DELIGHT
INBOUND
MARKETING AGENC Y
INBOUND
YOUR UL
TIMA TE GUIDE T
O HIRING AN
Shifting from outbound to inbound marketing provides an undeniable
return on investments. When companies choose to switch from old-school
marketing methods and follow their customers online, they see key growth metrics like sales productivity and
marketing efficiency really blow up! The inbound market’s combination of intense website engagement and remarkable
content create a foundation that’s not easily shaken and that actually inspires effectiveness, efficiency, and growth.
INBOUND
GIVES YOU AN
UNDENIABLE
ROI
CHOOSE AN EFFECTIVE AGENCY TO SEE FASTER RESULTS
Companies are shifting their marketing dollars from traditional cold calls and PR, but some still lag behind due to the fact that they don’t have the time and resources they need to train their internal employees on inbound marketing “musts” like e-mail marketing and SEO.
Many companies find that outsourcing online tactics such as social media and blogging is much more effective than trying to go about things alone. This approach can save time, increase results, and allow employees to concentrate on other tasks.
So, how do you know which agency to choose? Highly effective inbound agencies commonly share these 11 characteristics:
1. OFFERS THE
RIGHT SERVICES
Hire a marketing agency that delivers the inbound services that matter the most.
When you choose an inbound marketing agency, make sure it has the services that your company needs to succeed. You should, in general, be looking for four core services: traffic generation, lead generation, leads conversion, and analytical-focused service packages.
These services feature several components that work together to build one effective strategy for your business.
The first service you’ll want to focus on for inbound marketing is generating traffic to your website through social media sharing, blogging, and SEO tactics. Second, you’ll want an agency that can effectively utilize that traffic by creating premium content and landing pages to help maximize lead generation. Third, agencies should build lead-nurturing campaigns that are targeted at converting leads into clients. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the inbound marketing firm should use analysis and measurements to follow every step of the process.
Being able to dig into the results of your online efforts is critical.
Doing so on a regular basis will allow agencies to repeat successes and tune underachieving campaigns to get better results.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• Do you offer traffic generation, lead generation, lead conversion and analytical-focused service packages?
• What tactic or tactics does your firm use to deliver each of these service packages?
• What past or current client example(s) best illustrate success you have delivered for each of these services?
2. PRESENTS A
CLEARLY DEFINED DELIVERY PROCESS
Hire an agency with a solid, proven, and logical plan of attack
The agency you choose should know you and your business, and it should have a solid and proven plan of attack for your inbound marketing strategy. Don’t forget to ask for specifics and details about how the company’s campaigns and strategies will work.
Marketing companies should be able to outline their specific approach based on the four core services and explain the tactics they will use to execute your inbound marketing strategy. You should receive a timeline and description for resources needed and employed along the way.
Make sure each component of the strategy they are proposing to you, as well as what comes before and after each piece, makes logical sense. Does your business have no web presence? Then traffic generation services like SEO, blogging and social media need to come first.
Is your website underperforming from a lead generation perspective? If so, your agency partner will need to ensure that your site has decent traffic and then begin crafting premium offers and landing pages.
Are too few sales being attributed back to the website? An agency brought on to help with that challenge will (again) need to look at the traffic and lead numbers to ensure quality is present, and then begin crafting targeted lead nurturing and email follow-up sequences.
Obviously, the ability to measure and interpret data is a
baseline skill for each of the core services, and each agency you consider should be able to set benchmarks, identify trends and take action.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• Given your understanding of our situation, goals and challenges, what do you recommend we do first, second, third, etc?
• How does our situation, and the plan you’re
recommending, match that of another customer with which you’ve worked?
• What do you see as the most critical part of inbound marketing for our business and goals?
3. CONDUCTS A GOAL-ORIENTED SALES PROCESS
A marketing agency’s pitch should be tailored to your businesses-specific challenges and goals
A sales process with a great inbound marketing agency will begin with
understanding your company’s goals and challenges. Then, the agency will focus on how it can help you. They should
understand that their services are most compelling when they can be seen as potential answers to your business challenges.
A great agency will ask about your
goals and the timing and urgency around meeting those goals. Getting answers to these critical questions at the outset will allow them to prescribe a plan unique to your business. Your goals and challenges should be natural segues into discussions around their capabilities and case studies.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• Have you worked with clients who have faced challenges similar to mine?
• How does each piece of what you are proposing take aim at my challenges and goals?
• What is the timeframe for achieving these goals, based on the strategy you have in mind/outlined for my business?
4. MAINTAINS A WEBSITE
OPTIMIZED FOR INBOUND
Hire a firm that can cite itself as a case study
Make sure the agency you choose “talks the talk” and “walks the walk.” Does the agency do inbound marketing for itself? It certainly should. Take a step back from the agency’s web pages that contain services and client testimonials. Look around and see if it’s active on social media, blogs and other forms of inbound marketing.
A great inbound marketing agency should act as its own case study. You should ask about the firm’s personal inbound marketing efforts and how its plan matches up with the one it has for your company. Think twice about engaging with a firm that doesn’t make the services they sell a priority for their own business.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• What have been the results of your own firm’s inbound efforts?
• Does what you are outlining for us match what your own firm does online?
• What are some key lessons you have learned from using inbound marketing for your own business?
5. PRESENTS COMPELLING CASE STUDIES
Hire an agency with compelling examples of their inbound marketing prowess
An inbound marketing agency may have a lot of charts and graphs to prove its people know what they’re doing, but you should be asking how they can make their solutions work
specifically for your company. Great companies have excellent case studies, as they’ve been successful many times in the past.
Case studies should include client testimonials, numbers, and summaries of campaign strategies.
Consider the four core services of inbound marketing when perusing the information and numbers the agency offers. Do they prove that website traffic and leads increased? Did the number of customers increase from these efforts as well?
It’s always a good idea to ask agencies for references. They’ll likely be glad to hand them over, unless there’s a non-compete or conflict of interest in place. If a reference they provide is a long-term client, award the agency bonus points.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• Can you provide case study materials and references from other clients you have worked with?
• What lessons do you plan on applying to our business from inbound success you have achieved for other clients?
• What are the critical success factors for inbound
6. SHOWCASES SPECIFIC AREAS OF FOCUS
Your agency should specialize, not generalize
Does the agency in which you’re interested have a “sweet spot?” Perhaps they’ve
been very successful with clients in your specific industry, or maybe they’re
rock-star SEO experts. If the agency does have a specialty, make sure it aligns with your company’s goals.
Specialties can shine extra bright when incorporated into a comprehensive
strategy spanning the four core services.
Just make sure your agency’s biggest strengths make you stronger.
It’s also a good idea to ask if the agency is familiar with the thought leaders and key blogs in your industry, and these could prove an important part of your overall inbound marketing strategy.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• Have you worked in my industry before?
• Which piece of inbound marketing is your strongest
capability, and how does the strategy you plan to lay out capitalize on that in particular?
• If you have worked in our industry before, how familiar are you with our thought leaders and key blogs? If not, how do you plan to go about finding these?
7. TEACHES AND TRAINS YOUR
INTERNAL TEAM
Hire an agency that knows how and wants to leverage your team’s industry expertise
Inbound marketing is all about effort:
the effort it takes to create quality
content, the effort to research new SEO keywords, the effort to blog, and the effort to create lead nurturing
campaigns.
A great agency will spearhead all of these efforts, and its people should be willing to train your internal team
members on how to do so as well.
When doing so, they should focus on all of the different sides of your business and have an eagerness to communicate with your team. An agency truly worth its weight will be eager to talk with everyone, then train them on inbound marketing best
practices and harness their brain power.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• To what extent do you plan on using members of our team for content creation, etc.?
• How do you plan on setting those folks up for success and ensure the pieces they work on with you is a good use of their time?
• How has involving client team members in your efforts
8. KEY CAPABILITIES RESIDE EITHER
IN-HOUSE OR
WITH A TRUSTED PARTNER
Hire an agency that explains how it does what it does
When choosing an inbound marketing agency, you’ll want to ask if it does all of its inbound marketing in-house, and if so, who specializes in each particular area. If the company outsources some of its duties, it’s important to understand who their partners are and how long they’ve worked together.
A great inbound marketing company assembles all of the pieces of a comprehensive strategy into one effective unit. Just be sure you understand how and when all of these pieces are being addressed and who is addressing them. If it’s an outsourced company, dig a little deeper into its specific
offerings and reputation.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• Do you do all your inbound marketing work in-house?
• If yes, who on your team specializes in what?
• If no, to whom do you outsource what? And how long have you worked with them?
9. POSSESSES
STRONG PROJECT MANAGEMENT
SKILLS
Inbound marketing is a serious production, and the marketing agency you hire should want to run the whole show
Inbound marketing is an organic process. It involves a good amount of time and dedication, and it also involves a continuous relationship with the agency you choose to handle it. The agency will need to communicate with you on an ongoing basis to ensure their methods stay sharp and inline with your business.
They will also need a clear picture of who your customer is and what he/she desires when viewing your marketing efforts to achieve the most effective engagement.
Be sure the agency you choose has the communication skills and the processes needed to make reasonable and realistic requests of the people on your team. A good agency will make your life easier, not the opposite.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• What types of requests, technical or otherwise, do you anticipate making of myself and my team as our
engagement kicks off?
• What types of requests do you anticipate making of myself or other members of my team on an ongoing basis?
• What project management software, spreadsheets or
10. PLACES AN EMPHASIS ON
MEASUREMENTS
Agencies that measure everything succeed faster
The Internet is an infinitely
measurable place. This makes each piece of the inbound methodology track-able and interpretable. This should be a fact leveraged
heavily by any inbound agency you are considering working with.
Your prospective agencies should have presentations littered with the words “metrics,” “benchmarks,” and
“analytics.”
Your campaigns and performance should be constantly tracked.
Progress made toward your goals should be measured at every step of the way, and an effective inbound marketing agency will be able to track all campaigns and report on performance
regularly. Make sure to ask how the agency will measure your company’s success and how often they’ll report on your progress.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• How will you measure the success of the campaigns you are proposing?
• How often will you report back to us on these campaigns and progress being made towards other key metrics?
• What adjustments can be made if certain metrics are over/underperforming?
11. VALUES
TRANSPARENCY
Your marketing agency partner should want you to see everything that they see
Be sure that the agency you consider values transparency.
Transparent companies work with their clients by following three major business practices. First, they should outline a
regular meeting schedule in their sales process. These meetings allow the agencies a regular venue to raise questions and/or concerns.
Second, agencies should want to train your people. The more you understand what is being done and why, the more you can partner with your agency and set their efforts up for success. Third,
transparent inbound marketing agencies will insist that you have login credentials to the online marketing software they use to run your campaigns. These accounts are loaded with data, and clients who are comfortable with what they do will be happy to have you take a look around. Transparent agencies make their end client part of the team and get better velocity for it.
KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK:
• What online software packages does your firm use to execute and manage inbound marketing?
• Will we be trained on this software?
• How often will you share wins and progress with us?
CONCLUSION
If you’re short on the time and manpower necessary to
implement key inbound marketing tactics such as social media and blogging, you’ll need to choose an agency that has your best interests in mind. Agencies whose personalities, leaders, skill sets and core values mirror the above 11 attributes will be well-positioned to deliver.