Many marketing agencies use the term "Digital Marketing" to describe their online services. This affirmation could be adecuate but when they assure you that their Email Marketing, social media campaigns or web designs are "Inbound Marketing", they blur the line between being truthful and being on trend. Sure, these elements are fundamental for inbound marketing, but when they lack a base for their inbound program, they simply become marketing tactics.
There are many things that set apart a real inbound marketing agency from those that are not.
An Inbound marketing program has multiple phases. The success will depend on how well the company integrates and executes things together when it comes to:
Strategy development: As you already know, developing an Inbound marketing strategy is intense. Regularly you have a waiting period of around three fundamental working months for employee investigation and increase of strategies before going fully into an Inbound program.
Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is a crucial part of any inbound strategy, this helps your website to be positioned as the first options on search engines. True inbound agencies recognize the high value of this tool and stay on top of keeping your website updated. They implement the same plan for themselves as well, so a good sign to trust an agency is to find them between the first options of the results on the search engines.
Content creation: Content is the heart of Inbound. A true inbound agency prioritizes getting to know an industry to create well written content that targets weak points. This level of understanding helps you make the blogs educational and the advanced content to be intriguing and of interest to prospects.
Audiovisual creativity: Many times videos are the key to the visibility and their value of participation as inbound tactics are only increasing. Videos must be an integral part of the inbound program since 80% of visitors reaffirm their purchase decision is based on the audiovisual content they discover.
Social Media: Knowing how to manage your social media presence is important and you must know how to use, constant activity is essential, of course but how that content is positioned and optimized in order for it to be positioned and distributed accordingly between the best prospects is fundamental as well. Not to mention that it is a great direct source of information coming from our own prospects.
Paid Media: A big part of Inbound Marketing is generally focused on organic marketing strategies, but the support of paid media often helps speed up processes and reach areas that would take more time than we want if we had chosen to do it in an organic manner.
Marketing and Sales Alignment: The Inbound program depends 50% on the Marketing area. The agency that you decide to hire should work hand in hand with sales (which is the other 50%), thus contributing to the management of prospects and ultimately seeking and closing with qualified prospects.
Design: The website design along with content should be visually impactful. Taking a look at the agency's website and its content will give you ideas about who you would like to work with and above all their results.
The information above confirms the capabilities of an agency, if these are very important, there are other factors that will indicate if an agency has the knowledge, experience and personality to really manage an Inbound marketing program.
Applying the program to themselves: You cannot trust and believe in an agency that does not apply what it promises. Maintain its own dynamic program, with the constant creation of relevant content, blogs, participation in social networks and others.
They have success stories: Study not only the agency's portfolio but also read the clients testimonialswhich will give you an idea of how well their services are.
Field experience: The marketing specialist they know, understand and can speak with authority about their expertise to an audience who do not have a learning curve line is fundamental. An agency that has established relationships with similar companies as yours can begin to execute an inbound marketing program easily, faster and efficiently.
They share with you beyond comercial goals: The agency's internal culture is not something you should ignore. If the company's spirit does not fit with yours, it is more probable that the work relationship will not be the right one either.
Recognize the marketing and sales balance: Beyond the alignment between marketing and sales, it is essential that the agency contributes to improving the process around how prospects are generated, qualified, nurtured and sold. Getting both departments on the same page is key to driving the inbound program through higher conversion rates.
They know your software: If your company is already using an Inbound marketing software (such as Hubspot), the programs and processes must resonate with the inbound agency. But, if you haven't implemented a marketing software yet, the agency can guide you to choose the best option for you and teach you the basic and advances characteristics of the software they use.
The search for an agency that adjusts to what you are looking for might be hard and it might take long, but it can take your marketing efforts to the next level. Check our portfolio area, cases and experiences to get more information about our services and work team to evaluate if we are right for you.
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