Kathy Heil
How to Use Inbound Marketing to Generate Revenue in the New Year
Your business leads are the fuel of your company. Without leads your company won't generate revenue. Many companies spend hours, resources and money...
Many marketers and small business owners think that when it comes to lead generation an internal team is the only way—however, there are a myriad of reasons to hire a marketing agency and make your lead generation budget go further. If you feel your company's internal process has grown stale and is in need of a refresh, take a minute to consider the benefits you get with the right outside experts:
1. Fresh Perspective
After spending months and years working in the same company and the same industry with the same people, it's easy for your internal team to lose the ability to have a fresh perspective on your company's marketing options. Marketers can often get stuck doing activities that seem important to the company but aren't affecting your company's bottom line.
Marketing agencies work with a variety of companies, industries, and verticals and can often provide insight into what companies outside of your field of vision are doing to move the needle. This fresh perspective can really bring new life to your internal marketing efforts and help move your company toward seeing real results.
2. Make the Most of Your Investment
According to Salary.com figures, the average cost of hiring an in-house marketing manager has gone up by more than $26,000 over the last seven years. Think of it this way, rather than hire a unicorn and requiring that person to wear many hats, hiring an agency is like hiring a team with unique expertise in a variety of departments, (content marketing, web/seo, video, social media, marketing automation expertise, and email marketing,) all of which are at your disposal. Inbound marketing agencies focus on attracting and converting leads, so you can attribute revenue to their work.
3. Get a Complete, Well-Rounded Team from the Start
An in-house marketing director might have a specialty like SEO, but he or she likely isn’t equipped to run your campaigns alone. Instead, the marketing director’s first duty is usually to build out a team. It can take a new hire up to two years to get up to speed. Tack on six weeks to bring each new staff member on board and you could be waiting three years for real results. With an agency, you benefit from a full team on Day 1. Not to mention that an agency does not require benefits and you can terminate them much easier if you find they are not the right fit.
4. Scale Up Fractionally Based on Your Changing Needs
In a time of remote and hybrid work, many organizations have tried to avoid full-time hiring by bringing freelancers into their marketing teams. In theory, this lets you scale up by, say, 5% or 10% without more headcount. In reality, though, it’s difficult to verify freelancers’ credentials or commitment. On the other hand, a marketing agency provides a defined scope of work upfront that can change with your needs. Working with an agency enables you to adapt as your business needs change, easily adding to the workload or putting things on hold.
5. Avoid the Pitfalls of Marketing’s Steep Learning Curve
Marketing methodologies and technologies change constantly. Just one piece of software meant to help you get links to your website can cost thousands of dollars a month. You want to make sure you’re getting the most of that investment. Since your team has to learn it first, it may be months before you get value. An agency shoulders the costs of continuing education and staying up on the latest SEO software. You get to tap into that knowledge base without paying to create it.
6. Enjoy the Benefits of Professionalism and Accountability
Freelance marketers you connect with through an online platform could walk out on your project at any time or change their line of work without notice. Even your own personnel might quiet quit after all the hard work you put into hiring them, and it can take months to discover it. A marketing agency has to prove measurable value every quarter to justify your decision to continue their engagement and can provide a level of consistency important to achieving results.
If your lead generation has hit a wall or isn’t growing as fast as you want, new thinking will be needed. The same people using the same tactics will likely deliver the same results unless you are proactive and decide to change something.
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