How Alex Birkett built a brand that landed his agency its biggest client yet

Too many founders start building personal brands, then quit prematurely. They post a few times and move on. But founder marketing is a long game. The initial return is small, but it compounds. Every post, conversation, and appearance helps you build trust, grow your network, and attract clients weeks, months, or even years later.

That’s how it happened for Alex Birkett, Co-Founder of Omniscient Digital, a growth marketing agency that’s expanded to 50 employees and has worked with companies like TikTok, Loom, and Adobe. Still today, he gets leads from people he met at conferences years ago, readers of his old blog posts, and former colleagues who now lead companies.

We share how he’s building his founder brand and what you can learn from his approach.

Build the brand before the business

Alex started building his personal brand long before launching his agency, though he didn’t think of it as brand-building at the time. Inspired by authors like Ryan Holiday (Growth Hacker Marketing), Tim Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek), and tech bloggers, he started sharing what he was learning, books he was reading, and his internship experiences.

After college, he read Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz during a road trip to Austin, and it changed how he saw networking. He realized it was key to building a successful career, but it didn’t have to be boring or transactional. He could approach it in a way that felt natural and fun, which for him was through writing and speaking.

His first big break came at CXL, an e-learning platform for B2B marketers, where he worked under Peep Laja, now CEO of the research software Wynter. There, Alex wrote weekly long-form articles on conversion rate optimization, analytics, and experimentation for CXL’s blog, and shared his ideas across LinkedIn, Twitter (now X), GrowthHackers, Inbound.org, and his personal blog.

But the most important thing he did was how he showed up offline.

He regularly attended conferences, hosted meetups, spoke at events, and grabbed coffee with people in the industry. Some of those early relationships later turned into clients, collaborators, and friends.

Even after leaving CXL, he stayed consistent: aiming for one blog post a week and speaking at a few events each year. That consistency paid off. When he co-founded Omniscient Digital in 2019, he already had an audience who trusted him and wanted to work with or refer him.

“I’ve had people reach out who read my content back in 2015. People I met at conferences years ago, folks who knew me from my CXL days, or ex-colleagues who now lead other companies—they’ve all helped us in ways I couldn’t have predicted,” he says.

Alex calls this the “long tail of serendipity.” It’s not one post or event that drives results, but the cumulative effect of showing up consistently over time.

It’s not one post or event that drives results, but the cumulative effect of showing up consistently over time.

And while it may have been easier to stand out online a few years ago—when the internet was less crowded and simply publishing decent content could get you noticed—there’s still plenty of opportunity today. Platforms are changing (for instance, X is losing users while Threads and Bluesky are on the rise), and new formats are gaining traction like short-form video on TikTok or YouTube Shorts, and long-form essays via Substack. So find a platform or medium that suits you, and still dominate in some way. 

You don’t need to be an influencer to see results

Many agency founders hesitate to put themselves out there because they think it means they have to film flashy “day in the life” vlogs, post six times a day, or grow a massive following. But that’s not necessary. You don’t need to be an influencer or have thousands of followers to see results. 

Alex will be the first to admit he’s not an influencer, nor does he want to be. “Influencing is a full-time job,” he says. And when you’re running an agency, your time is already spent managing talent, ensuring quality control, hiring, handling sales, and onboarding clients.

“It’s unreasonable (at least to me) to aim for the level of impressions, followers, and engagement that people who think about this for 40+ hours per week get (and who likely have teams helping them construct their online identity),” says Alex.

Alex doesn’t post daily, and his average LinkedIn post gets around 30 likes and a few comments. But he doesn’t measure success by virality. Instead, he focuses on owning a niche and message, and repeating it consistently to the right audience. 

He focuses on owning a niche and message, and repeating it consistently to the right audience.

Earlier in his career, his niche was experimentation and growth. He ran experimentation programs at Workato, CXL, and HubSpot and often wrote and spoke about analytics, CRO, and growth marketing. Naturally, he attracted an audience that cared about those topics.

Today, most of his LinkedIn content centers on SEO, content strategy, and organic growth. He’s been posting about winning with content in the age of AI, driving sustainable SEO growth, and he even launched a course on organic growth. 

This consistency in messaging and focus on creating genuinely useful content has paid off. It helped his agency land its biggest client to date, even without a huge audience. It’s also helped shorten sales cycles and reduce friction in conversations with potential clients.

How Alex comes up with content ideas

He starts with his ideal customer profile (ICP) and creates content that solves real problems for them. “We simply answered the questions that came up most often,” Alex says. “It made content ideation frictionless and ensured we were talking about things our audience actually cared about.”

To generate ideas, he worked with a fractional consultant to build a messaging framework, then ran customer interviews, asking questions like:

• How do you think about organic growth?
• What’s your biggest challenge right now?
• What are you most excited about?

After gathering the responses, Alex synthesized the common themes and turned them into content ideas.

He uses the same approach for Omniscient Digital’s newsletter, Field Notes, and podcast, The Long Game, drawing from sales calls, Slack threads, events, and casual conversations.

In total, Alex spends ~15 hours a week creating and repurposing content. He often pulls podcast clips to share on LinkedIn, pairing them with an insightful caption that reinforces the point.

Lessons from Alex’s story

• Interview your ideal buyer to find content ideas.
• Have virtual or in-person coffee chats with connections.
• Choose a platform and content format you enjoy so you can be consistent.
• Keep creating even if you don’t see results at first—it compounds over time.
• Repurpose your content—turn one podcast episode into multiple LinkedIn posts. 
• Attend in-person events and talk to attendees.

Build a mini network, not a large audience

Alex shares that you don’t need a massive audience to make founder-led marketing work. In fact, chasing a massive audience can backfire, especially if you’re not selling a mass-market service.

Instead, focus on building relationships with ideal clients, peers, and potential partners. Then create and share useful and relevant content with them.

This creates a mini network effect inside your niche where the right people know who you are, trust your expertise, and recommend you to others. That’s how you drive word of mouth and build momentum over time.