Key Takeaways
- Only about 35% of B2B companies handle all marketing in-house; the other 65% rely on agencies or freelancers, so choosing the right B2B marketing agency is now a core strategic decision, not a nice-to-have.
- Before you shop agencies, get painfully clear on pipeline targets, ICP, sales cycle, and how many qualified meetings you actually need each month so you can judge agencies on revenue impact, not vanity metrics.
- Modern B2B deals average 10-11 stakeholders and up to 266 touchpoints before close, which means your agency must be able to run coordinated, multi-channel programs that support long, complex sales cycles.
- Treat agency selection like a sales process: create a scorecard, run a pilot with clear SLAs, and insist on weekly reporting that ties campaigns to opportunities and meetings, not just clicks and impressions.
- Most B2B marketers say generating high-quality leads and proving ROI are their top challenges; your best agency partners will talk in terms of CAC, pipeline, and payback, not just traffic or MQL volume.
- Watch for red flags like long-term contracts, vague ICP understanding, and weak sales integration; the best B2B marketing agencies are happy with month-to-month terms and can show you how they plug into SDR workflows.
- For companies that want pipeline fast without building a big in-house SDR machine, pairing a strong B2B marketing agency with a specialized outbound partner like SalesHive can compress ramp time and de-risk the whole go-to-market motion.
Why selecting a B2B marketing agency is harder (and more important) than it used to be
If choosing a B2B marketing agency feels as high-stakes as closing a six-figure deal, that’s because modern B2B buying behaves like one. The average buying group now includes 10–11 stakeholders, and CFOs hold final decision power in nearly 79% of purchases, which forces marketing to speak to committees—not individuals. At the same time, B2B journeys can require roughly 266 touchpoints before close, so “random acts of marketing” rarely translate into pipeline.
This is happening while budgets are tight and scrutiny is higher. Gartner reports marketing budgets dropped to about 7.7% of company revenue in 2024 and remained flat in 2025, which means every agency dollar has to justify itself fast. If an agency is great at impressions but weak at sales outcomes, your SDRs and AEs pay the price first—then your CFO asks why CAC is rising.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to evaluate agencies the way revenue teams evaluate anything else: with clear targets, a scorecard, and proof in a paid pilot. We’ll also cover where specialized partners like our team at SalesHive fit—especially when you need an outbound engine (think sdr agency + cold email agency + cold calling services) that converts interest into qualified meetings.
Outsourcing is now the default—so your agency choice is a competitive lever
Agency support is no longer an edge case in B2B; it’s mainstream. Research compiled by Backlinko shows roughly 65% of B2B brands don’t run all marketing in-house and rely on agencies or freelancers for at least part of execution. In a separate UK survey, 50% of B2B companies reported outsourcing some marketing activities, reinforcing how common external help is in complex selling environments.
The “why” is simple: pipeline pressure isn’t easing up. In recent lead-gen research, 51% of US B2B companies say getting new marketing-qualified leads into pipeline is an urgent priority, and 69% plan to increase lead generation investment. When you put those numbers next to longer sales cycles and more stakeholders, you get one conclusion: agencies must drive sales-ready demand, not vanity metrics.
The hidden risk is that many agency relationships fail because expectations are fuzzy. One marketing relationship survey found 55% of brands were likely to switch their primary agency within six months, with “value” dissatisfaction leading the list. The best protection is a selection process that forces specificity: what counts as success, how it’s measured in the CRM, and how the agency collaborates with sales week to week.
Start with revenue math, not channel tactics
Before you review a single deck, work backwards from revenue. If you need $X in new ARR or services revenue, then the agency conversation must translate that into opportunities and qualified meetings per month, based on average deal size, win rate, and sales cycle length. If an agency can’t comfortably discuss that math, you’re not evaluating a growth partner—you’re interviewing a vendor who will optimize whatever metric is easiest to move.
We recommend documenting qualification definitions upfront (MQL, SQL, SAL, qualified meeting) and aligning them with sales leadership before agencies pitch solutions. That one step prevents the most common failure mode: agencies defining success as cheap lead volume while your team needs pipeline-quality conversations. It also forces a real discussion about where your funnel is leaking—MQL-to-SQL, SQL-to-opportunity, or opportunity-to-close—so the agency is accountable for the right stage.
A simple revenue-backwards model also makes budgeting rational. With budgets hovering around 7.7% of revenue, you can’t afford strategy that “feels right” but can’t be measured; your spend has to ladder up to payback. When you can express goals as meetings, opportunities, and CAC targets, it becomes much easier to compare a traditional B2B marketing agency to a b2b sales agency or sales outsourcing partner.
| Revenue-backwards input | What you should calculate |
|---|---|
| New revenue target + average deal size | Closed-won deals needed per quarter/month |
| Win rate + sales cycle length | Opportunities needed per month (and when they must be created) |
| SQL-to-opportunity conversion | SQLs or sales-accepted meetings needed per month |
| Target CAC and payback window | Maximum cost per opportunity and cost per meeting you can tolerate |
Build an evaluation scorecard and require a paid pilot with exit criteria
Treat agency selection like a sales process: define requirements, score objectively, and make performance measurable quickly. Because 55% of brands say they’re likely to switch agencies within six months, you should assume “fit” is unproven until you see execution inside your funnel. That means you need a written scorecard, not a vibes-based decision driven by brand names and case study polish.
We like a 60–90 day paid pilot with a narrow but meaningful objective—such as a specific number of qualified meetings from target accounts at an agreed cost per opportunity. Long retainers before proof are where relationships go to die; they shift risk onto you and create political friction when results stall. The best agencies welcome pilots because they force clarity, and strong partners would rather win long-term trust than lock you into a contract.
During the pilot, reporting must tie activity to pipeline outcomes. Weekly updates should include meeting quality feedback, stage progression, and routing/SLA compliance—not just click-through rates and impressions. If the agency can’t show how their work becomes opportunities inside HubSpot or Salesforce, you’re buying marketing theater, not revenue impact.
| Scorecard category | What “good” looks like in evaluation |
|---|---|
| ICP + ACV fit | Proven results in your deal size, stakeholders, and sales cycle complexity |
| Sales alignment | Clear handoff design, follow-up SLAs, feedback loops, and CRM hygiene |
| Channel competence | Depth in 2–3 channels that match your motion, not “we do everything” |
| Measurement + attribution | Dashboards that connect campaigns to meetings, opportunities, and revenue |
| Contract flexibility | Pilot-friendly, month-to-month options, and transparent scope boundaries |
| Operating cadence | Weekly revenue meetings with decisions, owners, and documented next steps |
If an agency can’t explain how marketing turns into meetings and opportunities inside your CRM, you’re not buying growth—you’re buying theater.
Prioritize sales alignment: the handoff is where pipeline is won or lost
A great B2B marketing agency obsesses over your SDR and AE workflows as much as your website. Ask agencies to walk you through the lead journey from first touch to booked meeting: routing rules, follow-up expectations, and what happens when sales rejects a lead. If they can’t discuss speed-to-lead, SLAs, and feedback loops, you’ll end up with campaigns that look busy but don’t convert.
This is also where many companies underestimate tooling and process. Your agency must be comfortable integrating with your stack—HubSpot, Salesforce, Outreach, sales engagement sequences—and ensuring lead data is usable (clean fields, clear source tracking, consistent stages). The best partners will proactively troubleshoot breakdowns like “good leads that never get worked” or “meetings that aren’t qualified,” because those issues are operational, not creative.
If you’re considering sales outsourcing, be explicit about ownership boundaries. We generally advise keeping SDR strategy in-house (so revenue leadership retains control), while using an outsourced sales team or sales development agency to execute in specific segments. That model can work extremely well when your partner behaves like an extension of your team—especially in outbound programs involving cold callers, b2b cold calling services, and a disciplined cold email agency motion.
Demand multi-channel execution, but avoid “channel soup”
With modern journeys requiring around 266 touchpoints, your agency has to think in coordinated sequences, not isolated campaigns. Multi-channel doesn’t mean trying everything; it means choosing the few channels most likely to move your ICP based on deal size, urgency, and sales cycle, then orchestrating them into one coherent path. A strong agency can explain exactly why they’re prioritizing certain channels and what signal they expect each one to generate.
This is where stakeholder complexity matters. When buying groups average 10–11 people and the CFO is the decision-maker in nearly 79% of purchases, you need messaging for finance, technical evaluators, and day-to-day users simultaneously. Your agency should show how they’ll build committee-level content and enablement—proof points, ROI narratives, and objection handling—so sales can multithread accounts instead of chasing one champion.
Lead volume alone won’t save you when 51% of companies say pipeline-ready leads are urgent and budgets are under a microscope. Ask how the agency filters for intent and fit, and how they convert that into conversations—whether through paid, content nurture, events, or an outbound sales agency approach like b2b cold calling plus LinkedIn touches. The goal is a system where inbound and outbound reinforce each other, not separate motions competing for credit.
Make attribution, data, and AI competence non-negotiable
Proving impact is now a core requirement, not a nice-to-have. LinkedIn reports 78% of B2B CMOs say proving marketing ROI is a higher priority than before, yet 87% of marketers say measuring long-term impact is increasingly difficult. Your agency should be able to show real dashboards (not mockups) and explain how they connect campaigns to meetings, opportunities, and revenue—especially across long sales cycles.
Budget realities make this even sharper. With marketing budgets around 7.7% of revenue, the winners are teams that use data to decide what to stop doing, not just what to add. Ask how the agency uses AI and analytics to prioritize accounts, personalize messaging, and optimize weekly—then have them demonstrate how those insights change actions in the next sprint.
Watch for reporting red flags that hide performance: vague “engagement” metrics, attribution that ignores opportunity stages, and reluctance to be measured on pipeline outcomes. The best agencies will happily align to shared KPIs—qualified meetings booked, sales-accepted leads, sales-qualified opportunities, and cost per opportunity—because those metrics keep everyone honest and aligned.
A practical next step: pair the right marketing agency with a reliable outbound engine
If you need pipeline faster than SEO and content can ramp, consider separating “demand creation” from “demand conversion.” Many B2B teams run awareness and intent through a marketing partner, then use a specialized sdr agency or b2b sales agency to turn that intent into booked meetings through outbound. This approach often reduces risk because each partner is measured on the outcomes they directly control.
This is exactly where we fit at SalesHive. We focus on consistently turning market interest into qualified meetings using list building services, cold email, LinkedIn outreach services, and cold call services that plug into your existing SDR and AE workflow. Since 2016, we’ve booked 100,000+ B2B sales meetings for 1,500+ clients, supported by a blended US-based and Philippines-based team and an AI-powered outbound platform, and we operate with flexible, month-to-month terms.
Your best move now is to formalize the process: finalize your revenue-backwards model, define qualification criteria, select 2–3 agencies to run through a structured discovery, and insist on a 60–90 day pilot with weekly pipeline reporting. Whether you ultimately choose one integrated firm or combine a B2B marketing agency with SalesHive-style sales outsourcing, the goal is the same: a measurable, repeatable pipeline system—built for long cycles, buying committees, and real revenue accountability.
Sources
- Backlinko – B2B Marketing Statistics 2024
- Full Mix Marketing – Outsourcing Marketing Stats
- Digital Silk – Lead Generation Statistics 2025
- Gartner – 2024 CMO Spend Survey (Marketing Budgets)
- Webeo / HockeyStack – B2B Customer Journey Touchpoints
- Martal Group – B2B Buying Process Factors (2025)
- LinkedIn – The ROI Challenge in B2B Marketing
- Setup – Marketing Relationship Survey 2023
- SalesHive – B2B Lead Generation Resource
- SalesHive (saleshive.com)
📊 Key Statistics
Expert Insights
Start With Revenue Math, Not Channel Tactics
Before you look at any agency decks, work backwards from revenue targets: how much new ARR or services revenue do you need, what is your average deal size, and how many qualified meetings does that translate into per month. Agencies that cannot have a confident, detailed conversation about that math are not the ones you want running your demand gen. Tie their scope and KPIs directly to those numbers.
Judge Agencies on Sales Alignment, Not Just Creative
Great B2B agencies obsess over your SDR and AE workflows as much as your website. Ask each agency to walk you through how they hand leads to sales, what SLAs they expect on follow-up, and how they help you troubleshoot conversion issues at each stage. If they do not talk about CRM hygiene, routing, and feedback loops, you are buying marketing theater, not revenue operations.
Insist on Multi-Channel, But Avoid Channel Soup
Given the average 200+ touchpoints in modern B2B journeys, you absolutely need multi-channel campaigns, but that should not mean trying every shiny object at once. Look for agencies that can explain which 2-3 channels will likely have the biggest impact for your ICP and sales cycle, then prove they know how to sequence them into one coherent journey your SDR team can ride all the way to opportunities.
Use a Paid Pilot With Clear Exit Criteria
Long strategy phases and annual retainers are where agency relationships go to die. Instead, negotiate a 60-90 day paid pilot with a narrow but meaningful objective: for example, X qualified meetings from target accounts at Y cost per opportunity. Define those success metrics in the contract and agree on what happens if they are not hit. Good agencies will welcome that clarity.
Make AI and Data Competence a Non-Negotiable
With marketing budgets flat and sales cycles long, you cannot afford an agency that is guessing. Ask specifically how they use data and AI to prioritize accounts, personalize outreach, and optimize campaigns week over week. Have them show real dashboards and explain how they use insights to decide what to stop doing, not just what to add.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Choosing a B2B marketing agency on brand name and case studies alone
Big logos and pretty work do not guarantee they understand your niche, sales cycle, or outbound motion. You can end up with high traffic, low-intent leads that your SDRs cannot convert, burning budget and killing trust between marketing and sales.
Instead: Score agencies on ICP fit, sales alignment, and the relevance of their case studies to your deal size and motion. Ask detailed questions about how they improved SQL-to-opportunity conversion and reduced cost per opportunity, not just how many impressions they drove.
Signing long-term retainers before proving fit
When you lock into 12-month contracts with unproven partners, you absorb all the risk. If performance stalls or your strategy shifts, you are stuck pouring budget into a relationship that is already politically painful to unwind.
Instead: Start with 60-90 day pilots and month-to-month contracts where possible. Make renewal contingent on hitting clear pipeline and meeting targets, and do not be afraid to run two agencies in parallel for a short window to see who can actually execute.
Letting agencies define vague, marketing-only KPIs
If success is measured in clicks, followers, or MQL volume, your agency is incentivized to optimize for cheap, low-intent leads that never turn into revenue. That kills SDR productivity and inflates your CAC.
Instead: Define shared KPIs like qualified meetings booked, SALs, SQOs, opportunity value, and payback period. Make sure those metrics are visible in your CRM and that the agency is comfortable being judged on them alongside your sales leaders.
Ignoring how the agency will integrate with your SDR and sales dev stack
If agency leads do not flow cleanly into your CRM, sequences, and SDR workflows, they will stall or get ignored. Friction at that handoff is one of the biggest reasons good campaigns look like they underperform.
Instead: During evaluation, map the exact journey from click or form-fill into SDR outreach, including routing rules, SLA for follow-up, and feedback loops. Prefer agencies that have deep experience integrating with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Outreach, or SalesHive-style outbound platforms.
Underestimating the importance of industry and ACV fit
An agency that is fantastic at $5K SMB SaaS may struggle badly with $200K enterprise services deals involving 10-15 stakeholders and 9-12 month cycles. Messaging, content, and attribution models are totally different.
Instead: Ask for case studies and references that match your ACV band, deal complexity, and target personas. Dig into how they handled long-cycle nurture, content for different stakeholders, and how they measured influence across months, not just last-click wins.
Action Items
Build a simple revenue-backwards target model
List your annual new revenue goal, average deal size, win rate, and current sales cycle. From there, calculate how many qualified opportunities and sales-accepted meetings per month you need. Use this model as the starting point for every agency discussion and proposal.
Create an agency scorecard with 6–8 weighted criteria
Include categories like ICP and industry fit, sales alignment, channel expertise, analytics and reporting, contract flexibility, and cultural fit. Score each agency 1-5 per category and use that to keep internal discussions objective instead of political.
Run a structured discovery call with your top 3 agencies
Share your ICP, funnel data, and goals in advance, then ask each agency to walk you through their go-to-market hypothesis, metrics they would own, and a 90-day plan. Pay attention to the quality of their questions about your sales process-that is where the real signal is.
Define your lead and meeting qualification criteria upfront
Align sales, marketing, and the agency on what counts as an MQL, SQL, SAL, and a qualified meeting. Document firmographic, technographic, and behavioral criteria and bake them into the contract and reporting.
Pilot with a narrow, high-impact segment
Instead of trying to boil the ocean, choose a focused segment-like one vertical or product line-and have the agency prove they can drive qualified meetings there. Use that pilot data to refine messaging and decide whether to scale spend.
Set up shared dashboards in your CRM or BI tool
Work with your RevOps team and the agency to build dashboards that show lead source, speed to lead, conversion by stage, meetings booked, and pipeline created. Review these weekly with sales and the agency to make adjustments in near real time.
Partner with SalesHive
If you are evaluating B2B marketing agencies to drive demand, pairing them with SalesHive gives you a ready-made outbound engine that plugs directly into your CRM and sales process. SalesHive handles list building and research, cold calling, cold email outreach, LinkedIn touches, and appointment setting, all on flexible, month-to-month terms with risk-free onboarding. That means your marketing agency can focus on generating awareness and intent, while SalesHive’s SDRs work those signals through disciplined sequences until they show up on your reps calendars as qualified meetings. For B2B teams that want pipeline growth without the overhead of building a large in-house SDR organization, SalesHive is a proven way to de-risk the outbound side of your go-to-market.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
What is a B2B marketing agency and how is it different from a general marketing agency?
A B2B marketing agency focuses specifically on companies that sell to other businesses, not consumers. That means they are used to long sales cycles, buying committees with 6-10+ stakeholders, and complex products that require education and content, not just ads. They understand how to generate qualified leads and support SDRs and AEs through email, content, paid media, events, and outbound programs that speak to CFOs, IT, operations, and end users simultaneously. A generic agency might be great at ecommerce or brand awareness but still be lost when it comes to pipeline, opportunity stages, and how to feed an outbound sales engine.
When should a B2B company hire a marketing agency versus building in-house?
If you are early-stage, need pipeline fast, and do not yet have the budget or time to build a full internal team across content, paid, ops, and SDRs, a specialized agency can get you moving much faster. As you scale past a few million in ARR or revenue, it often makes sense to build core strategic roles in-house and use agencies for execution depth, specialized channels (like SEO or paid LinkedIn), and SDR outsourcing. A good rule of thumb: if you cannot consistently hire and manage experts in a given discipline, you are usually better off with a strong B2B agency there.
What should my budget be when working with a B2B marketing agency?
Across industries, B2B organizations typically spend around 6-9% of revenue on marketing overall, though Gartner data shows many larger firms at about 7.7% recently. For growth-focused mid-market B2B companies, it is common to allocate a meaningful slice of that to demand gen and outbound-often 30-60% of the marketing budget. The key is to compare agency costs to the value of a new customer: if your average deal is $50K and payback expectations are 12 months, spending $8-10K per closed-won opportunity can be perfectly rational as long as the agency can hit that CAC with reasonable consistency.
How do I evaluate whether a B2B marketing agency is actually good at lead quality, not just lead volume?
Start by asking for funnel metrics from similar clients: MQL-to-SQL conversion rate, SQL-to-opportunity rate, and average opportunity size. Then dig into how they define a qualified lead and what filtering they do before passing anything to your SDRs. During a pilot, have sales rate each lead or meeting on fit and buying stage and share that feedback weekly with the agency. If the agency is slow to act on that feedback or keeps sending you the same low-intent leads, you know what you need to know.
How long does it usually take to see results from a B2B marketing agency?
For outbound and appointment setting, you should expect early meetings in the first 30-60 days once messaging and targeting are dialed in, with more predictable volume by months three to four. For SEO and content-driven inbound, meaningful pipeline impact often takes 6-9 months. The real answer depends on your sales cycle length: if your average deal takes 6-9 months to close, you can still judge an agency on leading indicators like opportunities created, stage progression, and forecasted pipeline long before full revenue shows up.
Should my SDR/BDR team report into the agency or stay in-house?
Ownership should stay in-house; your revenue leadership needs direct line of sight into SDR productivity and quota. That said, many teams successfully use outsourced SDR agencies to augment or even replace in-house reps for specific segments or markets. In that model, treat the agency SDR pod like an extension of your team: same ICP, same qualification criteria, same CRM, and shared dashboards. A partner like SalesHive, for example, provides US-based and Philippines-based SDRs plus the tech and playbooks, while you keep strategic control of segments, offers, and pipeline goals.
How do I make sure my agency and sales team stay aligned over time?
Put a recurring revenue meeting on the calendar that includes sales leadership, RevOps, and the agency. Review the same dashboards and talk through where deals are stalling, what objections SDRs are hearing, and which campaigns are feeding real opportunities versus noise. Require the agency to listen to call recordings and read email replies, not just look at top-funnel metrics. When the agency is close to the front lines, they can adjust messaging and targeting in days instead of quarters.
Is it smart to hire separate agencies for brand, performance, and outbound sales development?
It can work, but only if someone internally owns the full funnel and forces those partners to play nicely together. If your brand agency is running big awareness campaigns, your performance agency is driving form fills, and a partner like SalesHive is running outbound, you need shared ICPs, shared scoring rules, and one view of pipeline. Many companies start with one demand gen partner plus an SDR partner and only add separate brand or creative agencies once they have a stable revenue engine in place.
