To add LinkedIn outreach to agency services in two weeks without a new hire, sell one narrow pilot to a client who already asked, have a person at that client connect their LinkedIn account once, and run the campaign from your own AI chat with a fixed weekly routine. This guide is for the owner of an SEO, PPC or web agency with retainer clients, after the second client this quarter asked “can you also do outbound for us”.
The routine uses the GTM Bud connector in Claude or ChatGPT. One limit belongs at the top: GTM Bud has no client login, no branded dashboard and no sub-accounts. You are the interface. If that is acceptable to your client, read on.
Why the request lands on an agency that does not do outbound
It lands on you because you already hold the two things outbound needs: the client’s positioning and the client’s trust. An SEO agency knows which pages convert and which buyer reads them. A PPC agency knows which offer gets the click. Turning that into a message to a short list of named people each day is a smaller step than it looks.
What you lack is a sender, a way to find the people, and someone to handle replies. The sender is the client. The finding and the sending are software. The reply handling is the real new skill, and it is where this plan spends the most care.
A service line is a defined piece of work with a scope, a price and an owner. “We can also try some LinkedIn” is not a service line. It is a favor, and favors get cut the first time delivery is busy.
The scope: one sender, one audience, one offer
A first outbound scope should fit in five lines. Anything more and you are selling a sales department.
| Scope item | In the pilot | Not in the pilot |
|---|---|---|
| Sender | One LinkedIn account of one person at the client | Several senders, the company page |
| Audience | One audience sentence, checked in a prospect preview | “Everyone who could buy” |
| Offer | One or two value offers the client already gives away | New lead magnets that someone must build |
| Replies | Agency writes with its AI, agency reviews, client takes calls | Agency runs the sales calls |
| Reporting | One page each Friday, written by the agency | A live dashboard or a client login |
Put the last cell in the proposal in those words. A client who learns in week three that there is no login feels misled. A client who reads it in the proposal rarely minds.
What the client must provide
Ask for all five things in one email, with a date.
- A sender. A named person with a personal LinkedIn profile that looks like a real seller: a photo, a current role, a headline that says what the company does. A company page cannot be the sender.
- The LinkedIn connection. You send a link, they sign in to LinkedIn through it and choose the days and hours on which the account can send. They need no GTM Bud account. The page is on gtmbud.com, so name the software in your email.
- Ten good customers. Names of companies that bought and were happy. You turn the pattern into the audience sentence.
- The rules for replies. What to say about price, which requests to decline, and who takes the call.
- One approver. A single person who says yes to the audience and the messages within two working days.
The two week launch plan
This plan assumes one person at the agency owns the service line and gives it about an hour on most days. The times are our estimate, not a measurement.
| Day | Job | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Send the pilot scope and the five requests | The client has confirmed the sender |
| 2 | Create the GTM Bud account, add the connector, connect your own LinkedIn | Your AI can list your sending accounts |
| 3 | Make the connection link for the client’s sender and send it | The client’s account shows as connected |
| 4 | Write the audience sentence, create the draft, read the criteria check | No criterion is flagged |
| 5 | Run the prospect preview and mark each person | You have six good fits to show the client |
| 6 to 7 | Seller profile, value offers, message sequence | The sequence is saved in the draft |
| 8 | Write the campaign reply playbook with the client | The client approved the exact text |
| 9 to 10 | Client approval of audience and messages | Written yes from the approver |
| 11 | Choose the sending account on gtmbud.com, readiness check, launch | Campaign status is active |
| 12 to 14 | First replies, first Friday report | The client has read one report |
Day 2 has a detail that is easy to miss. On the account page of gtmbud.com, the button that makes a connection link for another person appears in the LinkedIn section after the first LinkedIn account is connected. Connect your own account first.
Day 4 is where your AI earns its place. You give it the sentence. It writes the criteria, and GTM Bud checks each one. The check flags only a requirement that cannot be read from a LinkedIn profile, a company page or public web content, and it gives a suggested rewrite. “Has budget for a new website this year” is the kind of requirement that the check flags. “Marketing leaders at companies with 50 to 500 employees” is the kind that passes.
Some prompts for the middle of the plan:
- “Create a campaign draft named ‘Hollis Dental Supply: practice managers, Ireland’. The audience is practice managers and owners of dental practices with 5 to 50 employees in Ireland.”
- “Start a prospect preview for the Hollis draft and show me the first people with their title, company, location and why each one matched.”
- “Get the sequence brief for the Hollis draft, write the sequence, and show me the full text of every message before you save it.”
- “Run the launch readiness check for the Hollis draft and list every problem that stops a launch.”
The pilot: six weeks, three questions
A pilot is a short paid engagement that answers a question before either side commits to a retainer. A good outbound pilot answers three: is this the right audience, does this offer get a conversation started, and can the two companies work the replies together.
Price it as a service. Here is one agency’s math, with invented numbers that are the agency’s own prices to its client and nothing else:
- Setup fee for the pilot: 1,500 euros, once.
- Weekly fee for five sending weeks: 450 euros a week.
- Agency time: about 12 hours of setup, then about 3 hours a week.
- The agency’s software and seat costs come out of that fee.
Run your own numbers. The point of the example is the shape: a setup fee that pays for the two week build, and a weekly fee that pays for the routine.
At the end of week six, hold a 30 minute review with one page: leads reached, connection requests accepted out of sent, replies by label, and the three most useful conversations in full. Then one of three decisions: continue with the same audience, continue with a changed audience, or stop. A pilot that ends in “stop” with a clear reason is a good pilot.
The weekly routine after launch
The routine is three sessions. Keep them on fixed days, because the client’s leads do not wait for a quiet week.
Monday, 20 minutes: the audience. Ask: “List the leads of the Hollis campaign and flag any that do not match the audience sentence.” Remove the wrong ones. If the same kind of wrong lead appears twice, change the targeting on a duplicate of the campaign and compare.
Daily, 15 minutes: the replies. Ask for the replies that need an answer. Your AI reads each conversation, writes a reply that follows the playbooks, and shows it for your review. GTM Bud instructs it to send only the exact text you approved. Replies are labeled Interested, Warm or Not interested. Send each Interested lead to the client’s salesperson the same day, by the channel you agreed.
Friday, 30 minutes: the report. Ask: “Give me the results of the Hollis campaign with the as-of time, and the replies of this week by label.” Write the page yourself. Add one sentence about what you will change next week. GTM Bud sends no scheduled report and makes no PDF, so this page is the client’s whole view of the service.
For wording of the difficult answers, our guide on how to handle cold outreach replies has patterns you can turn into playbook rules.
What to promise and what not to promise
Promise the inputs you control. Do not promise the outcomes you do not.
| Promise | Do not promise |
|---|---|
| A campaign launched within two weeks of the client’s inputs | A number of meetings |
| An audience the client approved from real previewed people | A reply rate or an acceptance rate |
| Every reply reviewed by a person at the agency before it is sent | A fixed number of new leads each week |
| A written report every Friday | A dashboard, a portal or a client login |
| Interested leads handed over on the day they reply | That replies turn into revenue |
Two points need a word more.
Results. You have no history with this client’s market on LinkedIn. Any figure you give is a guess that the client will hold you to. Say what you will measure and when you will decide.
The sender’s schedule. The messages go out from the LinkedIn account of a person at the client. Keep the sending schedule that the sender confirmed, and stop the campaign from the chat if the sender asks.
Trade-off: A narrow scope means a smaller first invoice. It also means you can deliver it with the team you have, and a client who saw one clean pilot is the easiest sale of the wider retainer.
When this plan is the wrong one
It is wrong for three kinds of agency. If your client wants its brand hidden behind yours in a portal, GTM Bud does not fit: there is no white-label dashboard and no client workspace. If the client wants you to contact a fixed list of named accounts, the connector takes no list upload. If nobody at the client will take sales calls, outreach creates conversations that go nowhere.
If you would sooner hand the whole thing to someone else, compare the options in lead generation agency vs software.
Frequently asked questions about adding LinkedIn outreach to agency services
Can an SEO or PPC agency sell LinkedIn outreach without a sales background?
Yes, if the scope is narrow. An agency that already writes for a client knows the client’s buyers and offers, which is most of the work. The part that is new is reply handling, so write the reply rules with the client before launch and keep the client’s salesperson on the calls.
How long should a LinkedIn outreach pilot be?
Six weeks is a workable length. The first week is setup and approval, and the next five give enough sending days to judge the audience and the offer. A two week pilot ends before follow-up messages have gone out, so it measures almost nothing.
Whose LinkedIn account sends the messages?
A person at the client, usually a founder or a sales lead. Prospects answer a person at the company they might buy from. The agency does not send client campaigns from its own profiles, and the client connects the account one time through a link.
What does the agency need before it can launch a client campaign?
A GTM Bud account with an active plan or trial, the connector in Claude or ChatGPT, the client’s connected LinkedIn account, and the client’s approval of the audience and the messages. The list of sending accounts shows if the account of the sender has Sales Navigator access, so check it after the connection.
Should the agency charge for results or for the service?
For the service, at least in the pilot. You control the audience, the offer and the speed of replies. You do not control the client’s product, price or closing. A fee for each meeting moves that risk to you before you know the account.
Start with the client who already asked
You can add LinkedIn outreach to agency services with one pilot, one sender and one hour on most days, provided the client knows from the first page that the report comes from you and not from a login. Send the five requests today. Then add the connector with the steps on GTM Bud for Claude, and read white label LinkedIn outreach for agencies before you write the proposal, so that its limits are in your scope and not in a week three surprise.