Tired of chasing down leads and feeling defeated after cold calling? Your business relies on capturing the eyes of your audience, showing them the true value of your service or product—but getting started is not easy. The question is, “Where to start?”
Regardless of the reasons, whether it be minimal resources, lack of talent, or you just simply do not have the knowledge in this field, an inbound marketing agency can assist in creating a strategy that develops, grows, and nurtures the relationship between you and your audience from the very first time you meet. A B2B digital marketing agency acts to ensure your customers are comfortable all the way through the sales funnel, from first contact to repeat buyer loyalty. By using, measuring, and tweaking analytics, an inbound marketing agency will be able to provide visual and physical proof of growth.
Businesses Are Wary About Working with an Agency and Here’s Why
When inviting a marketing agency in to help you grow your business, it takes a huge commitment and leap of faith. It’s similar to going through the hiring process for an internal addition to the team. An inbound marketing agency is not like a plumber, who you only call when you need help.
An inbound marketing agency should take the role of an advisor and loyal companion that is there to help consult and guide, not just fix and leave.
This is why it is so important to make the right decision when choosing a B2B digital marketing agency. Despite the overall good that comes from using outsourced talent with concentrated expertise, there are still concerns when working with a marketing agency. Whether it’s a B2B technology digital marketing agency or a top-tier HubSpot agency, these issues cannot be ignored:
- Agencies are expensive
- Agencies could take control of marketing decisions
- Agencies may not understand the company like trained employees
These are pretty big concerns and even a bigger indicator that interviewing agencies will be needed. However, even with these fears floating around, there are still numerous reasons to back up partnering with a marketing agency and committing to the investment.
How You Know To Start Looking For An Inbound Marketing Agency
More often than not, businesses get a little irritated with their marketing strategies, especially when traffic is coming in, but not converting. This could be a sign that your marketing department or team isn’t doing their job, the salesmen are unable to close sales or even the fact that the product is not up to par. Perhaps it’s prime time to seek the help of hiring a team of marketing experts to improve your overall strategy and generate solid leads.
When it comes to trying to do all of these tasks in-house, you could be left with more problems than you started with because:
- Your employees understand the business, but may not understand how to use a CMS or other marketing tools effectively.
- Individual developers may not understand your business and how graphics, imagery, and design play a part in your brand strategy.
- Niche concentrated marketing groups rarely try new things for growth. They stick with what has worked.
Isn’t it time to make a decision that takes hassle, stress and worry away? It’s time for a friend who isn’t afraid to try new things. You need a team of growth experts who understand the necessity of looking for new ways to grow and engage with your customers by your side. An inbound marketing agency is more than a hired team that comes in and sets up sale generation for companies.
They come in as consultants and stay as friends. Why? Maybe it is because they want to see you succeed as much as you do or maybe it’s the feeling of having someone who understands the pains of growing a business and is willing to stick with you through thick and thin. Either way, finding a quality B2B marketing agency is vital for your business’s health.
13 Indicators You Need An Inbound Marketing Agency On Your Side
1. You have leads but don’t engage them
What good is a long list of potential prospects if you’re not strategically nurturing them through your sales funnel? Follow-ups, lead generations, and other customer service focuses take time and knowledge to accurately execute. Having an agency in your back pocket can make sure those hot leads don’t turn cold due to negligence.
2. You have bunches of content with no channel promotion
You know your business inside and out, you understand what type of content you need, but you and your team lack the knowledge to get your amazing content in front of your intended demographic. Content is great to have, but it still needs a channel to be promoted on. B2B digital marketing agencies specialize in putting your message exactly where it needs to be when it needs to be. It takes experience and time. How much spare time do you have?
3. You have lots of content with no interaction
It can get frustrating to spend time, effort, and thought in curating captivating content that no one clicks, reads, or interacts with. Marketing agencies have spent time studying the psychology behind the buyer’s decision and understand what makes users engage.
4. Time constraints are leaving your efforts subpar
You’re running a business. How much time do you have to ensure your directives and goals are being met? Working with an inbound marketing agency frees up a lot of time so that you can focus on the business side of things while your newly trusted team works to accomplish your company’s growth goals.
5. You’re missing the right tools in your toolbox
Ideas can be easy to come up with, but finding a team with the skillset, discipline, and drive to implement them correctly is the tough part. Digital marketing agencies are designed to come with a fully-loaded toolbox, ready to sniff, poke, and prod for areas of improvement.
6. You think everyone is your potential customer
The saying, “If you throw enough at a wall, something will stick,” does not make for a strong marketing strategy. If you are trying to appeal to everyone, then you’re ultimately flattering no one. An inbound marketing agency can help identify your business’s buyer personas to ensure your messages and efforts are making it to the people who actually care about your product or service.
7. You’re paying for software you aren’t effectively using
Software is an amazing asset in the digital world than swears to deliver results, and most of the time it does. Marketing software like Hubspot aims to assist business owners in achieving their goals. The problem comes in when companies purchase these great software platforms with no technical knowledge of how to fully use it.
It’s like buying groceries from the store even though you don’t know how to cook with the ingredients you brought home. This wastes money, time, and effort.
Software helps a lot, but in the hands of an infant, it will always underperform. Using a qualified expert inbound marketing agency can make sure you are utilizing every piece of software to its fullest.
8. You’re in need of more leads that convert to customers
If you have no leads, you have no business, right? When your lead pool runs dry, you’ll definitely flop around like a fish out of water. But with the help of B2B digital marketing agency, you can make sure your well never goes dry and you’re never left without a steady flow of incoming sales.
9. Your business and marketing goals aren’t on the same page
If your business goals are not talking properly with their marketing counterparts, you could be left spinning tires. Sometimes an outside hand can provide a fresh perspective on things and make sure your business and marketing goals are in sync.
Using a professional inbound marketing agency can help realign your company’s goals and ensure proper direction for your brand’s voice and vision.
10. You need an increase in quality website traffic
One of the biggest problems with site traffic is quality. More often than not, businesses struggle to advertise their message effectively to the right audience. Proper use of advertising budgets can boost business by making sure the right message is meeting the intended audience.
11. You offer a generic and basic web experience
Maybe your website gets plenty of traffic but also has an incredibly high bounce rate. If this is the case, chances are your website isn’t giving visitors the user-friendly experience that is needed to convert visitors into customers.
12. You’re unable to measure success using analytics & data
Data and analytics matter, but not all business owners can track, observe, and digest ALL the amount of information that is collected. This is where an inbound marketing agency comes in hand. They have experts who understand how to read the data, what it means, and how to improve based on what it says.
13. Your business is on the decline
The world changes, advertising evolves, and the way we connect with our customers also morphs over time. Your business should also adapt and ensure a fresh marketing strategy is always scheduled. Every now and then, some businesses just need a new approach to the same problem.
How an Inbound Marketing Agency Can Make All the Difference in Your Business
The problem with most marketers today is they would rather use what has worked in the past instead of looking for a better way. No matter what, there is always room for improvement and your business should keep its best foot forward, but how? Ever heard of growth hacking? It’s not new, just misunderstood.
For a long time, many marketers thought inbound marketing and growth hacking played different sports, and that they were nothing alike. Depending on how you look at it, this can be true, but most will not see it like that once you’ve read this.
The idea of inbound marketing as a whole can be thought of as strategic frameworks, where certain activities need to be completed in order to produce a said result. It includes tactics and relevant strategies to achieve the goal set from the planned framework. A typical digital marketing agency sticks to previously used templates that have brought them success. However, inbound marketing agencies have started to incorporate the idea of growth hacking into their marketing framework.
Why? Think of it like this. You spent a lot of time making a stellar blog post for your company blog and that’s where you want people to see it, so you post it there. This is a standard approach. You’ve hit your SEO checklist, made sure the page was optimized and then published it to give your audience something to enjoy. The growth hack way would be to distribute a link to that great content across every possible channel your audience may visit. It is this type of thinking that provides real results.
Inbound marketing agencies are becoming more adept in growth hacking and are able to produce incredible and scalable results. They have been able to accomplish this through change. Everything can be approached scientifically. If you’ve retained anything from grad school science, it should be that you have to keep experimenting. There is no room for improvement if you are doing the same thing time and time again.
The best inbound marketing agencies take the time and experiment on all sorts of business growth areas, instead of relying on repeated ideas that have been done hundreds of times. A strong and reliable digital marketing agency does not accept what those before them have done. Instead, they look for a way to improve, not only themselves, but your business as well.
A trusted agency is not in it for the quick payday. They are advisors who are there when you need a shoulder to lean on — there when you’ve looked everywhere else and are lost. They are there to make sure your company succeeds.
by Perry Nalevka on November 15, 2018
CEO of Penguin Strategies
