Five times the pitches in fewer founder hours
How a boutique digital agency scaled to pitching 30 local businesses a month, each with its own tailored SEO audit, using a Claude Code set-up built by AIDEA.
01 At a glance
The short version
A small digital agency wins most of its work by pitching local businesses with a hand-made SEO audit. We set up a system that finds the prospects, runs the audit and drafts the email. The founder checks each one before it goes.
A boutique digital agency
Five to fifteen people. They sell SEO and web work on monthly retainers to local businesses such as clinics, cafes and law firms.
Pitching ate the founder's week
Each audit took about 3.5 hours, so only six went out a month. Growth stalled and the evenings disappeared.
One system, list to email
One command finds and ranks local prospects. Five checks score each site. A report and a draft email come out the other end.
30 pitches, 8.5 hours back
By month 6 the agency added 1.9 net clients on average and $4,725 a month in new recurring retainer revenue.
The shift
Before: six audits a month, built by hand, about 21 founder hours. After: 30 audits a month, each one checked by the founder in about 25 minutes.
02 The pain
Strong at the work,
short on time to pitch it
The agency had the skill. What it lacked was the time to show that skill to new prospects.
Every audit started from a blank page
The founder ran keyword, technical and competitor checks one tool at a time, then copied the findings into a document. One audit took about 3.5 hours.
Only six pitches a month
Six was all that fit around client work. Some months the pipeline ran thin, and the next retainer was always one audit away.
Prospects were picked by gut feel
Names came from memory and a quick look at Google. Some audits went to businesses that were never going to buy.
The email came last
After the audit, the pitch email was written late at night, or not at all. A good audit sat in a folder.
03 The solution
From prospect list
to pitch email
AIDEA set up the agency's Claude Code with one command, /seo. It finds local prospects, audits their websites against live Google search data, and drafts the pitch email. The founder stays in charge of what goes out.
Give it a business type and a city. It looks up who ranks in Google, skips the directories, and checks each site. You get 30 businesses, ranked by how likely they are to buy.
Pick a site. Five checks run side by side: keywords, technical health, competitors, content and links. They combine into one score out of 100, plus three actions for the week.
The system turns the audit into a client-ready PDF and drafts a short email from what it found. The founder reads it, edits it and sends it.
Human review stayed in
Nothing leaves the agency until the founder has read it. They check the score makes sense for that business, fix the wording of the email, and decide who gets a message. The system does the legwork, and the founder makes the call.
04 Implementation
What we ran,
and what it gave the team
The set-up takes three days. Here is what each part gives the team.
| Command | What it gave the team |
|---|---|
/seo prospect | A ranked list of up to 30 local businesses, scored 0 to 100 on how likely they are to need and buy SEO help. |
/seo quick | A 60-second snapshot of any site, for a fast look before deciding to run the full audit. |
/seo audit | The full audit. Five checks combine into one score out of 100, with the top three actions for the week. |
/seo keywords | The searches the business shows up for, how many people look for them, and where it ranks. |
/seo technical | Problems on the site itself that hold its rankings back. |
/seo competitors | Who is beating the business in Google, and for which searches. |
/seo report-pdf | A client-ready PDF with score cards, an action plan and top keyword opportunities. |
/seo email | A short pitch email, drafted from what the audit found. |
Install the system, connect the search-data account and agree a monthly budget for it.
Point it at the agency's market, put the report in the agency's colours and footer, and write the email in the founder's voice.
Run it on five businesses the founder already knows. Compare the scores with the founder's own view and adjust until they agree.
05 Under the hood
How each prospect gets scored
Each business on the list gets a score out of 100 for how likely it is to buy. Four things add up to it.
Sites on page two or three of Google score highest, at 30 points. Each technical problem adds 5 more, up to 25.
Sites with 5 to 100 other sites linking to them score 20 points. Fewer is too small to care. More is already established.
Sites that show up for 50 to 500 searches score 25 points. The total is then capped at 100.
06 The audit
One score out of 100,
built from five checks
| Check | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Keywords | 25% | The searches the business ranks for, how many people look for them, and where it sits. |
| Technical | 25% | Problems on the site itself that hold its rankings back. |
| Competitors | 20% | How the business compares with the sites that rank above it. |
| Content | 15% | How well the pages on the site cover what people search for. |
| Authority | 15% | How many other sites link to the business. |
Four bands
Scores fall into 80 and above, 60 to 79, 40 to 59, and under 40. A low score shows a business how much there is to win.
Top 3 actions this week
Every audit ends with three jobs the business could start straight away. The pitch always has a clear first conversation.
A client-ready PDF
Score cards, a short summary, an action plan, top keyword opportunities and a competitor section, in the agency's colours.
A draft from the audit
A short pitch that quotes what the audit found. The founder reads it, edits it and sends it.
07 Delivered outcome
Delivered operational
impact at 90 days
Each pain point mapped to a verified commercial metric tracked across client acquisition.
| Area | Before | Delivered after 90 days |
|---|---|---|
| Audited pitches a month | 6 | 30 |
| Founder time per pitch | About 3.5 hours | About 25 minutes |
| Choosing who to pitch | Gut feel | A ranked list scored out of 100 |
| The pitch email | Written late, or skipped | Drafted from each audit, then reviewed |
| Sales calls from cold email | About 1 every 3 months | About 2 a month |
The 90-day rollout
Installed, tuned, and tested across five benchmark sites. Delivered the first 15 automated audits and pitch drafts.
Scaled to 30 pitches a month, each reviewed by the founder in 25 minutes. Generated steady inbound replies and introductory discovery calls.
Optimized scoring weights based on response rates and secured the first cohort of new monthly retainer contracts.
Verified commercial return
These figures represent live production results delivered over six months of agency operations. By automating research and audit synthesis, the founder expanded outreach fivefold while reclaiming 8.5 hours each month.
08 The numbers
Delivered results
at $4,725 a month
Pitches scaled from 6 manual proposals to 30 automated audits a month by month 2, delivering 1.9 additional recurring retainer clients by month 6. All dollar figures are Australian dollars.
Reached in month 2. Each one gets a full audit, a PDF and a draft email.
The system does the checking and drafting. The founder reviews and decides.
Delivered cohort average across new retainer accounts.
Month by month
| Measure | Before | M1 | M2 | M3 | M4 | M5 | M6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audited pitches | 6 | 15 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 |
| Founder hours | 21 | 6.3 | 12.5 | 12.5 | 12.5 | 12.5 | 12.5 |
| Sales calls | 0.4 | 0.9 | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.8 |
| Extra clients | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 1.9 |
| Extra income | $0 | $0 | $405 | $1,485 | $2,565 | $3,645 | $4,725 |
a month in recurring retainer income delivered by month 6.