Agencies Must Pivot from SEO to Outbound and Personal Branding

The agency world is in flux, and clinging to yesterday's strategies is a fast track to irrelevance. This conversation with Laryssa Wirstiuk reveals a critical, often overlooked truth: adaptation isn't just about adopting new tools; it's about fundamentally rethinking how your agency operates when its core assumptions, like a niche market or a trusted inbound channel, begin to erode. The hidden consequence of inaction is not just stagnation, but regression, a reality many agencies faced in 2025. This analysis is for agency owners and leaders who recognize the shifting sands and want to proactively build resilience, understanding that the discomfort of change today is the foundation for durable competitive advantage tomorrow. It offers a framework for navigating this transition by dissecting the systemic forces at play and highlighting the strategic pivots that create lasting separation.

The Uncomfortable Pivot: When Your Agency's Foundation Crumbles

The digital marketing landscape is a relentless tide of change. For years, Laryssa Wirstiuk’s agency, Joy Joya, thrived by focusing on a specific niche: jewelry e-commerce brands, powered by a robust inbound strategy built on SEO and content. This worked beautifully, creating a steady stream of clients who found them through their expertise and reputation. But as she candidly shares, the ground began to shift. The algorithms changed, AI emerged, and the predictable inbound channels started to falter. The realization wasn't sudden, but a dawning awareness that what worked for nearly a decade was no longer sufficient. This isn't just about updating a tactic; it's about understanding how a system you relied on can subtly, and then dramatically, stop working.

The real challenge, as Wirstiuk implies, is that the very things that made an agency successful in one era can become anchors in the next. The deep knowledge of the jewelry niche, while valuable, also created a dependency. When that niche itself experienced shifts, the agency was directly impacted. The shift towards email and SMS marketing, while a strategic move to focus on high-ROI services, also represented a move from a vertically specialized inbound model to a horizontally specialized service model. This pivot required not just new skills, but a new approach to client acquisition and positioning.

"I have to rethink a lot of that to stay relevant."

-- Laryssa Wirstiuk

This is where the uncomfortable truth lies: the systems that once propelled an agency forward can, without conscious adaptation, become the very mechanisms of its decline. Jason Swenk echoes this sentiment, highlighting the common agency plight: "if 2025 was not the stellar year for you or if you actually went backwards it's not because you can't blame the market it's probably because you haven't adapted and you're doing things the same way you've always done it and you're doing it alone." The implication is stark: clinging to outdated methods, especially in isolation, guarantees a downward spiral. The "lion shit" analogy, while colloquial, captures the essence of this required effort -- the willingness to do the hard, often unglamorous work of adaptation, rather than waiting for a magical solution.

The Inertia of Success: Why Yesterday's Wins Sabotage Tomorrow

The most insidious consequence of past success is the inertia it breeds. When an agency has a proven formula, particularly one that relies on inbound leads, the temptation is to double down rather than diversify. Wirstiuk’s experience with SEO and content marketing for the jewelry industry is a prime example. This strategy built a strong personal brand and a reliable client pipeline. However, as she notes, "SEO is changing, the way people find service based businesses is changing, AI came into the picture." This isn't just a minor tweak; it's a fundamental shift in how value is discovered and delivered.

The downstream effect of relying too heavily on a single, now-eroding, inbound channel is a gradual drying up of opportunities. When this happens, the immediate reaction is often to try and "do more of the same," perhaps by creating more content or optimizing existing SEO efforts. But if the underlying discovery mechanisms have changed, this is akin to shouting louder in a room where the audience has left. The system has rerouted.

"The algorithms that once brought me so much traffic on YouTube on Instagram on LinkedIn those have been changing so much."

-- Laryssa Wirstiuk

This forces a critical juncture: either understand the new system dynamics or become a casualty of them. Wirstiuk’s pivot to a more outbound strategy, including cold outreach via email, calls, and LinkedIn, exemplifies the necessary adaptation. This requires a different skillset and a different mindset -- moving from being found to actively finding. It’s a shift that many agencies resist because it feels less efficient or more intrusive than the comfortable inbound flow. However, as Wirstiuk implicitly argues, this discomfort is precisely where the opportunity for lasting advantage lies. Building outbound processes and mastering new outreach channels creates a capability that competitors who are still waiting for inbound leads will lack.

The Niche Paradox: Specialization's Double-Edged Sword

Wirstiuk’s journey also highlights the paradox of niche specialization. While a niche can be a powerful tool for building expertise, reputation, and targeted marketing, it can also create a vulnerability. Her nine years in the jewelry industry provided deep insights and a strong network. However, when that industry faced its own economic or algorithmic challenges, her agency was disproportionately affected.

The move to focus on email and SMS marketing as a horizontal service, while still catering to women-focused, product-based e-commerce brands, represents a strategic de-risking. It broadens the potential client base while retaining a focus on a specific type of business and a high-impact service. This transition, however, wasn't an overnight decision but an organic realization of where her agency provided the most value and had the strongest processes.

"When we saw how well we could prove our value and get true results through email marketing it really made me feel a little more passionate about it and also almost accidentally we had better and stronger processes internally for executing on email."

-- Laryssa Wirstiuk

The consequence of not making such a pivot, or of delaying it, is a slow erosion of market share and relevance. Competitors who are more agile, or who haven't built their entire business on a single, potentially volatile, vertical, will gain an advantage. The "lion shit" mentality applies here too: it’s easier to stick with what you know, but the real growth comes from embracing the challenging work of recalibrating your agency’s focus and capabilities when the market demands it. This delayed payoff -- building new expertise, developing new processes, and establishing new client relationships -- is precisely what creates a durable competitive moat.

Embracing the Unknown: The AI-Driven Imperative

The conversation touches on AI as a significant disruptor, not just in how services are delivered but in how clients search for solutions. Swenk’s experience with Albert, his AI agency advisor, illustrates this. By understanding how AI is recommending services, agencies can proactively position themselves. Wirstiuk’s own observation about AI changing how people search for service-based businesses underscores this.

The danger here is viewing AI as merely another tool to be added to the existing stack. Instead, it represents a fundamental shift in the information ecosystem. Agencies that understand how AI is influencing client discovery and decision-making can adapt their inbound and outbound strategies accordingly. This might mean optimizing content for AI-driven search queries, building personal brands that AI can reliably associate with expertise, or even leveraging AI tools to enhance their own service delivery and outbound efforts.

The failure to adapt to AI’s influence, or to critically examine its role in client acquisition, is a direct path to obsolescence. It’s the equivalent of ignoring the internet in the late 90s. The agencies that proactively engage with AI, understanding its implications for their niche, their services, and their client acquisition, will be the ones that thrive. This requires a willingness to experiment, to learn, and to potentially pivot based on how the system--now increasingly influenced by AI--is evolving. It’s the hard work of staying ahead, of doing the "lion shit," that separates those who merely survive from those who truly lead.

Key Action Items

• Immediate Action (0-3 Months):

  • Audit your primary client acquisition channels: Honestly assess which inbound channels are still performing at historical levels and which are showing signs of decline.
  • Identify your most profitable/impactful service: Determine which service within your agency consistently delivers the highest ROI for clients and where your team has the strongest internal processes.
  • Begin experimenting with outbound tactics: If inbound is declining, dedicate a small but consistent portion of your team's time (or your own) to cold outreach via email, LinkedIn, or even targeted calls.
  • Map your agency's "lion shit": List the essential, yet potentially unappealing, tasks required for adaptation and survival. Prioritize which ones can be systematized, delegated, or eliminated.

• Short-Term Investment (3-9 Months):

  • Develop outbound processes: Formalize your outbound strategy. Create templates, define target lists, and establish tracking mechanisms to measure effectiveness.
  • Explore niche diversification or horizontal service focus: Based on your profitable services, investigate adjacent niches or consider specializing further in a high-demand horizontal service (like email/SMS marketing).
  • Invest in AI literacy for your team: Provide training or resources for your team to understand how AI is impacting marketing, client search behavior, and service delivery.

• Longer-Term Investment (9-18+ Months):

  • Build a resilient inbound strategy leveraging new discovery methods: Adapt your content and SEO efforts to account for AI-driven search and changing platform algorithms. Consider building your personal brand as a key differentiator.
  • Systematize outbound for predictable growth: Refine your outbound processes to become a reliable and scalable source of new business, reducing dependency on fluctuating inbound channels.
  • Continuously evaluate and adapt your agency's core offering: Treat your agency's structure and services as dynamic, ready for recalibration based on market shifts and client needs, rather than static assets.