insights to your client’s product (like the Vegan brand Just Egg). For example, Audiense can surface insights like “These vegan moms are having a hard time finding vegan friendly recipes that are both easy AND fast to make, this bothers them because they only have max 15 minutes to prepare dinner every night but they admire influencers like Dominique and Janet Wright who cook healthy vegan meals for their family every night.”

This type of insight - their need for easy and fast vegan recipes and their pain point of not being able to find them, and their desire to be like the Vegan mom influencers they admire - is then taken and a winning strategy is built around it. 

Insight-backed marketing strategies and campaigns 

The insight revealed above means nothing if it isn’t actioned on. It’s your job to impress them with that insight sure, but then it’s your job to wow them with the strategy you built off that insight. 

Using the insight above, your agency might suggest launching a blog of fast and easy 10 minute vegan recipes that incorporate your client’s product Just Egg. The vegan recipe blogs could be guest-written by their top influencers Dominique and Janet Wright. By using their top influencers to write the content you can gain consumer trust, it brings more authority to the articles, and you also attract those influencers owned audiences that might not yet be your customers.  

A tool like Audiense can then direct which media and social channels this new blog should be advertised through, what the creative and copy should look like, and which influencers should be hired to promote it. Like below: 

Personalized content 

Showing your client the strategy is impressive, but getting down to the details of that strategy in the pitch deck can assure them that it’s not just all smoke and mirrors. 

Show them that you will also use data-backed insights to build personalized content, like the blog content itself, the ads, the copy in those ads, the social posts etc. 

These details don’t have to take a long time to get to either since Audiense can surface them instantly: 

Value-add insights 

Here’s where you can really show the potential client the kind of value your agency can add. 

This section of the pitch can be dedicated to other insights that aren’t just valuable to the client brief, but insights the client can consider and action on themselves. It shows your agency is 3 steps ahead, and positions you as a partner to that client, not just another agency.

For example, Audiense can surface insights on the client’s competition (ie. Zero Egg), like the fact that they’ve managed to acquire an entire cluster your client hasn’t yet considered or catered to yet. This insight could encourage them to create a new product for this consumer group and target them. 

Insights as they relate to new opportunities for the client, are always a wow factor. 

These four sections sum up the insights you should include in your winning pitch deck, they demonstrate your agency's expertise, value and thought leadership in the industry. 

Use these tips and best practices to win pitches

How easy is it to grab these audience insights? We’ll show you! 

At the beginning of the pitch creation process, Audiense makes the perfect discovery tool. All you have to do is run a report on your client’s audience, and the insights are populated and shown through easy to read dashboards and visualizations:

*All the platform images shown are ones we would recommend including in your next winning pitch deck.

A popular pitch deck visualization is the network graph, it shows the client you understand the breakdown of their overall audience - and from there you can zero in on their target audience: 

Agencies who use Audiense, use it before any client pitch to do initial audience research and get a feel for who the audience is through their top interests, behaviors and affinities: 

As you go through the Audiense report, it's best practice to take note of any insights that surprise you, or that you think you should highlight to the client. For example you could include the insight below that this audience is busy and focused on work yes, but they also care about making time for traveling, they are science geeks, and they love retail therapy: 

Remember you’re building a story about the audience, so let the insights direct that story from start to finish:  

The visuals and dashboards are easily imported into any pitch deck: 

When proposing your marketing strategy, having the visuals to back it up shows the client how you got to that point.  

Ideas are great but it's the supporting evidence that your client will find most compelling. 

Finally, add any insights that could lead to new business opportunities, like noticeable audience trends. 

Audiense insights brighten up your pitch deck and turn audience theories into solid audience revelations. Clients will feel confident that the strategy your agency is proposing is going to work, because you have the data to back it up. 

See just how easy it is to surface insights on an audience and just imagine how the visuals would light up your pitch deck (navigate through an Audiense insights report):

Win your next pitch 

It’s no secret that you need audience intelligence if you’re going to win new business in 2024 and beyond.

Audience segmentation, customer pain points and needs, interest and affinity insights and new business opportunities are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the type of insights Audiense can unearth, but they’re the top ones used by agencies to win their client pitches.

Audiense’s suite of audience intelligence tools are just what your agency’s pitch decks are missing. 

Seal the deal, and try Audiense in your next pitch.