8 Steps to Transforming Into an Inbound Agency

8 STEPS TO TRANSFORMING INTO AN INBOUND AGENCY.

Transform your agency into a sleek, high-performance inbound marketing machine.

A publication of

INTRODUCTORY

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8 STEPS TO TRANSFORMING INTO AN INBOUND AGENCY

Introductory content is for marketers who are new to the subject. This content typically includes step-by-step instructions on how to get started with this aspect of inbound marketing and learn its fundamentals. After reading it, you will be able to execute basic marketing tactics related to the topic.

INTRODUCTORY

IS THIS BOOK RIGHT FOR ME?Not quite sure if this ebook is right for you? See the below description to determine if your level matches the content you are about to read.

Intermediate content is for marketers who are familiar with the subject but have only basic experience in executing strategies and tactics on the topic. This content typically covers the fundamentals and moves on to reveal more complex functions and examples. After reading it, you will feel comfortable leading projects with this aspect of inbound marketing.

INTERMEDIATE

Advanced content is for marketers who are, or want to be, experts on the subject. In it, we walk you through advanced features of this aspect of inbound marketing and help you develop complete mastery of the subject. After reading it, you will feel ready not only to execute strategies and tactics, but also to teach others how to be successful.

ADVANCED

THIS BOOK

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... brings your whole marketing world together in one, powerful, integrated sys-tem.

HUBSPOT’S ALL-IN-ONE MARKETING SOFTWARE.

MARKETING ANALYTICS

Y

Request A Demo

Video Overview

Analyse your web traffic and see which sources are generating the most leads.

NBLOGGINGCreate blog content quick-ly while getting SEO tips and best practice pointers as you type.

MEMAILSend personalised,segmented emails based on any information in your contact database.

SEARCH OPTIMISATION

s Improve your rank in search engines by finding and tracking your most ef-fective keywords.

ULEAD MANAGEMENTTrack leads with acomplete timeline-view of their interactions with your company

qSOCIAL MEDIAPublish content to your social accounts, thennurture leads based on their social engagement.

http://bitly.com/HubSpot-Demo

http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DX_bqIr7pGzQ

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8 LESSONS.

COMMIT.01

GET GOOD AT CONTENT.02

ADOPT INBOUND NOW.03

BE YOUR OWN CASE STUDY.04

PROVIDE RETAINER-BASED SERVICES.05

FOLLOW THROUGH.06

07 LEARN TO SAY NO.

08 CONSIDER YOUR CLIENT’S LONG TERM SUCCESS.

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You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

But you can teach a good, old-school agency how to adapt to

changes in the marketplace, and transform themselves into a sleek,

high-performance inbound marketing machine. We know. We’ve seen

it done time and again.

And, luckily for you, we asked a half dozen of the top execs at some

of these game-changing agencies to tell us how they did it. They

answered -- honestly, enthusiastically, and informatively.

“58% of companies in Europe are going to execute inbound

marketing strategies this year, which is the same figure as the U.S.,

with 42% of companies in Europe also set to increase their spend

on inbound.”

Stop wasting your time and budget on traditional marketing tactics

that yield low or no ROI. Here’s their advice for transforming your

agency from old-school, to inbound.

Introduction.

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Step 1. COMMIT

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“Commit. Make a very tangible, meaningful commitment to inbound marketing.” - Greg Linnemanstons, President, Wiedert Group.

This is the first step toward your transition, and its importance must not be

understated. But it also must not be misconstrued.

“Inbound marketing is not something you tack on to your traditional

marketing offerings; it’s an all-in commitment to a different way of

approaching your business, and how you execute for both your clients

and your own agency. “

When Linnemanstons arrived at Weidert Group in 2000, it was a 20-year-

old agency doing the same old things in the same old ways as every

other agency in town. “Our lack of specialised positioning was killing us,”

Linnemanstons said.

“We neglected to follow the same advice we gave our clients: Understand

what your unique promise is, and then be laser-focused on communicating

that message effectively. I think the most difficult challenge we faced was

realising we were operating as a commodity service provider with no market

positioning to get us out of it.”

http://www.weidert.com/

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Weidert committed to change the way they sold their services, and was

determined to take a more inbound approach to it, instead. He applied the inbound

thought process to the questions he asked clients.

“Are you getting all the new business that you want?”

That led Weidert to a conversation that uncovered a client’s goals, what they have

or don’t have in place to accomplish those goals, the challenges they’re facing, and

what their timeline is.

The company still offers traditional marketing services at its 10-person shop, every-

thing from wrapping a car in collateral to creating a brochure. That is to say, you

don’t have to abandon more traditional advertising and marketing service offerings

to be an inbound agency. But by adopting inbound marketing at the core of every

client they approach, they no longer have to compete for business in a limited

market.

“The whole world is our pie.” Linnemanstons says; he now competes for business

far outside of Appleton, WI and its surrounding towns.

“Commit,” explains Linnemanstons. “Embrace the approach wholeheart-

edly. That’s very different than adding some inbound marketing services to your

offerings.”

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GET GOOD AT CONTENT.

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“Get good at creating great content. If you’re not good at creating great content, hire an agency to do it. Then, get good at promoting content.”

An 85-person agency, Digital Relevance (formerly Slingshot SEO) was named the

fastest growing private company in central Indiana by the Indianapolis Business

Journal in 2012. Why? A nearly 3,600 percent growth rate over the past three years,

much of which hinges on their commitment to content.

If you’re staying up to date on SEO, you know that

the Caffeine, Panda, and Penguin updates radi-

cally altered how Google’s algorithms determine

search results. “SEO has undergone a steady revo-

lution since the 90s,” Aders explains. “We realised

we couldn’t create relevant brands for our clients

without expanding our definition of SEO to include

strategic content creation and distribution through

blogging, social media, email, and media relations.

“Inbound marketing is the new SEO.” Today, the company has a marketing team of eight dedicated to promoting the agency,

and its in-house social media team has grown to 30 staffers ready to blog, tweet, post,

and otherwise create content for Digital Relevance and it’s customers.

http://relevance.com/

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It’s important to reiterate that if

content creation -- or a certain

type of content creation, like video

content, for instance -- isn’t your

area of expertise, it doesn’t mean

you can’t play in the inbound

marketing ballgame.

Get really good at

outsourcing content creation,

for yourself and for your

clients.

If you need some help

transforming yourself into a

content creation machine, speak

to one of our agency inbound

marketing specialists -request a

one-to-one here.

http://offers.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing-assessment

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ADOPT INBOUND NOW.

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“Start learning about inbound marketing now.”

- Bob Ruffalo, CEO and Founder, IMPACT Branding and Design

IMPACT Branding and Design began as a company that only designed websites

for it’s clients. But after the work was done, clients soon came back to Ruffalo

complaining that their websites were “broken,” which is to say they weren’t gener-

ating the amount of traffic they expected.

Ruffalo realised that if you don’t offer marketing services along with website devel-

opment, you and your clients were missing out on the real value that inbound

marketing generates.

IMPACT saw the following results within the first eighteen months of adopting

inbound marketing methodologies and technology;

Revenue doubled

Increased from 1,500 monthly site visits to 27,000

600 monthly leads

50-100 qualified leads converting into customers.

But what’s even more important is that now that IMPACT experienced how inbound

marketing could work for themselves, they could now provide these types of

services to their clients. That’s why it’s so critical for agencies to learn about

inbound marketing -- and implement it in their own agencies -- as soon as possible.

http://www.impactbnd.com/

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4. BE YOUR OWN CASE STUDY.

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“The first thing agencies need to think about is how to position themselves.“

Once you’ve immersed yourself in the

inbound marketing methodology, it’s

crucial to not only implement it for your

own business, but to demonstrate how

inbound has impacted your business.

In other words, be your own best case

study. It’s not enough to show how you’ve

helped other clients with your services

-- it’s incumbent on inbound agencies to

practice what they preach, and communi-

cate those results to potential clients.

“If tomorrow you want to be an inbound marketing agency, you have to market differently, sell differently, and execute differently. A mandatory step in the process is doing inbound marketing from your own agency.”

- Mike Lieberman, Co-founder and President, Square 2 Marketing

“1 in 5 European marketers say traditional adver-tising is less important in 2013”

Source: The State of Inbound Marketing in Europe

http://offers.hubspot.com/2013-state-of-inbound-marketing-europe

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Acting as your own best case study will make the impact you’re promising seem

attainable, and grounded in reality. Heck, you believe in it so much you rely on it for

your own business growth -- that’s a pretty serious testimonial. So put some numbers

behind your own agency growth due to inbound marketing, and share those

numbers and stories with your clients -- current and potential.

Square 2 Marketing, for example, is able

to point to some serious traffic growth

from inbound; it’s increased 359% through

exclusively non-paid, web-based inbound

tactics. This has also resulted in a 10X

increase of inbound leads delivered to

their agency.

Being able to point to the lessons you’ve

learned, the success you’ve had, and even

the help you wish you had, will move the

business growth conversation from the

clouds to the ground.

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5. PROVIDE RETAINER-BASED

SERVICES.

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“Create a pricing and service package model that allows you to provide retainer-based services”

- Paul Roetzer, CEO and Founder, PR 20/20

Roetzer could see that transparency and trust are key to relationship-building in a

world where customers own the relationship with their brands, and social media

can set things on fire in an instant. With that transparency in mind, he started PR

20/20 with 105 fixed-price, a la carte services. Eventually, he began to bundle those

services. That enabled him to build the business based on monthly retainers.

“You could just bundle what you’re selling now, but chances are that won’t work,” Roetzer says. “Start small. Start with one

proposal or one client who’s willing to experiment.”

Roetzer tests every new service they intend to offer internally for months before

offering it to clients. That enables them to determine their costs so they can prop-

erly price when the service is ready to be launched.

If you’re looking to transform into an inbound agency, you’ll inevitably have some

new service offerings that you’ll have to price and package. Take a chapter from

Roetzer’s book, keeping an eye on crafting retainer-based services, and thoroughly

experimenting with offerings before taking them live to clients.

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6. FOLLOW THROUGH.

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“When you’re interested in something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results.”

- Tiffany Sauder, President, Element Three

Focused primarily on B2B clients whose revenues ranged from $2MM-$400MM

annually, Sauder found herself and her team constantly chasing data via spread-

sheets provided by their clients. Data which, by the time they received it, was

several months old ... if they received it at all. Worse, every client had their own

marketing tools. Element Three was expected to become fluent in their multiple

systems in less than 30 days -- an impossible task.

“This was hard, but you know what? So is change.”

Sauder was successful in transforming her business into an inbound agency due to

the fact that she was committed to learning about and implementing closed-loop

technology that brought everyone on the same page -- client and agency alike. The

commitment and up-front investment paid off.

By 2012, 80% of Element Three’s business was on retainer

Client renewal rates soared from 37% in 2011 to 83% in 2012

Client spend increased 91%

Revenues doubled, a feat they are on track to accomplish again in 2013

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7. LEARN HOW TO SAY NO.

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“Be willing to make tough decisions and let money go. If you’re going to pivot your business model like we did, you’re going to have all of these clients that don’t want to adapt. Let them go.” - John McTigue, Executive Vice President and Co-Owner, Kuno Creative

“As your positioning and service offer-ings are solidified, it’s important to remember what kind of agency you’ve transformed into. That might mean leaving money on the table sometimes.”In the mid-2000s, Kuno Creative was a traditional

agency designing brochures, building websites, and

executing direct mail campaigns.

They also were not profitable, so McTigue and the agency’s owner, Chris Knipper, sat

down to figure out how they could fix things. Today, Kuno is a full-service, enterprise

inbound marketing agency that provides content, demand generation, lead nurturing,

marketing automation, and analytics for mid- to large-size companies, primarily in tech-

nology, healthcare, and manufacturing.

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8. CONSIDER YOUR CLIENT’S LONG TERM SUCCESS.

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“We’ve not simply adopted software, but what we’ve done is completely redeveloped our business in building out a full methodology that we both use for our sales and for our customers.” - Johnny Mone, Director and VP of Business Development, Brightfire

“Our differentiation is really our investment in our client’s long term success rather than just arranging a digital

project for them.”

The directors at Brightfire reconsidered their future growth strategy, and ultimately saw

inbound marketing with HubSpot as their opportunity for differentiation in the field.

Using the HubSpot software alongside the inbound marketing methodology gave

Brightfire the ability to offer business-wide solutions to their clients instead of one-off

creative projects.

With the tools to shift focus to a client’s entire strategy, Johnny says switching to an

inbound agency has also helped us to establish credentials in inbound marketing

which enable the generation of recurring revenues, which has enabled us to plan and

grow.

It worked. Kuno has gone from 300 smaller clients to fewer than 20, but those 20

pay the bills and then some, month in and month out.

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After spending 2008 learning how to do inbound marketing, in 2009, McTigue

began using blogging and social media to get Kuno found online. They soon

realised this strategy was a real differentiator for them and they honed in on a

handful of clients for whom they could apply their content creation strategies and

skills. They became experts at creating effective digital content.

“Then,” says McTigue, “we focused on learning how to sell inbound marketing

services and to whom.” For Kuno, that meant letting go of smaller clients, or compa-

nies not willing to adapt. Instead of going for large volumes of customers, they

would focus on fewer, larger clients with the financial means and the will to make a

commitment to inbound marketing.

2x increase in revenue in first year

70% increase in revenue in second year

Continued growth through a recurrring revenue model

“36% of European marketers completely integrate their inbound marketing goals with their larger strategy”

Source: The State of Inbound Marketing European Report

http://offers.hubspot.com/2013-state-of-inbound-marketing-europe

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Talk to a HubSpot specialist today to learn how you can transform into an

inbound agency.

LOOKING TO REDEFINE THE FUTURE OF YOUR MARKETING AGENCY?

TALK TO US TODAY.

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8 Steps to Transforming Into an Inbound Agency