We are a web development and marketing agency, and our primary focus for acquiring clients is now LinkedIn. That is worth saying plainly, because it is not where most agencies look. I registered on LinkedIn twenty years ago and was not active at all for most of that time. For years we relied on referrals, organic traffic, and marketplaces to get clients instead.
Why the Channel Shifted
Something changed in how people find providers. I now see LinkedIn becoming more critical than Google for this kind of work, and a big part of the reason is search itself. More people are turning to tools like ChatGPT to answer the questions they used to type into Google. It seems likely that Google will transform from a traditional search engine over the next few years, and the safe assumption is that the way buyers discover an agency is moving with it.
When the search box stops being the front door, the relationships and the visible track record become the front door instead. LinkedIn is where that track record lives for a B2B service business. It is the difference between hoping to rank for a keyword and being already known to the people who might hire you. This is the same shift I wrote about in asking ChatGPT how it describes your brand before your customers do.
The Numbers Behind the System
I want to share some real numbers, because the change was measurable. When we attended the Social Media Monetization event in Chester at the end of September, I had around seven thousand connections, mostly built up over years from people in India who had followed me for a long time. They were connections, but they were not the audience that turns into UK ecommerce clients.
Since then, we put a system in place inside our team, and I am now at 8,362 connections, with a very different make-up. The point is not the raw count. It is that the growth was deliberate and aimed at the right people, rather than accumulated by accident. A system you run on purpose beats a number that grew on its own, which is the same lesson behind why follower counts are so easy to fake.
Why I Treat This as the Main Channel Now
For a long time I treated LinkedIn as a profile I happened to have. Now I treat it as the top of the funnel. The work shows up here, the conversations start here, and the clients increasingly arrive here. It took me far too long to make that switch, which is the honest backstory in twenty years on LinkedIn, mostly wasted.
MageCloud Operating Note
Where Our Clients Now Come From
THE OLD CHANNELS
Referrals, organic search, marketplaces
Still real, but slower and harder to steer as search changes.
THE MAIN CHANNEL NOW
LinkedIn, run as a system
7,000 passive connections became 8,362 deliberate ones.
Paul Ryazanov · MageCloud · the front door moved
If you run an agency or a store and you are wondering where your next clients will actually come from as search shifts, come and find me at the next Ecommerce Camp UK. It is one of the most useful conversations to have right now.