The HubSpot partner team spends a lot of time helping marketing agencies develop their inbound marketing skills and their businesses. There's good ones, there are bad ones, and there are good ones in the making. It might make sense for you to hire a new inbound marketing agency, unencumbered by the old ways of marketing. But, you should be vigilant as you interview new firms.
If you're hiring an agency, you should test for the aptitudes below. Hiring an inbound marketing agency is like hiring an employee, since inbound marketing is NOT a one time thing. Don't jump into it lightly and don't get enamored by a glossy finish that's rotten below the surface.
Sales
If they don't know how to sell in the right way, they should forget about starting a marketing agency. A good agency knows how to generate leads and referrals, develop rapport, ask probing questions to uncover challenges, establish credibility and trust, help prospects develop marketing goals, present budget-appropriate plans and ask for business. These aren't skills innate to most marketers. But, they're critical if a marketer wants to build a business. Why would you hire a marketer that doesn't know how to sell? How can a marketer who can't sell, help you grow your sales?
Ironically, these sales skills seem to get lost somewhere along the way when agencies get to a certain size. Their sales tactics tend to be about impressing prospects, instead of identifying how to help them.
Account Management
If an agency isn't strong at managing their accounts by setting expectations, reviewing activities, seeking buy-in, inspiring continued action and reporting results, they'll quickly lose clients. Unfortunately, I've worked with a handful of agencies that have significant churn issues. They're good [enough] at client acquisition, but fail when it's time to manage the account.
In order to avoid firms like this, ask questions about how they do monthly reviews. Know what they'll be doing in month 3 and month 6. Resist hiring agencies who tell you that you need to spend 3 months analyzing and fixing things, or redesigning your site from scratch. These things might be necessary, but a good inbound marketing agency gets to work generating leads and sales right away, by launching landing pages and a blog. They'll gradually circle back and fix the other issues.
Project Management
Delivering inbound marketing services isn't easy. It usually involves communication with lots of different parties, including both the client and the speciaiists who do the work. With inbound marketing, it's important that project managers also know how to do some of the inbound marketing tasks themselves. It's hard to manage and direct someone who will conduct the social media marketing activities or build a lead nurturing sequence, if they don't know the steps involved.
Graphic Design & Web Programming
In order to design and launch a website, blog or landing page, artistic graphic design skills and css development skills are absolutely necessary. These are often not possessed by the same person, but these two people need to work closely, from start to finish, throughout any design process.
Analytical Skills
In order to do inbound marketing, reading graphs and tables is a critical skill. Surprisingly to me, reading graphs and drawing conclusions from the data is not a common skill. Most people look at graphs and jump to illogical conclusion, instead of drawing accurate ones. It's impossible to improve results without understanding them first. Ask your prospective agency how they measure results and how they report them. Each month, they should review them with you and talk about how you can improve.
Most certified HubSpot partners take this a step further. They use a HubSpot trial to benchmark where you are now, and to put together a plan that is custom for you, based on analysis of your site, and your competitors' sites.
Content Creation Skills
Content creation is the most critical skill for an inbound marketing agency to possess. Content is the engine that draws traffic; it is the offer that compels a visitor to convert into a lead; it is what educates a lead so they become sales ready. Content is key to inbound marketing. Without it, inbound marketing does not exist. An agency who isn't strong at creating or sourcing blog posts, webinars, ebooks, white papers, videos and other content isn't an inbound marketing agency.
Does your marketing agency have all of these skills? Or at least have access to them when needed?
(Photo via sarchi)
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HubSpot TV will be LIVE in Las Vegas today, Friday, at 4:00 p.m. ET. Watch the show in real-time at www.hubspot.tv.
Episode #83 - March 12, 2010
(Episode Length: 27 minutes, 34 seconds)
Intro
- How to interact on Twitter: Include hashtag #HubSpotTV in your tweets! On the show today is Mike Volpe (@mvolpe), Karen Rubin (@karenrubin) and Emily Nagle Green (@emilynaglegreen)
- As always, all the old episodes are in iTunes: http://itunes.hubspot.tv/. If you like the show, please leave a review!
- Wild Web Women have nominated Mike for "Social Media Man Crush" finalist. Please vote!
- We're doing HubSpot TV from Las Vegas on March 19!
Special Guest, Emily Nagle Green
Mailbag
Headlines
Stalking via Facebook & Twitter Is Made Even EASIER
- Facebook Plans to Stake Its Location Claim Next Month
- "Facebook plans to add friend location information as soon as next month, reports The New York Times Bits blog today. Honestly, this news is so expected that the fact that it was reported using anonymous sources attributed as 'several people briefed on the project' only makes it a little more certain than it was before."
- How Marketers Can Use Twitter's New Locations Featurex
- "After agreeing to share your location information in your settings, a small location icon will appear next to each tweet's byline. Clicking it will bring up Google Maps, displaying your location."
- Marketing Takeaway: Start building your presence on Four Square, Facebook & Twitter. Try to find interesting ways to incorporate it in your business
Yelp Still Battling Bad Reviews
- Yelp Hit With Class Action Lawsuit For Running An “Extortion Scheme”
- Two law firms, Beck & Lee from Miami and The Weston Firm in San Diego, have filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court alleging unfair business practices by local business review and rating website operator Yelp.
- Marketing Takeaway: Be transparent with your customers!
Google Opens the Google Apps Marketplace For Business
- Open for business: the Google Apps Marketplace
- "The Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps."
- Marketing Takeaway: Make it easy for people to find you. If you have an application, apply to put it in the Google Marketplace today.
Forum Fodder
- Kristi Shoemaker from inbound.org: When measuring "what" effort drove the lead, do I point to the person's first point of entry into our website, or the closest point of entry when they filled out the lead.
Marketing Tip of the Week: Read the book
Anywhere and think about what elements of your business are not yet connected.
Closing
Webinar - PR 2.0 for Marketers: Why Social Media Participation Matters
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Google announced an interesting new opt-out feature for Google Analytics today. From their blog:
Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.
At HubSpot, we often get asked whether someone should use Google Analytics. My typical response, when asked, is to say, "Why not? It's free, and it measures different data and presents data differently than HubSpot's marketing analytics." That has developed into the standard answer at HubSpot as we've trained more of our consultants and salespeople. As a result, many of our customers use our analytics tools and Google Analytics side by side. In fact, here's a case study a partner just published that shows data from both tools.
But, I'm left perplexed regarding the purpose of this new opt-out feature. For marketers, web site analytics is a key tool to help determine ROI of marketing activities and expenditures and help improve conversion paths on a site. It's a key pillar of the inbound marketing methodology that enables businesses to convert visitors into lead and leads into sales. And the data that is important is the aggregate number of visitors and users on a site. The aggregate numbers and trends are what a marketer cares about. But, what happens if a decent percentage of visitors opt out of being tracked?
- Leads and sales can't be tied back to marketing activities such as SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, press releases, etc.
- Visitor, page view counts, etc. become inaccurate.
Furthermore, individual user's personal data is not needed in order to draw marketing conclusions, and Google doesn't actually collect personally identifiiable information through Google Analytics. They actually don't allow you to do it either. From their terms of use:
7. PRIVACY . You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to track or collect personally identifiable information of Internet users, nor will You (or will You allow any third party to) associate any data gathered from Your website(s) (or such third parties' website(s)) with any personally identifying information from any source as part of Your use (or such third parties' use) of the Service. You will have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy and will comply with all applicable laws relating to the collection of information from visitors to Your websites. You must post a privacy policy and that policy must provide notice of your use of a cookie that collects anonymous traffic data.
If I were completely reliant on Google Analytics right now for my business, I'd be questioning who really owns my analytics data? Google? Me? Or my site visitors?
While I generally applaud Google's significant efforts to help us little people maintain some vestige of privacy as we share more and more data with the borg, knowingly or not, I don't understand the point of this move. Is this a trade-off that needs to made?
It's an interesting issue. I feel like I'm questioning God when I question Google. I'm not sure I have the right answer, either. But, Google's move perplexes me, from the perspective of a marketer, especially. What do you think?
Updated 10:08 AM - The Onion has a hilarious take on this one.
Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village (Found via bengriffithsme)
Update 10:20 AM - Patricio Robles from econsultancy says:
Needless to say, publishers using Google Analytics will probably not be thrilled at the prospect that certain data won't be collected from a potentially larger number of users. After all, when it comes to web analytics, more is better for most publishers.
Update 10:23 AM - Frederic Lardinois from ReadWriteWeb says:
If opting out of Google Analytics becomes a widespread phenomenon, this could have wide-reaching consequences for site owners. After all, having detailed analytics about your visitors allows site owners and publishers to tweak their marketing efforts.
Update 10:25 AM - Matt McGee from Searchengineland gets a comment from Google:
Webmasters may be concerned about losing the integrity of their Google Analytics data because it won't be tracking as many web visitors...
...Asked about the impact on web site owners, Google Analytics Group Product Manager Amy Chang sounded unconcerned. "Analytics reports will continue to provide advertisers with robust and valuable data to help improve their websites and advertising campaigns," she said via email.
Seems like a non-answer.
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Everybody knows -- or should know -- that blog content is critical to successful online marketing in today's world.
Less talked about (but perhaps even more important) is offer content.
As a marketer, offers are your lead generation ammunition. They're information and resources your site visitors want to consume and are willing to give you their contact information in exchange for. Offers are simply the best ways to generate leads from your website.
The people who respond to your offers might not always realize it, but by providing that informational resource, they have turned themselves into leads for you and your sales team to follow up.
So, what makes a good offer? How do you go about creating these resources? Perhaps a better question is, "Who is your target?" One of the real truths about Web site visitors is that a huge majority of them are simply looking for information. People who find your site organically have likely visited some other site before they even got to yours, so creating offers that will educate and nurture the top of your funnel is your number 1 priority.
Great, so you've got some people in your funnel.
Now what?
The next step can be extremely automated, and it's a step where your offers can do a lot of the work for you. If you've got a lead that converts through a top-of-the-funnel offer, you should consider giving yourself the ability to put more middle-of-the-funnel offers in front of them by simply sending them some email.
We call this lead nurturing, and it's been proven to work wonders for many companies in terms of automating an effective marketing tactic. The goal of these lead nurturing campaigns should be to get other offers in front of your leads with the hope that they'll re-visit your site and convert on a lower funnel offer.
So, with two lead-conversion events under their belts and without having to use any actual manpower, your sales team is going to forget they ever had to make a cold call.
In essence, you've won. Your leads will be better educated and versed in your product offerings and will be more likely to use your solution to solve their problem.
Photo Credit: mira66
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In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, our hero, driving a massive steamroller at a snail's pace, bears down on a security guard, about 20 yards away. Despite ample time to move out of harm's way, the guard stays put, eventually flattened like the proverbial pancake.
This is not unlike the scenario playing out between large marketing agencies and their outmoded, outbound marketing methods, and smaller agencies embracing inbound marketing. Big agencies see inbound marketing coming, but remain flatfooted.
The Internet disproportionately benefits small businesses, and that includes small agencies, too. With inbound marketing, smaller agencies aren't one giant sloth of a steamroller, but a fleet of quick-moving little ones.
This disruption boils down to business-model alignment, or rather misalignment, from recent shifts in marketing. Most large, traditional agencies excel at outbound marketing and their business model is aligned for that. They need a large, fixed staff and they charge accordingly.
But what happens when this comparative advantage is no longer advantageous? When what agencies do best (outbound marketing) is no longer best for clients?
Smaller agencies aren't wedded to old marketing methods They have no stake in preserving them. In fact, just the opposite since the new world order benefits them in several ways.
1. Today's marketing is about content, not distribution. You don't need big budgets for TV/radio/print ads. You don't need PR agencies' access to gatekeepers. Where distribution is a polo game for the elite, content is a scrappy, pickup game anyone can play. The challenge now is breaking through the cacophony of content online... but that just requires brains, not budget.
2. Marketing tools are freely available. No need for expensive monitoring tools only big agencies can afford when there's a myriad of inexpensive ones (e.g. HubSpot, Radian6, Cision). To create content, you don't need professional equipment or staffing. HubSpot's latest marketing video was born from a great idea, one hour of scriptwriting, and two hours of shooting using a $100 camcorder.
3. You can be a virtual, full-service agency. Inbound marketing doesn't require a huge, integrated staff. We built the HubSpot Marketing Services Marketplace as an eBay for marketing services (open to both HubSpot and non-HubSpot customers). It turns out that marketing agencies also use it to find collaborators for projects. One agency may be great at graphic design, offering call to action buttons or landing page design services, but collaborates with freelancers to provide clients with blog writing services or social media marketing services. Flexible staffing in the virtual agency model makes them more nimble, specialized yet general, and thus able to charge more competitive rates.
4. You can afford -- and win with -- guerilla tactics. Most big firms won't change their practices quickly, even if they see the steamroller (or in this case, many tiny steamrollers) coming. Smaller firms, unencumbered by a broken business model, have little to lose trying new things. Think outside-the-box to take capture business from traditional firms. Contemplate la carte jobs, which often lead to ongoing business. Embrace performance measurements (such as the ones on our Marketplace directories) and consider performance-based pricing from the resultant traffic, leads, or customers from your services.
We've had raging debates here as to whether PR is dead, Madison Avenue's future, how the marketing services industry is broken Parts I and II, and how we can help transform the marketing services industry. Not all agencies are in denial, but watch out for smaller, nimbler agencies already pouncing on the opportunities created by this market disruption.
| Feel overwhelmed by all the things you need to do to be a successful inbound marketer? Learn from 2 inbound marketers at HubSpot on how to prioritize your days and leverage internal & external resources to get the highest ROI from inbound marketing. Reserve your spot now! When: Friday, March 26, 2010 at 12:00 PM ET |
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