Okay, we get it. We're pushing Inbound marketing pretty hard lately but there's a reason for it. It just makes sense. 

Not only for us as an agency but the businesses we work with. Hiring an inbound marketing agency can help you generate leads online while seeing a return on your investment all while strengthening your digital presence. More specifically, it educates potential leads online and nurtures them through the buying cycle until they are ready to move from a lead to becoming a customer.

Here are six reasons why you should work with an inbound agency:

1. They already have years of experience

It's rare that a marketing agency starts out as an inbound marketing agency specifically. The reason being that there are so many moving pieces to inbound that you need a fully equipped team with oodles of talent and experience to execute the strategy properly. 

If your business is new to inbound marketing you likely don't have the experience to confidently to do this if you did it internally. An inbound agency will help you define deadlines and SMART goals with your strategy, leaning on an agency that has done this type of plan before is crucial to success. This will save you time, money and headache from hiring an agency later to fix the issues rather than from the start of the process. 

2. THEY ALREADY HAVE The tools and resources

In order to get the best of out of your marketing software, inbound marketing agencies will have lots of other tools and software in their toolkit that they use on a daily basis to get the best results from the work conducted in an inbound campaign. This can range from search engine optimization tools, pay per click tools, content and design tools and countless other kinds.

This saves you money by not having to shell out the funds for the tools needed to ensure the best results from inbound tactics. 

Here is an example of a tool we use at ICS, ReportGarden. 

3. You will get UNBIASED feedback on your efforts

Being on a sales or marketing team for a company you're in the trenches everyday, so you don't get an outside perspective of whether the work you are putting in is perceived how you want it to be. Working with an agency that has worked in several verticals allows you to get an unbiased opinion of whether or not you are putting your efforts in the right area. 

Working on ideas that don't actually make sense is a common mistake businesses made. They can be dangerous to your company's growth. 

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4. You can't just generate leads, you need to close them

Generating leads is an ongoing struggle for some companies, but it doesn't have to be when using inbound. The inbound methodology creates a stream of leads for you long term. Normally, with all of these leads your sales team has to spend a lot of time working on closing the deal by educating them. 

If you are using inbound, you should have the resources to help streamline the education and shorten the length of the buyers journey. This will help your sales team avoid using aggressive outbound sales techniques which will actually drive potential customers and hurt your businesses reputation. 

5. There is less risk

You outsource parts of your business everyday, whether it be accounting, legal, cleaning services or whatever! Why do more businesses not do this with their marketing? Creating an inbound strategy internally without leaning on agency can be a costly and risky venture. The amount of time and money it takes to invest in the unknown can be a scary fact. 

Things can go wrong when testing a new marketing tactic but when they do, would you rather the fix fall on your shoulders or an agencies? Imagine hiring an internal marketing team and things go wrong. This could be because they don't have the experience in inbound marketing or just don't mesh well with your business goals. Generally, a bad hire takes 3-6 months to discover and at this point you're left with a huge investment gone with 0 results. 

When you use an agency, you are often engaging in a year long agreement where you avoid training periods and getting effective work from the start of the campaign. 

6. You open up time for other tasks

When you're running a business there is never a shortage of things to do. Marketing, although VERY important for any business is a small part of keeping the lights on. An inbound marketing agency saves you crucial time allowing your in house employees to complete the job they were actually hired to do. 

There is a lot of planning and execution that goes into a successful campaign. A good agency will open your eyes to who your customers are, how they think and how they buy. This is value that you can't afford to turn your back on. 

THE TAKEAWAY

Inbound marketing isn't a short term investment and it takes time to see its return. Investing in an agency that has experience in inbound is a safe way to learn the inbound methodology so you can get quick wins to cover the investment while you start to generate a flow of leads. Not only will you save money by hiring an inbound agency, this will open you up to run your business instead of focusing on the marketing aspect. 

Other Sources:
SEO Isn't Dead, It's Evolved.
10 Brilliant Advertising Campaigns of 2018 So Far
Inbound Marketing, Explained.