In the digital landscape, your marketing strategy can no longer rely on traditional ads because online prospects will easily bounce to your competitor’s website, and ad spend is often wasted. This is why inbound marketing is a pivotal part of online digital marketing.
Inbound marketing attracts visitors to your website, converts them using valuable content and closes those leads to customers with lead nurturing.
While you may have implemented some aspects of inbound marketing or are just getting started, here are 6 signs that you may need to hire a inbound marketing agency to help with your strategy:
1. Your Blog Is as Inconsistent as the Dodgers
Today you blog about your dog, tomorrow it is what you had for dinner, and the next day you finally write about something really important. My point is — you have to have a consistent blogging schedule that is integrated with your overall marketing goals.
An inbound marketing agency will ensure your blogs are helping you to reach your objectives.
2. You Don’t Know Who Your Content Is For
In other words, you haven’t developed marketing personas for your company. Marketing personas are used to ensure any content you create is focused around the goals, pain points and interests of your target audience. An agency is especially beneficial in developing marketing personas because they are usually already familiar with personas relevant to your industry.
3. Your Metric of Inbound Marketing Success Is Higher Traffic
I get it. You’ve invested a lot of money into your brand new website so you naturally get super excited when traffic is higher. However, is that really why you built a website? To get more traffic? Likely, you built it to increase sales, but you aren’t exactly sure how your website will do that so you get excited about traffic.
Really, the true measure of a successful website involves traffic, lead generation, and ultimately new customers. Inbound marketing agencies that know their stuff can help you figure out how all of these components are working on your website.
4. You Think Every Website Visitor Is There to Buy Your Product
Research has shown that 50% of site visitors are qualified but not yet ready to buy, which means an early call from sales will not only be a waste of time but may also decrease the chances they buy from you in the future.
An inbound marketing agency can help you establish lead nurturing campaigns for those who aren’t quite ready to buy.
5. You Think Revenue Goals Are Something for Sales to Worry About
Traditionally, it has been difficult for marketing to measure the ROI of their efforts. Sure, you may have had a survey asking a customer where they heard about you, but we can admit that this method isn’t truly effective. Thus, marketers haven’t spent too much time focusing on ROI.
However, with marketing analytic tools like HubSpot marketing can now ensure all efforts are actually bringing in revenue and set goals to ensure that happens.
You may be wondering, “Why do I need an agency if I have analytics?” Well, someone has to teach how to use it, which brings me to my next point.
6. You Have No Clue How to Effectively Use Marketing Analytics
You jumped on the bandwagon and bought a marketing automation or analytics system, but you have no clue how to use it effectively with current marketing initiatives.
An inbound marketing agency can help you successfully integrate and implement inbound marketing automation tools so that you may use them effectively.
This post was originally published in September 2014 and was updated in November 2019.
