The goal of inbound marketing is to draw in new and existing consumers through dedicated initiatives instead of bombarding them with your products.
It differs from traditional digital marketing in that it isn’t as product-promotional. Instead, it concerns itself with creating a relationship and establishing a positive brand identity.
Your brand needs to leverage both forms of digital marketing in order to create a cohesive strategy that engages consumers and boosts sales.
That’s where the best inbound marketing agencies come in.
How To Choose A Top Inbound Marketing Agency
The Best Inbound Marketing Companies Have The Specific Services You Need
There are a lot of services involved in inbound marketing.
These services include social media, email, SEO, paid media and web optimization services.
55 percent of companies, for instance, cite blog content creation as their number one inbound marketing priority.
Depending on the scope of your project and the results you’re looking for, a different digital marketing approach needs to be taken.
The best inbound marketers will have the specific strategies and services you need in order to create a successful campaign.
Top-Rated Inbound Marketing Agencies Provide Additional Branding Services
In addition to the traditional inbound marketing services provided by these marketers including social media and content marketing, the best inbound marketing agencies also provide superior branding services.
In order for your brand to be successful, it needs a fluid, succinct and positive brand identity.
For 89 percent of marketers, increasing brand awareness is their number one goal.
Award-winning inbound marketing companies use research, experience and expertise to create a consistent and engaging brand identity that keeps consumers coming back for more.
The Best Inbound Marketing Firm Has Costs In Your Budget
Inbound marketing can get expensive.
As a whole, inbound marketing initiatives are less expensive than traditional marketing campaigns. But you’re still looking at around $5,000 a month for inbound marketing.
It’s dependent on the scope and size of your project, of course. But marketing costs can quickly add up.
That being said, the best inbound marketers will work with you and your budget. They won’t blindside you with unseen costs and they will provide you with the winning campaigns that don’t blow your budget out of the water.
Reputable Inbound Marketing Agencies Have An Organized Process
These professional marketers don’t just wing it.
They have an established and effective process in place that they use to lead them on their way to a successful campaign.
There is a structured foundation in place that guides them from the brainstorming phase to launch. It’s a process you can trust and be confident in.
Just like you have a step-by-step process in place to manage and promote your business, these professionals have a strategy for promoting your brand to the masses and establishing a strategy to get you the traffic you’re looking for.
Successful Inbound Marketing Firms Invest In Relationships
You want to feel like you can trust your inbound marketing agency partner. That means that you want this to be a two-way relationship, not simply a one-sided business transaction.
Top inbound marketing firms invest in this relationship as well. They don’t just complete this project and send you off. They want to create lasting relationships that are profitable for both parties involved.
18 Questions To Ask A Top-Rated Inbound Marketing Agency
Ask Your Inbound Marketing Agency About Services They Provide
There are a number of services involved with inbound marketing — from content marketing asset creation to social media promotion to web optimization services and beyond.
Make sure you ask your agency partner what services they provide, which services they recommend, and what goals they are capable of reaching through them.
- What inbound marketing services do you provide?
- What types of collateral can you create for our brand?
- Do you offer design services?
- How can you integrate these initiatives into our overall marketing strategy?
Ask Your Inbound Marketing Firm How They Determine Goals
It’s important that your company, and the agency partner you’re working with, has set goals.
Those that set goals, and write them down, earn 10 times more than those that don’t.
You need to know what goals these inbound marketers are capable of achieving. You need to understand their process and how much input you’ll have in what goals are set and achieved.
- What goals will these inbound marketing initiatives achieve?
- How do you set goals?
- How will these initiatives reach out business goals?
- How will these initiatives affect our branding, sales and customer satisfaction goals?
- What goals have you reached in the past for other clients?
Ask Your Inbound Marketing Agency Partner How They Will Keep Branding Consistent
Branding is extremely important in marketing as we’ve already discussed.
Building an audience and establishing brand identity is more valuable than direct sales for 70 percent of managers.
Therefore, you need to ensure that branding is always a top priority regardless of campaign or collateral.
- How will you keep branding consistent?
- How will you fully understand and promote our brand?
- How will the collateral you create flow with our current collateral?
- How will these inbound marketing initiatives build our brand identity and increase exposure?
Ask An Inbound Marketing Partner About Their Past Experience
Past experience is a great indicator as to how your potential inbound agency partner can function and grow your business.
Looking at their portfolio and diving into their track record can illuminate their strengths and weaknesses.
It can outline what they are good at, what they’re not and how they invest in their partnerships.
- What businesses have you worked with in the past?
- Have you worked with any competitors or others brands in our industry?
- Can we speak to any of your past clients?
- What are some successful campaigns you’ve launched in the past?
- What have you learned from your past successes and failures?
What Your Inbound Marketing Agency Team Will Look Like
The Best Inbound Marketing Companies Have A Key Point Of Contact
57 percent of projects fail due to a breakdown in communication.
Especially when it comes to outsourcing your work, it’s important that you fluidly and effectively communicate with team members.
That’s why the best inbound marketing firms hire project managers as a key point of contact. They oversee the project and provide the necessary updates to keep you informed and keep the project running smoothly.
Top Inbound Marketing Firms Hire Branding Experts
Branding keeps track of the way your audience interacts, engages and perceives your brand. It’s important that your audience has a positive perception of your brand.
Otherwise, it will fail.
That’s why top-rated inbound marketing companies hire branding experts to learn about your brand identity, conduct research and understand what will do well.
Industry-Leading Inbound Marketing Agencies Employ Copywriters And Designers
When it comes to content creation and asset development, your brand needs designers, developers and copywriters.
Visitors to a website only read 20 percent of the content on a web page.
So that content needs to be compelling.
Copywriters work with the branding team to write and brainstorm names, taglines and messaging.
In addition to that, designers work on logos, visual collateral and even websites to create a consistent identity and establish a connection between your brand and your audience.
Top Inbound Marketing Companies Have Dedicated Digital Marketers On Staff
Inbound marketing firms hire digital marketers to offer an overarching understanding of the competitive market, marketing trends and evolving technologies.
The world of marketing evolves constantly. These professionals have seen it and experienced it. So they know what will work in a social media campaign just as much as they know how to optimize your content for SEO.
You don’t want a team that only hires inbound marketers. They don't understand the big picture and that won’t do your brand any favors.
The Best Inbound Marketing Companies Have An Effective Process
Top Inbound Marketers Start By Defining Their Strategy
The first step in a fluid and effective inbound marketing process if establishing a strategy or plan of attack.
The best inbound marketers have to define goals and targets, pinpoint their target audience, understand their client and establish core values and missions to promote.
This gives them an idea as to how to set out on the right campaign and the right medium to impact audiences.
Reputable Inbound Marketers Work With You To Decide On Specific Types Of Campaign
Before you set out on your quest to find an inbound marketing agency, you likely have an idea in mind as to what you want to boost.
Maybe you want more engaging email and social media campaigns. Maybe you want to optimize your website and content. Maybe you have no idea and that’s ok.
Top-rated inbound marketers will work with you to decide on a specific strategy, medium and platform to help you meet your key performance indicators (KPIs).
Top Inbound Marketers Conduct Extensive Market Research
Successful inbound marketing firms conduct extensive research to ensure they understand your brand, your needs and your audience.
They test people in specific demographics to see what type of message has a greater impact and why.
They use top tools to understand the competitive landscape. They want to know what your audience wants, what your competitors are doing and how they can craft a strategy that aligns your brand as a leader.
Inbound Marketers Then Decide On Visual Collateral And Messaging
Marketing campaigns require collateral.
This collateral comes in a variety of forms — from blog posts and social media images to website imagery, email banners and more.
The next step in the inbound marketing process is creating this visual collateral and establishing core messaging standards. This keeps branding consistent and gives your brand an approachable visual identity for your audience to interact with.
The Best Marketers Then Launch Effective Inbound Campaigns
The most valuable content for moving companies and audiences through the sales funnel all come from inbound marketing initiatives.
Once they’ve finalized a strategy, decided on platforms and mediums and created collateral, it’s now time for inbound marketers to launch these campaigns.
Using a wide range of effective management platforms, tracking tools and analytics, they can see how these campaigns are affecting your audience.
They can track website traffic, lead generation and conversions with ease.
The Last Step In The Inbound Marketing Process Is Monitoring And Maintenance
The final step in this inbound marketing process is the monitoring and maintenance phase.
It’s here that campaigns are monitoring using cutting-edge tracking tools. From here, marketers can hone in on specific audiences, tweak campaigns for the desired result and answer questions that consumers have.
5 Traits Of The Best Inbound Marketing Firm
Top Inbound Marketers Take The Time To Understand Your Brand
Instead of jumping right into a project without fully understanding who you are and what you’re looking for, the best inbound marketers take the time to understand your brand and your audience.
This brand understanding can help the marketing team get a better feel for which angle to take your campaign.
It helps them hone in on your audience and develop concise and compelling messaging to really make an impact on your target audience.
Successful Inbound Marketing Companies Collect Extensive Data
Top inbound marketing companies gather data and analytics about your brand, target audience, industry and market to understand what will work, what won’t and why.
This research goes far being just simply understanding your brand.
This also means understanding the competitive market and what other brands in your industry are doing.
These marketers have access to state-of-the-art tools that can track your audience demographics, emerging tools and developing trends.
This makes it easier for them to develop a campaign that will evolve without falling behind or becoming outdated.
The Best Inbound Marketing Firms Offer Complete Marketing And Branding Services
These marketers don’t just focus on inbound marketing services. They are also well-versed in traditional, digital marketing services so that they can fluidly and effectively integrate these new initiatives into your existing strategies.
You don’t want your strategy to feel disjointed and jarring.
Plus, consistent branding can increase your revenue by 23 percent on average.
So your inbound agency partner needs to be able to jump right in and keep things consistent and comprehensive.
Top Inbound Marketing Teams Are Collaborative And Effective
The best inbound marketing firm has a collaborative team of expert marketers, advertisers, branding experts, designers and copywriters.
These professionals have an innate understanding of the digital marketing landscape.
Thanks to their experience, knowledge, tools and more, they can think on their feet and develop a strategy regardless of the challenges or hurdles already in place.
Reputable Inbound Marketing Companies Take A Goal-Oriented Approach
More than 80 percent of businesses don’t keep track of their goals.
This has a negative impact on project completion and success.
That being said, leading inbound marketers have a firm grasp of what their goals are, as well as the overall business goals of the client they’re working with.
With these goals in mind, they take a very strategic approach to their campaigns that keep these goals front and center.
By doing this, they ensure that they meet them, thus further propelling their client to success.
Top Inbound Marketing Companies
How Top Inbound Marketing Companies Charge Their Clients
The Best Inbound Marketing Companies Charge For Dedicated Marketing Strategies
The biggest expense you can expect from an inbound marketing firm is for overall strategy and campaigns.
This is the most obvious charge. It accounts for the strategizing, the brainstorming and the launch of the campaign — whether its email, social media paid media or optimization.
It’s the strategy that ultimately leads to opportunities, leads, conversions and sales. Therefore, it makes sense that agencies will charge for the campaigns they launch.
Top Inbound Marketers Charge For Branding
Another charge your business can expect from inbound marketing companies is overall brand strategy and implementation.
As we’ve discussed, branding is vital for business growth.
Therefore, your inbound marketing agency partner will need to establish an engaging brand identity and create corresponding collateral that promotes this brand identity to the masses.
Industry-Leading Inbound Marketing Companies Include Continued Maintenance And Support In Their Pricing
The final piece of the budget will come from maintenance and support.
You can’t just launch a marketing campaign and call it a day.
These professional marketers know that, and they included this additional, ongoing maintenance into their retainer.
This also opens up the door for future campaign strategizing, support and alterations going forward, thus establishing a symbiotic relationship between you and your agency.
Why Your Brand Should Invest In Top Inbound Marketing Companies
Inbound marketing is a great way to increase brand awareness, promote your brand and establish a profitable relationship between you and your audience.
Your brand needs to leverage the increased opportunities inbound marketing provides in order to grow and thrive in this increasingly digital-first world.
Email marketing, social media marketing, SEO initiatives, web optimization and more all have a vital place in overall business strategy.
If your business isn’t already taking advantage of these avenues, it needs to. Otherwise, you’re giving your competition the go-ahead to blow you out of the water.
View the top inbound marketing agencies in DesignRush's Agency Listing Table above.
