Although we always do our best to stay on top of trends and developments in our business, every so often we at Emphasize Design like to test ourselves just to make sure we’re as far ahead of the curve as we can be. We’ve recently been studying factors of efficient inbound marketing companies to help us establish the essentials for our business and confirm that we have them. Through this process we came up with ten fundamentals for successful inbound marketing companies. In the first part of our series we explored five elements of agencies including how applicable services and clear plans are the primary steps, and how relationships absolutely matter for creating effective strategies with your client.
Here are the final five factors that indicate an inbound marketing company’s ability to effectively present your product to the market.
6. Employs Their Workforce Properly
Employ means “to hire”, but it also means “to use”.
Since there are so many parts to an inbound marketing campaign (SEO, social media, content creation, blogging, lead nurturing, CTAs, whitepapers…whew!), the company you are considering should have agile employees that not only know their own specific area well, but also are also willing to jump in the fray and learn something new. More importantly, there needs to be a management style that encourages employees to push themselves into becoming better and better at what they do.
Inbound marketing is not the kind of industry where anyone can afford to become stagnant. Employees should have the ability to diversify, but they should also work as a unit. Coordinated efforts for campaign implementation are essential to facilitate success.
7. Introduces You to Their Employees
The components of inbound marketing company are diverse, but they come together to work like a well-oiled machine. For the most part, the person you meet that supplies the sales pitch for your potential inbound marketing company is not the one who will be designing your site. And the designer you’ll eventually meet to go over your vision is likely not the one in charge of content. As mentioned in Part 1, it’s good that an inbound marketing company has the specific talent on board to be able to generate traffic, manage content, nurture leads and provide proper analysis, and it’s even better when you get to know those people personally. You will be in constant contact with your company during the development process and should feel comfortable approaching anyone with your suggestions. After development your main go-tos will be whoever provides the analysis for your site and the company’s content manager.
8. Can Coordinate
Inbound marketing agencies are bound to the clock. Everything should be carefully scheduled well ahead of time and you should be made well aware of processes and progression. At the same time, “news” happens in several industries, and if you’d like to get an emergency blog up or social media post out about impending changes in your field, your inbound company ought be able to handle it.
9. Emphasizes Analyses
There’s pretty much nothing on the Internet that can’t be tracked, tested and scrutinized, and your inbound marketing agency should be adept at all of these. Just as you set goals for your company, your inbound marketing agency should set goals for your online growth. And although it’s good to set realistic goals, it’s important to remember that overall Internet presence is something that CAN be continually improved upon. If you’ve noticed that your potential agency has some clients they spend more time on than others, ask why. You don’t want your company to become complacent once you’ve reached a certain level of accomplishment. It could be that the client seeming to receive more attention is undergoing a rebuild, and the client seeming to receive less is simply very organized and has been scheduled well in advance.
10. Uses Good Business Practices
The main aspects of all “good business” include three main practices. First, you should have a regular (usually monthly) meeting scheduled with your agency representative where you can discuss advancement, questions and concerns. Second, your inbound agency should be happy to help educate your own employees about how inbound marketing works so that there is a constant flow of ideas for improvements and approaches. Finally, your inbound marketing agency should be happy to show you how all of the tools they use actually work, which, in fact, also helps build trust and ease a potential clients’ mind about accidentally making a risky investment.
