The Agency Growth Blog - For Owners Who Want Growth

Inbound Takes Time And Clients Want Leads Today—You Better Be Able To Deliver

Let me start by clarifying, I am in no way going back on my belief that inbound is how you should be marketing your business. I’m 100% ALL IN ON inbound. However, today’s marketing world is dramatically different than the world that birthed inbound marketing back in 2008 and 2009.

When inbound first burst on the scene the country was in the midst of the Great Recession. The idea of marketing based on the size of your brain instead of the size of your wallet made a lot of sense. It was smart and efficient.

Today businesses are spending and their spending on marketing. Today there are many more methodologies joining the ranks of inbound. Account based marketing, content marketing, influencer marketing, advocacy marketing and demand generation on its own is back in vogue.

One of the reasons I like blogging for Agencies 2 Inbound and Square 2 Marketing is I feel connected to my community. One of the many advantages of that connection is being able to answer questions for many people with a single article. If you’ve been following me, you know that from time to time I take common questions and answer them for everyone.

The question represented in the title of this article is not one that I get asked directly, but one that I think other agency owners want to ask but perhaps are afraid to hear the answer. You know this type of question, it’s a little like, “Am I saving enough money?” You know the answer is no, so why even bother asking it.

How long does it take to get good at inbound marketing?

It’s the first week of January and hopefully you’ve already spent a good amount of time setting your goals for 2016. Make sure those goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based. These SMART goals are the basis by which you’ll make decisions during the year, but more importantly how you’ll know if you're on track during the year.

Talking about goal setting and actually establishing a set of goals and KPIs (key performance indicators) is easier said than done. In this article, I’ll share with you some of the quantitative goals top tier inbound marketing agencies are deploying in 2016.

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No one ever said it was going to be easy. In fact, I’ll challenge you—that if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Since it’s not easy—when you get your inbound marketing agency to be the company you always envisioned it could be you’ll know all your hard work was worth it.

I wanted to share this short excerpt from an email I received a few days ago. It’s from an agency owner who I’ve known for a few years.

She’s been through the same set of challenges facing most of you.

In my role as advisor to inbound marketing agency owners many of you have asked me to review your agency strategy and specifically your differentiation strategy.

The bad news is you all sound the same. In 2016, it’s going to be increasingly more difficult to tell one inbound agency from another inbound agency.

You all talk about getting clients leads, you all have the required inbound marketing flow chart on your websites, the one with attract, convert, close and delight. Maybe you have different words, but the story is the same. You all have pictures of your team and your cool creative offices but if you were a prospect, how would you tell the difference between one vs. any of the others?

If you think you’re busy today get ready for an even busier 2016. More and more people are realizing inbound marketing is what they should be doing. Here’s a picture of inbound marketing’s popularity from Google which is a fairly solid predictor of interest. The tide is turning.

Your job as an inbound agency owner is to turn this interest into revenue. So in this article I’ll share with you the ten steps you need to be taking RIGHT NOW to get ready for the increase in interest from companies wanting help with their own inbound marketing programs.

You went to Inbound15 this year and you’ve returned to your office all full of vim and vigor. You’re finally ready to do it.

You’re ready to go ALL IN on inbound and transform your entire agency into something that one day can be a Diamond Partner for HubSpot.

You wake up Monday, look in the mirror and say to yourself, “now what?” “I don’t have the faintest idea how to start taking my company from (a ___________ agency--fill in the blank) to being a full inbound agency that’s ready to compete with New Breed, Impact, Kuno and Square 2 Marketing.”

Here’s some good news. You don’t have to compete with any of these companies. You just have to get out of your own way.

Growing Your Inbound Marketing Agency

If you’re working hard growing your inbound marketing agency, then you’re probably looking for changes you can make today to impact that growth tomorrow. Good news, here are 11.5 ways to propel your agency up and to the right.

But there’s better news, you can attend a live, in-person session with me at Inbound 2015, where I’ll talk about each of these items, answer your questions and provide personal guidance to anyone with questions related to inbound agency growth. If you want to attend you can use code HSBLOG for 25% off the All-Access Pass.

Here we go.

I get it. You’ve done traditional work for clients a lot longer than you’ve done inbound. Outbound work makes up a significant amount of revenue and to cut that out is scary.

I can rattle of 20 reasons why you think you should do both inbound marketing and outbound marketing for clients. However, today I’m going to make a case for why an inbound marketing agency shouldn't do any traditional tactics. 

Perhaps this should have been my first blog, But in all transparency, I wanted the site to launch with an educational blog and I blew right past something to set the table for why Agencies 2 Inbound is even in existence.

But later is better than ever and how we have a nice following of subscribers that the message will get out and hopefully resonate with all of you, new readers and existing.

The response to the launch of Agencies 2 Inbound has been phenomenal but a few people have asked me, appropriately so, “why would I help other agencies?”