When to Hire an Inbound Marketing Agency

When to Hire an Inbound Marketing Agency 

Jennelle McGrath Jennelle McGrath 5 min read Apr 5, 2017
When to Hire an Inbound Marketing Agency | Market Veep
10:01

If you try to lay your company's marketing responsibilities on a single person, they'll always come up short.

You need a team, but hiring internally is expensive. It may be time to hire an inbound marketing agency.

Getting more customers is the most important part of growing your business. Small to mid-sized businesses often start by networking and relying on referrals. Eventually, they'll reach a point where the old methods just aren’t cutting it. In order to keep growing, you need to reach new markets.

In order to sustain growth, you need new partnerships. You need digital marketing, so you're left with a choice: rely on your current team for marketing, create your own marketing department, or hire an inbound marketing agency?

Marketing Takes Specific Skills

Some businesses choose to rely on their current staff to take on additional marketing tasks. Employing more people is just too expensive, so these additional responsibilities most often fall on sales teams. Your sales team is one of your best assets. They’ve closed customers and obtained significant revenue for your business, so it only makes sense that they should be responsible for the entire customer journey: from outlier to lead to customer.

There are pitfalls to relying on salespeople for marketing, however. Mainly, they haven’t been trained with the right skills. Marketing and sales are intertwined. Both teams must align to be successful, but they are also different animals entirely.

Marketers are “top of the funnel” professionals, while salespeople focus on the bottom. Sales departments prospect, communicate, actively listen, and close deals. In short, they are good with people. Marketers tend to be more creative and technical. They create content, make designs and illustrations, and build websites.

In a perfect system, a marketing team attracts and converts leads while the sales team closes and delights customers. These are also the tenets of the inbound marketing methodology.

A fully staffed marketing team consists of a number of individuals, each with their own specializations. According to the marketing experts at Hubspot, there are 6 essential positions to fill when building a marketing team: a leader, a search engine specialist, a writer, a web developer, an analyst, and a creative person, such as a designer. 

In-House Marketing is Expensive

You may be considering building your own marketing department. Depending on the size of your business and the extent of your marketing budget, this may not be a bad idea. You can easily supervise and scrutinize your own marketing team. They’d also be dedicated to your brand, espousing your company’s mission and goals. They could grow along with your business.

But with salaries and overhead costs, hiring a marketing department can be extremely expensive, especially for small to mid-sized businesses. You could hire an inbound marketing agency for a fraction of the cost. You'd still get access to the same skills, too.

A Chief Marketing Officer earns an average salary of $160,387 per year. Mid-level marketing professionals earn an average salary of $60,000 per year. To avoid the costs, some businesses hire a single individual to handle every marketing task.

If you do the same, you may get lucky and find someone particularly skilled. Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible for a single person to implement a fully-realized digital marketing campaign.

For example, if you hired a copywriter to write content, you’d also need them to optimize your website for search engines to get traffic on your blog, create forms and calls-to-action to generate leads, design gated pieces of content to nurture those leads, and manage social media accounts to encourage more web traffic.

A single professional just can’t handle the work of an entire team, and you need a team if you truly want your marketing to be effective.

Marketing teams are copywriters, graphic designers, web developers, digital strategists and others. To put an entire team in place, you could be looking at an investment of over half a million dollars each year for salaries, benefits, and other costs.

You’d also have to consider the costs of marketing automation software, metrics tools, design programs, and physical expenses like office space.

Why Hire an Inbound Marketing Agency?

You should hire a marketing agency to get the benefits of a full marketing staff without the costs. Agencies house the skills you need to implement end-to-end inbound marketing strategies in the digital age.

If you have a limited marketing budget and you need more help than your current staff can provide, an inbound marketing agency will start and manage all your campaigns on a strict budget.

An agency can work with you to determine which marketing strategies will work best for your business. Most importantly, your inbound marketing agency partner will do all the necessary tasks to put your campaigns into action. They do the writing, the designing, the website development, and the optimization.

All you have to do is consult with them periodically, give approval for their work, and receive reports about the results.

When you hire an inbound marketing agency, you can consult with professionals who have already served a number of other businesses. An agency will recognize your specific needs and become an active participant in your industry.

Copywriters and designers will then create beautiful collateral to target your markets. Web developers will optimize your website for industry-specific search terms and design it for lead capture, conversion, and ease of use.

Once you take the first steam, maintain a long-term relationship with your agency. You’ll see an influx of new leads and new customers each quarter, so you can continue to grow your business and reach your goals.

How an Inbound Marketing Agency Helps Your Small Business

At this point, you may be wondering something along the lines of, “exactly what can an inbound marketing agency do for my company?” Let’s zero in several answers that should give you a better idea of what to expect.

An inbound marketing agency can help you:

  • Decide which marketing strategies are right for your unique business.

  • Identify your target audience, their pain points, and the content most likely to appeal to them.

  • Develop high-quality content and campaigns that target your ideal customer.

  • Optimize your website to increase search engine visibility.

  • Create and run cross-channel digital marketing campaigns designed to attract and delight potential customers.

  • Introduce you to automated marketing tools that can save you a great deal of time and effort.

  • Use analytics to monitor the results of your campaign so you can make data-informed decisions.

What to Look For in an Inbound Marketing Agency

Figuring out how to choose an inbound marketing agency may initially feel intimidating, but it’s largely a matter of asking the right questions. Here are some things to consider when evaluating potential candidates.

Services Offered

While the average inbound marketing agency offers a collection of different services, some specialize in a certain area. For example, one agency may be known for creating excellent social media campaigns, while another might specialize in paid search marketing. Make sure potential candidates offer any services that are important to you.

Experience

A reputable inbound digital marketing agency should have a solid record of success and the portfolio to back them up. Make sure you check out reviews from previous customers and any samples or case studies that the agency provides. Last but not least, look into whether the agency has experience working with clients in your industry.

Size and Budget

Before you jump into the finer points of how to hire an inbound marketing agency, make sure that you spend some time aligning your goals to your budget. Having clearly defined goals sets you up for long term success. If you don’t know where you want to end up how can you know where to start? Begin by working through your big picture annual goals and breaking them into tangible quarterly milestones. Make sure that your goals align to what you have allocated to budget towards activities. Budget can often define the speed at which you are able to reach your goals. Be realistic and honest about what is possible both in terms of goals and budget so you set yourself up for success. 

What Should You Ask an Inbound Marketing Agency Before Hiring One?

First things first. Before you begin interviewing agencies, it’s worth taking the time to ask yourself, “Should I hire internally or use an agency for inbound marketing services?” If you do decide that working with an inbound agency is right for you, then here are some questions you can use to vet potential candidates.

  • Who is your ideal client?

  • Do you have experience with clients in my industry?

  • How do you define success?

  • Who will I communicate with and how often?

  • Does your agency have any specialties?

  • What will be required from me throughout the process?

  • What is your monthly retainer?

  • When can I expect to see results?

  • How would you describe your agency's core values and/or culture?

How to Choose a Marketing Agency That Specializes in Inbound Marketing

When it comes to how to hire an inbound marketing agency, the key is to look for a trusted partner. Even if you’re no marketing expert, it can be helpful to make a shortlist of services you feel would best help your business grow.

Many agencies offer initial consultations before on-boarding new clients, which can be incredibly helpful. This is a great opportunity to gauge whether an agency feels like the right fit for your unique goals and needs.

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