Do They Practice What They Preach?
Another good way to gauge an inbound agency’s portfolio is to examine its own content. Does the agency you’re considering have a blog? Does it have a strong social media presence? How’s their email marketing strategy? In short, do they practice what they preach? If not, calmly click the back arrow on your web browser and continue your search. Blogs, email, and social media are three great resources that all of the top inbound marketing agencies are using today to market themselves. But a blog isn’t just a space for ramblings and quick bursts of thoughts. A blog should be a lead generating and sales dominating machine gun — firing off rounds and rounds of content in hopes of creating leads and ROI. The same goes for social media.
And our ability to eat, drink and breathe inbound isn’t only confined to the workday either. Once a week, everyone from the inbound team comes in early for an “inbound meeting”, in order to continually measure and assess Vital’s own inbound goals and objectives, as well as brush up on some of the latest SEO tactics or content creation concepts. In addition to the weekly inbound meeting, we share knowledge in frequent breakout meetings, we loan each other books, we eat lunch together, we exercise together and we hang out together.
At Vital, we put our past work out there for all eyes to see, but we also place a major emphasis on creating quality, relevant and long-lasting content. We leverage top-of-the-funnel topics with fun company announcements and achievements with engaging and informative industry perspective. We also try and post a new piece of content on our blog once a week, and we attempt to engage our audience on social media daily. But, don’t mistake our punctuality; we take our time creating this content. It is carefully thought out and well planned; from the graphics and headlines to the keywords and hyperlinks. We treat ourselves like we treat our clients. We care.
Offers Transparent, Tested and Tenacious Services
An inbound marketing agency that offers content marketing and social media strategy, but has yet to embrace SEO strategy is essentially worthless. If you’re looking for top inbound marketing assistance, then there’s no way you should settle for an agency in the making. A top inbound marketing agency should offer the full package, the full Monty, the whole enchilada. Components of a successful inbound marketing campaign includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Strategy
- Email Marketing
- Pay-Per-Click Marketing
- Video Production Services
- Webinar Production
- Whitepaper, Ebook, Case Study Production
- SEO Strategy
- Conversion Rate Optimization
But simply offering these services isn’t enough. These inbound strategies need to be:
Transparent — There should be no question whether these inbound strategies are working or not. If they are in fact proving to be effective, then a good inbound team will stick with them. If they aren’t, a good team will cast them aside and refocus their efforts. The success and/or failure of inbound strategies is easy to judge, meaning any agency that gives you vague explanations is full of it. You should expect monthly reporting from your inbound marketing agency, and you should have 24/7 access to tools like Hubspot and Google Analytics to continually check in on your metrics. Highly measureable and actionable: inbound marketing is all about creating results.
Tested —Proven inbound marketing strategies aren’t just some hair brain schemes thought up by some mad scientists. Quite the contrary: inbound strategies are battle tested and ready for war. A top inbound marketing agency knows what works, because they’ve seen what doesn’t.
Tenacious — Persistence and fearlessness pay off in inbound marketing. An inbound agency should be tenacious in its pursuit for success — which for a company means leads that turn into sales. The ability to take a punch and keep getting up is what sets an average inbound team aside from a top inbound titan.
Now you know what it takes to find a top inbound marketing agency. Contact us today to see how we can help your business drive inbound success.
