The Agency Growth Blog - For Owners Who Want Growth

It appears that one of the bigger HubSpot partner agencies is moving to “strategy only” services. Just consulting on how to grow, no delivery services, no content, no websites, no paid media management, no organic SEO work—just thoughts on how to drive revenue.

I’ll preface this by saying my knowledge of the “news” is second hand and via social media primarily, so let’s have a more conceptual conversation about this idea, as opposed to commenting on this specific agency’s new strategy.

Can an agency exist to just offer strategic consulting services and no delivery?

HubSpot continues to transform how people think about revenue by including customer service in the conversation. On the surface this might seem strange to owners of inbound marketing agencies, especially those steeped in traditional marketing related tactics like web design or public relations, but when you dig a little deeper you should be able to see how this is the right advice for almost every company.

The traditional digital agency is dying a slow death, but most of the inbound agencies associated with HubSpot and those more innovative agencies have already seen their path to the future involves helping companies learn how to generate revenue in new and more buyer-centric ways. This move into services is one of the best ways to become much more strategic, garner higher retainers and make a bigger impact on your clients’ companies.

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.

I get it, long-term, contractual relationships with inbound marketing agency clients who pay you every month is going to be better than managing month to month project work.

However, what if there was a way to do both and do it in a way that kept cashflow predictable, matched delivery with revenue and allowed you to service many more clients. Would that be interesting? It should be.

When you look at the market opportunity there are just as many inbound marketing agencies who still do project work as those who only work on retainer. That means, by definition, there’s a big group of clients who prefer to hire agencies to do project work. Now the question becomes, how do you handle both, so that you can work with everyone and anyone who qualifies in to work with your agency?