The life of a business owner can be a hectic one. They’re consistently juggling tasks, deadlines, and decisions. They manage these commitments and more in an effort to keep their company on the cutting edge and to keep their customers delighted. In an effort to ease some of the burden, here are 5 ways an inbound marketing agency can help make a business owner’s life easier.
Unifying Strategy
To an owner who is trying to grow their business, the seemingly endless variety of online marketing tools and tactics can be overwhelming. Often times, they miss the impact that can be gained by uniting the power of these tools.
There was a CEO who had an amazing passion for helping people. That passion was the motivation behind his entire business model. He recognized the positive impact that maintaining a business blog could have on his company. He committed himself to blogging once a week. He also hired an SEO firm to help improve his rankings in Google so his business would be found more often when people came looking for a solution to their pain. He took it even a step farther by hiring a full time employee to manage the company’s social media profiles and email marketing campaigns.
On the surface, this looks like a CEO who “gets it.” Despite this commitment, however, he failed to see considerable growth.
The problem is that each of these areas of investment exist independently of each other. They lack a unifying vision that could contribute towards achieving his goals.
An inbound agency comes alongside and serves as an augmenting force to your organization’s team. They work to create a strategy that maximizes the resources already invested into marketing by building an inbound marketing gameplan. This gamplan serves as a guide and unites the company across departments.
Less Expensive and Less Risky than Hiring a Full Time Team
To some, there is a decision between hiring a marketing agency and hiring an internal team to manage the marketing. Out of the gate, hiring an agency is a lower risk move for most companies.
I sat across the desk from a CEO who candidly shared that he preferred to work with agencies. He said that at the end of the day, if they don’t deliver, they’re much easier to fire than a full time employee.
There is a mountain of truth in his logic. Any inbound marketing agency worth their salt will provide key performance indicators against which their success is to be measured.
Easy to Justify your Investment with Marketing Analytics
Traditional marketing investments geared toward generating B2B leads, like trade magazines, direct mail campaigns, and trade show booths, are a challenge to track. Typically these costs are justified by saying, “that is what we have always done.”
Inbound marketing centers on technology that measures the impact of investment. With marketing analytics, a company executive can see at a glance what percentage of customers are coming from organic search traffic, social media sites, and Pay Per Click campaigns. They can even track actions that originated at specific trade show events.
Not only do marketing analytics help owners gain a clear understanding of the return they’re experiencing from inbound marketing, they can also help capture intelligence from traditional offline activities.
Outside Accountability to Fuel your Content-Creation Fires
One of the biggest reasons people work with a personal trainer is for the accountability they provide. Together they can outline the goals and identify the obstacles to success. Over time, the trainer helps the individual through their plan, toward success. This outside influence provides a motivation to continue with the regement. If they quit, they feel like they’re letting someone down. If they get busy, the trainer can help to bring them back onto the plan by restating their goals and vision.
An inbound marketing agency isn’t much different that a personal trainer. Committing to a content creation culture within an organization is not easy. It requires commitment and endurance, especially in the beginning while writers are finding their voice and visits are low.
An agency can come alongside teams within the company and give them the guidance and accountability necessary to create content at a high level. This can mean creating content calendars to make choosing a topic easy, polishing a writer’s work to make it suitable for the company blog, or simple brainstorming together to identify the topics that will help their target customers the most.
A Trusted Advisor
One of the greatest marks of a leader is the group of people they choose to associate themselves. Leaders recognize the importance of gaining an outside perspective from sources that are experts in their field.
An inbound marketing agency serves as such an advisor. Since their partnerships take place over the long term (12-24 months), their success is based upon the success of their clients. As a trusted advisor, they can help set growth goals and build a plan to accomplish those goals and grow the business.
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