From tender to triumph: Fixing the pitfalls of pitching in digital marketing

If you work in marketing and new business for a digital agency, you’ve likely experienced the ghosting. That moment when you’ve poured time, effort, and brainpower into an audit, a proposal, or even a full-blown pitch… only for the client to vanish into thin air. No feedback, no decision, not even a courtesy “thanks, but no thanks.” Just radio silence.

Yep, it’s just happened to us. Again.

It leaves agencies in a cycle of “chasing up” over weeks and even months, and new business leaders apologising to production teams for the effort they’ve put in, and how long do you chase before you cut your losses?

The frustration of the black hole

Not even getting confirmation that your proposal has been received is frustrating. But what makes it worse is the internal effort that goes into preparing these pitches.

Anyone in this business knows that rallying internal teams to contribute – getting strategists, analysts, and senior leads to invest their time in a new opportunity – is no small feat. When those same people come back asking for an update, and all you can offer is a shrug, it’s beyond frustrating.

Of course, we’re realists – we work in a competitive industry. We expect to lose pitches. In fact, we welcome the “no’s” because they come with valuable feedback that helps us refine our approach. But getting completely blanked? That’s just disrespectful.

The qualification challenge: When is a pitch worth it?

At Wolfenden, and I’m sure like many agencies, we try to qualify every opportunity as much as possible before investing time. We look for genuine signs that the prospect has a real challenge, goal, or need for our support – rather than just fishing for free insights.

The source of the lead tells us a lot. Referrals and inbound inquiries tend to be much stronger than cold outbound approaches, where businesses might just be shopping around for ideas with no real intention to switch agencies. The real challenge is spotting when a potential client is genuinely open to change versus when they’re just collecting intel.

And in such a competitive environment, it’s tempting to just say “yes” to everything. But the more pitches we chase, the more we risk burning out our teams for opportunities that were never serious in the first place.

Setting boundaries: A smarter approach to pitching

So, how do we take back control?

Perhaps as agencies, we need to set clearer boundaries before diving into proposal mode. That means:

• Being more upfront when asking about decision-makers and timelines – who’s actually making the call, and when? Are we speaking to the right people, and do they have a specific time in mind for when they need to make the call? If not, it might not be the top of their agenda right now.
• Being more selective about which opportunities align with our agency vision and the brands we know we can truly impact.
• Being okay with stepping back if something doesn’t feel right – because if a prospect can’t show respect at the pitch stage, is that really a relationship worth chasing?

This year, we’re aligning more closely with our agency vision, focusing on working with like-minded clients where we can make a real impact. And that means taking a step back to assess every new business opportunity before throwing our full weight behind it.

Will we still get ghosted? Probably. But if we can take a little more control over the process, maybe – just maybe – it will lead to more meaningful partnerships built on respect, transparency, and genuine collaboration.