Bottling your brilliance: Your referral cheat code
Guest blog written by Anna McLoughlin
You can be the best at what you do, but if you sound like everyone else, your name ends up as a forgotten tab in someone's brain. And if someone can't easily repeat your message, they can't recommend you.
That's the difference between "just another digital agency" and "I immediately thought of you."
The good news: there's one change you can make to fix this. Get clear on what your clients *actually* buy.
Hint: it's not your services.
Imagine you’re ordering at a cafe and see, “flour, fat, sugar, and a lemon” on the chalkboard. It’s a lot less tempting than “lemon drizzle cake”.
Yet most agencies default to doing exactly this. When asked what they do, most describe ingredients (UX, SEO, brand) rather than the thing their clients are hungry for.
If you’ve ever worked with Dave, this won’t be new to you. As he always says, "People refer you for what you do, not what you sell."
Nobody is ever buying a better website, brand or marketing strategy; they’re buying what it does for them.
Once you focus on that, it’s the difference between people being able to say “I know a place that sells cake” versus “I know where you can get lemon drizzle to die for”.
Name the shift so people refer you for it
I know you’ve been told a million times to “sell benefits” and “speak to pain points”. I know you’ve told your clients that a million times, too.
But in 20 years of working with agencies, I find that most don’t clearly explain why their work matters – even when they think they have.
The problem is that when you are so close to it, you feel the benefits are so obvious that they don’t need explaining. Or what I call The Brilliance Paradox.
So humour me. Go back to your website, your LinkedIn, your bio. Look at how you describe yourself. And ask: am I listing services, or describing what those services help clients do?
If every sentence starts with “we” or focuses on deliverables, flip it to explain what it means for your clients.
What problem are your clients coming to you to solve?
What goal are they trying to reach?
What does their world look like right now, and what will it look like after working with you?
Clearly explaining that shift will make you stand out more.
Some message makeovers
Here are some examples of turning forgettable one-liners into more memorable messages:
Forgettable ❌: “We’re an animation agency for startups” Referable ✅: “We turn ideas into investor-ready pitch videos”
Forgettable ❌: “We’re a full-service digital marketing agency for the trades” Referable ✅: “We help trades book more jobs from Google”
Forgettable ❌: “We do branding for consultancies” Referable ✅: “We help gig-to-gig consultants become in-demand experts”
Notice something about those reframes? They’re not shorter or even particularly clever.
But they are sharper.
Sharper means they are far more likely to stick.
Now, there are a hundred ways to bottle your brilliance. But for now?
Say what you DO.
Say it sharply.
Then say it everywhere.
Anna McLoughlin is a messaging expert who helps small agencies bottle their brilliance into sharp words that their clients buy into.
In over 20 years in the agency world, she’s seen how hard it is for people to do for themselves what they find easy for clients. And what an obstacle this can become. That’s why it’s her mission to solve it. She has a knack for drawing out clear ideas from confused brains, and her work has helped agencies triple revenue, reach 7-figure exits, win dream clients and awards. See more at: www.inkspiller.co.uk