| Your name and title | |
|---|---|
| Erin Michalak, SVP | |
| How many total employees does your agency currently have? How has this changed over the last 2 years? | |
| We currently have 61 employees. We ended 2023 with 65, and at our peak in 2024 reached 68. Prior to 2023, our headcount consistently remained at 75 or more, and at our largest—pre-COVID—we had over 90 team members. | |
| What are the total revenues for the firm (substitute & indicate billings if this is the only available number): | |
| $8M | |
| List your clients for the past 2 years (please group by industry category and indicate past/current clients). Cut and paste from another document if this helps. | |
| Life Sciences & Laboratory/Research Supplies Avantor (all divisions) Brooks Instrument Manufacturing & Industrial Equipment Air Distribution Technologies Inc. Burnham Holdings, Inc. CNH Industrial America Danfoss Emerson Electric Co. Harrington Hoists and Cranes Heatcraft Refrigeration Products, LLC. Hypertherm, Inc. (no active projects) Johnson Controls Koch Engineered Solutions Monoflo International, Inc. (new client this year) Peak Technologies, Inc. Red Lion Sandvik Machining Solution USA LLC Valmet Inc. Construction & Building Materials ICP Construction, Inc. Warfel Construction (new client this year) Graham (no longer a client) Access Control & Security ASSA ABLOY Entrance Systems HID Global Corporation(no longer a client) Heavy Machinery & Equipment JLG (all divisions) Chemicals & Process Industries Mississippi Lime Company-MLC Solenis LLC Packaging & Paper Pixelle Specialty Solutions (no longer a client) Supply Chain & Procurement Services RS Integrated Supply (no longer a client) | |
| For your client-side decision-makers, what are their roles/titles? | |
| Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) – not often interfacing with this role Vice President of Marketing Director of Marketing Marketing Manager / Product Marketing Manager Brand Manager Communications Manager Content Marketing Manager Digital Marketing Manager Global Marketing Lead Procurement Manager (for contract/budget negotiations) | |
| Bullet point the services you offer your clients: | |
| Branding Campaign Planning Customer Experience Data & Analytics Internal Comms Campaign Research Content Creation Event Marketing Identity & Logo Design Sales Promotion & Support Video Website Design & Development Email Marketing Landing Page & Microsites Lead Generation Media Planning & Buying Public Relations Search Social Media Management | |
| List the agencies/consultancies/marketing services firms that you compete against most often for share of your clients' budgets or for new business. | |
| https://tricomb2b.com/ https://www.themxgroup.com/ https://www.mower.com/ https://www.akhia.com/ https://craftedagency.com/ https://www.ammunition.agency/ | |
| What percent of new revenue comes from the following sources: | |
| 91-100% | |
| Expanding on your answer above, how has most revenue growth come in? | |
| Over the past two years, our revenue growth has come primarily from existing clients. This growth wasn’t driven by proactive selling, but rather by expanded programs or major client events—such as mergers or acquisitions—that led to increased budgets. Historically, our primary contacts at these accounts have worked within fairly fixed budgets. To unlock more potential, we need to proactively expand our relationships into new divisions, departments, and stakeholders within our current clients. Until now, we haven’t pursued that strategy in a focused way. Traditionally, we’ve relied on new business to drive growth. However, 2024 was particularly challenging on that front—we did not secure any new business wins last year. | |
| How do you see these sources of revenue growth changing over the year ahead, if applicable? | |
| Our goal for the year is to secure 2–3 substantial new client wins—we’ve achieved one so far. In parallel, we’re focused on uncovering new revenue streams within our existing client base by expanding into additional divisions or service areas, such as HR or Sustainability. We are looking to do even more organic growth than previously and also ensure we have several new business wins. | |
| What strategic resources are available to your teams? For example, do you have any proprietary strategy, research, data, tools, or any services you subscribe to? | |
| Hoovers – provides detailed information about companies, including their financials, employees and industry sector First Research – provides comprehensive market intelligence about industries and companies, including market size, competitive landscape and industry trends Sprout Social - provides information on social media performance across various platforms, including audience demographics, content engagement metrics, competitor analysis, sentiment analysis, share of voice and detailed insights on how your audience interacts with your brand on social media Buzzsumo – provides trending topics and popular content across platforms Media Radar - provides advertising intelligence , including examples of ad creative and data on brand spending across various media platforms SEMRush - provides research information on various aspects of digital marketing, including keyword rankings, website traffic, backlinks, competitor strategies and search volume | |
| Are your client-facing team leaders held accountable for executing and monitoring the initiatives and activities for client Organic Revenue Growth plans? Please explain. | |
| Not consistently. While the job descriptions of our client-facing team include responsibility for executing and monitoring Organic Revenue Growth plans, accountability has not been consistently enforced. We’ve implemented structured plans in the past focused on organic growth and intentional investment, but they lacked sustained follow-through and measurable ownership. As a result, those initiatives did not gain meaningful traction or produce the desired impact. While we believe in the value of organic growth, we’ve struggled to operationalize it in a way that drives consistent results. | |
| How would you rate your client-facing teams’ effectiveness at driving Organic Revenue Growth — based on having documented plans, a methodical approach, and being assertive? Please explain. | |
| Historically, our effectiveness has been limited. While our client-facing teams excel at service delivery and execution, we have not consistently taken an assertive or strategic approach to driving Organic Revenue Growth. Documented plans and a methodical growth mindset have not been core to how we operate. That said, recent internal initiatives are starting to shift this dynamic, and we’re beginning to see signs of progress. The potential within our teams is high, but we’re still in the early stages of embedding this approach into our culture and processes. | |
| When you consider Organic Revenue Growth, specifically, where does the team most need to improve? Where is the greatest opportunity for the team? | |
| The greatest opportunity for our team lies in building confidence and assertiveness around idea generation. Currently, our team tends to hold back on presenting proactive ideas unless they have a fully fleshed-out solution. This desire for perfection limits the kind of exploratory, strategic conversations that can drive organic growth. We need to become more comfortable with proposing ideas in earlier, less refined stages—focusing on possibilities and business impact, not just execution. Additionally, our account managers often take client input at face value rather than probing deeper to uncover the underlying needs or strategic challenges. While our Account Directors are generally stronger in this area, they’re not always present in those initial conversations where opportunities can be uncovered. Strengthening this capability across the broader client-facing team would be a major unlock for growth. | |
| Is there a particular practice area or capability within the agency that you think is exceptionally strong or a competitive advantage? Alternatively, is there a practice area or capability you think is weak or needs improvement? | |
| We have several areas of strength that serve as competitive advantages. Our strategy team stands out as a core strength—bringing deep expertise in our clients’ industries, markets, and audiences. This enables us to conduct thorough research when needed while also executing efficiently, thanks to our team's long-tenured, B2B industrial manufacturing focus. This institutional knowledge also extends to our writing team, which consistently demonstrates an ability to translate highly technical concepts into compelling, client-valued content. Our PR offering is a standout capability within the agency—both in terms of performance and profitability. We have a dedicated and experienced team of 11 professionals, and our relationships with trade editors are exceptionally strong. In fact, we often receive direct feedback from editors noting that we are the best B2B agency they’ve worked with, which is a testament to the team’s professionalism, industry knowledge, and consistency. In addition to media relations, our influencer relations practice is gaining momentum. We’re seeing increased success in this area and are building a more robust and strategic offering to meet evolving client needs. We do support some PR-only clients and have longstanding relationships that reflect the value and trust we’ve built over time. However, we haven’t historically done a great job of expanding those relationships into broader, integrated engagements. There’s untapped potential to grow these accounts through deeper collaboration across disciplines. Currently, the PR team tends to operate somewhat independently. While this autonomy has worked well for execution, we recognize that greater integration with other agency teams—especially strategy, digital, and creative—could unlock stronger results and better position PR as part of a more holistic offering. Our digital marketing offering has also evolved significantly in recent years and continues to grow in strength. However, lead generation and account-based marketing (ABM) remain areas of opportunity. We see these as critical capabilities to enhance as part of our future roadmap. Our web development team performs well on complex, enterprise-level websites that require advanced integrations. That said, we are less competitive on low-cost web projects where price is the primary decision factor. Lastly, our data analytics capabilities are an area in need of improvement. While we deliver reporting, we’re not consistently uncovering or communicating the most actionable insights, and that’s something we’re actively working to address. | |
| What AI tools are being used and by whom? Which have been institutionalized vs. those being tested by individuals or departments? | |
| We’ve begun to integrate AI tools across several areas of the agency, though adoption varies by team and role. ChatGPT is in use across most of the agency, though not universally adopted. While we haven’t conducted formal training, we recently stood up a cross-functional team to identify key use cases and develop a prompt library, which has just been rolled out to support broader and more consistent usage. Our writing team has institutionalized Jasper as their primary AI writing tool, using it regularly to support content development and ideation. The creative team is exploring tools like MidJourney (with plans for implementation soon), Runway AI, and Adobe’s suite of integrated AI capabilities. These tools are being actively tested and increasingly incorporated into workflows, though full institutionalization is still in progress. | |
| Has any AI training been provided to agency employees (whether internal or external training)? If so, what type of training and for which roles/departments? | |
| We have not yet conducted formal, agency-wide AI training. However, we have supported individual learning by sponsoring team members to attend industry conferences such as MAICON. We also closely follow the Marketing AI Institute and regularly attend their seminars to stay current on emerging trends and tools. Additionally, members of our writing team have participated in the Writers Summit to deepen their understanding of AI’s role in content creation. While these efforts have helped build awareness and enthusiasm, there is an opportunity to formalize and scale training across departments and we have that on our roadmap for this year. Last year, we held a full-agency hackathon that brought together team members from across disciplines to collaborate on end-to-end campaign development—from insight and strategy to creative concepting, planning, and activation. The event served as a hands-on opportunity to experiment with new approaches and tools, and several AI platforms were used to bring concepts to life. It was a high-energy, high-engagement experience that showcased the team's creativity and adaptability. More recently, we ran an internal video challenge where three cross-functional teams—PR, Account/Traffic/Strategy, and Creative—were tasked with producing videos using only AI tools. This exercise not only demonstrated the increasing accessibility of AI in content production but also gave teams a fun, low-risk way to explore and experiment with emerging technologies. | |
| Is there anything else that would provide insight into your Organic Growth goals, opportunities, or challenges? | |
| The team is eager to improve in this area, and I believe you’ll find strong enthusiasm and openness to your training. There’s a genuine willingness to approach Organic Growth differently, and a shared recognition that this is an important capability to strengthen moving forward. One trend we've observed is that team members are less willing to travel to visit clients than they were in the past. While remote work has brought flexibility and efficiency, it's also contributed to a decline in face-to-face interactions, which can limit relationship-building, collaboration, and deeper discovery. Reestablishing the value of in-person engagement—especially for key meetings and strategy sessions—will be important as we focus on driving organic growth and strengthening client partnerships. | |
| For new business pitches, what are the biggest changes you’ve noticed in the pitch process with clients over the past one to two years? Please explain. | |
| While this extends beyond just the last two years, one of the most notable shifts post-COVID has been the decline of in-person pitches. We continue to push for face-to-face presentations when possible, but those opportunities have become rare—especially since many client teams are now remote and geographically dispersed themselves. We recently experienced a pitch scenario that felt more transactional—30 minutes to respond to a structured set of questions, almost like speed dating. That format didn’t allow us to build connection or demonstrate the strategic depth we bring, and unfortunately, we didn’t win the business. This reflects a broader trend: clients are streamlining their processes, but in doing so, sometimes limit the opportunity for meaningful dialogue. We’ve also seen procurement playing a larger role earlier in the process, introducing more complexity around pricing, scopes, and deliverables. This increases pressure on our margins and requires us to be both competitive and disciplined in how we structure proposals. Additional trends we’re seeing include: A rise in project-based opportunities rather than larger, long-term AOR-style engagements. An increase in RFPs or discovery processes that stall, with clients shifting priorities mid-process or going completely dark. Heightened sensitivity to budget and cost, with clients more focused than ever on demonstrating ROI. Greater competition, often from a broader pool of smaller agencies, which can create price-driven selection dynamics. Overall, the environment is more competitive and less predictable than in years past. It demands more agility, sharper positioning, and a stronger ability to communicate differentiated value quickly. | |
| Do you have any qualification criteria for committing to a new business opportunity? Please explain. | |
| Please see our Go-No-Go doc provided in our resources. | |
| When you step back and consider new business pitches, how does Godfrey need to improve? For example, are there stages in the pitch process where your team experiences particular challenges (whether internal or external)? | |
| We’ve identified several areas where we need to improve our pitch process. Our story has become stale—we often lead with credentials and talk too much about ourselves rather than focusing on the client’s needs and how we uniquely solve their challenges. As a result, our presentations can lack energy and clarity of purpose. There also seems to be a lack of enthusiasm around pursuing new business. What used to feel like exciting, high-stakes work now feels burdensome to some team members, with less willingness to go the extra mile—whether that’s travel, late nights, or iterative prep. We’ve lost some of the joy that comes from the thrill of the win. Currently, pitches and communications are managed primarily by Josh, our SVP of Business Development. While he does a strong job, we may be missing opportunities to integrate the delivery team earlier in the process so prospects can get a real sense of what it’s like to work with us. That human connection can be a differentiator. Lastly, we’re not consistently delivering a compelling point of view—a reason why a client should choose us over anyone else. | |