YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE TO HIRING AN INBOUND MARKETING AGENCY DELIGHT INBOUND 1
INBOUND GIVES YOU AN UNDENIABLE ROI 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. 2
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: 3
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. 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? 4
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. 5
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. 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? 6
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. 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? 7
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. 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? 8
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. 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 marketing? 9
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. 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? 10
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. 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 worked in the past? 11
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. 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? 12
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. 13 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 other orientation materials should we expect to receive and when?
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. 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? 14
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. 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? 15
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. BIGSHOT Inbound is a full-service advertising agency located in Kansas City, Missouri. We can assist you in creating powerful digital and traditional marketing campaigns, web development and automated lead generation programs that drive new business and help retain current customers. We can help you build your marketing program from the ground up or step in and assist you with your current marketing programs to make them more effective and results-driven. We can help you attract new customers, sell more products and services, and develop the tools necessary to create a steady flow of new business, all with ROI in mind. Contact BIGSHOT Inbound today to learn how our inbound marketing services can help your company meet its goals. INBOUND BIGSHOTinbound.com 816.471.1877 16