A B2B digital agency went from zero inbound leads to 13 a month in two months
A B2B digital agency went from no inbound leads in August 2026 to 13 in October (lead log and CRM), and 5 of the first 12 leads in its CRM became clients. Over the same weeks the share of AI answers citing its site rose from 2.1% to 17.1% across 130 tracked buyer questions (Verticality AI Visibility Tracker).
- B2B digital agency
- Specialist marketing services
- 56 new pages in 9 weeks
- Updated
At a glance
-
0 → 13
inbound leads a month
August → October
Lead log and CRM · Aug–Oct 2026
-
5 of 12
first CRM leads became clients
15 of 20 leads asked for a proposal or a call
Agency sales records · leads of Sep 8 – Oct 21, 2026
-
17.1%
AI answers citing the site
up from 2.1%
Verticality AI Visibility Tracker · week 2 vs week 9, Sep–Oct 2026
-
34 of 56
new pages cited by AI
ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews
Verticality AI Visibility Tracker · Sep–Oct 2026
-
7 of 20
leads came from AI assistants
6 from search engines
Lead log and CRM · Sep–Oct 2026
The brief
A working website that no buyer found
Starting point
The agency sells specialist marketing services to B2B companies. Its site had been live for six months and brought in no inbound leads in August. Google sent it 1 to 5 clicks a week, and in the first days of tracking none of 1,454 AI answers to its buyers’ questions cited the site.
Goal
Proposal requests and booked calls from companies comparing agencies. Rankings, traffic and citations were means, not the goal.
Measured from day one
130 questions buyers ask before hiring an agency like this one, put to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews every day. Every lead logged with the channel of its first visit.
The result
The first lead came in week 2, and 5 of the first 12 in the CRM became clients
Five weeks in a row brought no inbound lead at all. The first arrived in week 2, and weeks 3 to 8 brought 2, 0, 4, 4, 1 and 6. These were buyers, not browsers: 15 of the 20 leads asked for a proposal or booked a call, and 5 of the first 12 leads in the CRM became clients by the end of October.
Of the 20 leads from week 2 to the end of October, AI assistants brought 7, search engines 6, and direct visits, referrals and untracked visits 7.
August
0
September
7
October
13
Inbound leads · Lead log and CRM · 2026
AI assistants Search engines Direct, referral and untracked
A form, a booked call, a free-check request or a chat that left an email; one person counts once a week. Weeks run Monday to Sunday; week 9 was still in progress.
AI citations
From 2% to 17% of AI answers in seven weeks
Every day the tracker put the 130 questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and recorded which sources each answer cited. In week 2, 54 of 2,606 answers with sources cited one of the agency’s pages; in week 9, 431 of 2,522.
Answers with sources, all three assistants. Week 1 had four days of tracking.
Each dot is a page; the tick is the wave’s median. Wave 5 went live the day before this was written; 4 of its 17 pages were cited the next morning.
published waiting for the first citation cited that day: 1 answer to many
Each row is one page. The brighter the square, the more answers cited the page that day.
What was done
Nine weeks of work, in the order it shipped
On the agency’s own site, from late August to the end of October 2026.
-
Week 1
Measurement
Mapped what buyers ask AI
- 130 questions a buyer asks before hiring an agency like this one: shortlists, comparisons, prices and how-to.
- Asked ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews every day; every answer and every cited source recorded.
- Every lead from the site logged with the channel of its first visit.
-
Weeks 1–5
First waves
Published the pages buyers land on
- Service pages, comparisons and shortlists, and plain answers to buyer questions, built around questions from the tracked set.
- Three waves in weeks 1, 3 and 5: 32 pages, among them a free self-serve check for visitors.
Result. The first lead in week 2, two more in week 3, both from AI assistants. 23 of the 32 pages cited by week 9.
-
Every day
Page by page
Measured every page
- For each page: the day AI first cited it, how many answers cited it after that, and which assistant.
- Each wave could be compared with the earlier ones within days.
-
Weeks 8–9
Next waves
Published two more waves
- Two more waves: 24 pages in weeks 8 and 9.
Result. Every page of the week-8 wave cited within two days. Week 8 brought 6 leads; by week 9, 17.1% of tracked AI answers cited the site. By the end of October 5 of the first 12 leads in the CRM had become clients.
Before and after
Every number, with its tool and window
| Metric | Before | After | Change | Tool | Window |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inbound leads a month | 0 | 13 | 0 → 13 | Lead log and CRM | Aug vs Oct 2026 |
| Leads that became clients | — | 5 of 12 | 42% | Agency sales records | leads of Sep 8 – Oct 21, 2026 |
| Leads that asked for a proposal or a call | — | 15 of 20 | 75% | Lead log and CRM | Sep–Oct 2026 |
| Leads from AI assistants | 0 | 7 of 20 | — | Lead log and CRM | Aug vs Sep–Oct 2026 |
| AI answers citing the site, 130 questions | 2.1% | 17.1% | +15 pts | Verticality AI Visibility Tracker | week 2 vs week 9, Sep–Oct 2026 |
| New pages cited by AI | — | 34 of 56 | — | Verticality AI Visibility Tracker | Sep–Oct 2026 |
| Median days to a first citation | 8.5 and 10.5 | 1 | −7.5 and −9.5 days | Verticality AI Visibility Tracker | waves of weeks 3 and 5 vs week 8 |
| Google clicks a week | 1–5 | 15–27 | — | Google Search Console | Aug vs Oct 2026 |
Key takeaways
Three things worth repeating for any B2B service
Measure citations page by page
Daily tracking showed which new page AI cited and when, often within days of publishing. The next wave did not have to wait a quarter for a verdict.
Publish in waves
Each wave added citations on top of the earlier ones. The share of answers citing the site went from 2% to 17% in seven weeks.
Log every lead with its channel
That is how the agency knows 7 of its 20 leads came straight from an AI assistant, and that buyers who arrive from AI answers ask for proposals, not information.
The agency is anonymous: its name, niche and pages are left out, and weeks count from the start of the programme. The numbers are unrounded. Leads are people, not form submissions: tests, spam and the agency’s own team are removed. Services in this case: AI SEO and generative engine optimization.
Find out which questions AI answers without you
We run your buyers’ questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and show who gets named instead of you. The audit is free.
