Looking for a Digital Marketing Company in London?
The process to attract leads and then nurture them through their buyer's journey. Our whitepaper overview shows you how to achieve a perfect inbound marketing plan.
Digital marketing, perhaps more than any other, is a business skill that is widely known but seldom understood. We can all see the impact of sales, the importance of customer service, and the need for stock control, but none of those things will matter if people don’t know you’re there to provide those services. A digital marketing agency can help.
An experienced digital marketing team should know, understand, and love marketing, starting from the basics such as the 4 Ps of Marketing. They should do all of those marketing tasks, so you don’t have to worry about them and can trust them to run your marketing in an effective and trustworthy manner. They should have an expert team on hand to help you through any issues and questions.
Working with a great advertising agency means that you don’t have to even think about the intricacies of marketing strategies and analysis, you can concentrate on doing what you and your business do best. Allow your digital marketing agency to utilise all its marketing experience and knowledge to create a blueprint to ensure you’re free to go to market and grow your business.
Inbound marketing companies are there to share their years of expertise in inbound marketing—the tips, tricks, strategies, and know-how, all designed to make it work for you.
Before we get to what makes a great Inbound Marketing agency the best partner for your marketing needs, let’s talk a little bit about inbound marketing itself.
Let’s begin with an important factor, what inbound marketing isn’t.
Inbound marketing isn’t about buying email lists, cold-calling or sending out vague, non-specific emails and flyers to people who you don’t know or are unfamiliar with your business.
That is an old-fashioned paradigm and doesn’t work in this technology-driven, digital world. A world where consumers, like you and I, are much more discerning and no longer want to be bothered by irrelevant information and disruptions.
That outdated, outmoded approach is the exact opposite of what inbound marketing is.
Inbound marketing is focused towards attracting customers to your site through great, unique content which creates a virtual environment that people like to be in. This authority content is what will convert your visitors into leads and ultimately leads into customers.
When your customers start singing the praises of your brand, you know you’re onto a winner and that’s exactly what we’re hoping for with our digital marketing strategy. We no longer trust brands and salespeople but rely on other people's experiences and opinions. Word-of-mouth has become the key to success, therefore delighting and pleasing your customers, even after they have purchased your product or service, is imperative to maximise your company's success.
By combining the power of the traditionally disjointed aspects of digital marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), blogs, your website, social media and, where appropriate, paid advertising, a strong digital marketing platform will bring them all together to form one, cohesive powerhouse that we (as your trusted online marketing agency) can manage on your behalf.
When putting together a list of marketing agencies, some of the marketing services they should provide should include:
Recent reports state that inbound campaigns achieve a higher return on investment (ROI) than traditional ‘outbound’ campaigns. This happens regardless of the company’s size or budget.
Consumers no longer want to be interrupted and disturbed by "traditional" outbound marketing methods and tools, they want to be able to decide when, where and how they interact with a brand. Inbound marketing means being there for the consumer when they need you and providing them with contextual and helpful information and services when they want and need it.
This approach creates exponential growth in demand for inbound marketing services across the core areas of search, social, content, PR, email, analytics, web, digital advertising, mobile, and more.
The future belongs to top marketing agencies with more efficient management systems, integrated services, versatile talent, a love for data, and a commitment to producing results that can be tracked in real-time and correlated directly to sales.
The digital agency you choose should be a member of HubSpot’s Certified Partner Agency scheme. This means that they should work closely with the people at HubSpot and have been trained and validated on the standard inbound marketing methodologies.
In terms of skill sets, your agency should have multiple talents. It should be an advertising agency, a digital agency, an SEO company, and a social media marketing agency - all in one!
When it comes to comprehensive Inbound Marketing software, no one does it better than HubSpot. This is exactly why an Inbound firm needs to be part of their scheme.
HubSpot's approach has helped revolutionise the way marketing is done in this digital age.
An agency's consultants and copywriters should be completely on board with inbound. Of course, if you’ve heard of HubSpot, you’ll know that already.
You should also know, and understand, why it is crucial to partner with an inbound marketing agency that can guide you through the inbound marketing maze and ensure you’re always heading in the right direction.
Your inbound company will work with you to harness the unrivalled power of the HubSpot platform, to make marketing finally work for you.
For all the power that HubSpot’s platform can provide, it doesn’t create an autonomous entity that relies on algorithms and works by magic. It needs a human element to do the work. The platform allows a marketer to manage and influence all the various marketing activities directly within the marketing software platform.
The built-in reports, analysis and measures that are part and parcel of the software, allow a top digital marketing firm to monitor every aspect of your campaign, from social media interactions to conversion rates, and how these traditional separate factors are now coalescing together seamlessly. All the data drawn in through the HubSpot platform will give you and your marketing team a better understanding of your inbound marketing campaigns and how you are performing. With Hubspot, all of that information is available at your fingertips.
With the help of an experienced agency and the Hubspot software, details and data, that were historically difficult to find and understand, can become a strong source of knowledge and understanding. You can use it to understand your customers better and to optimise and adjust your campaigns to draw even more people to your business and your services.
Analysing your results through Hubspot makes it easier and more manageable to understand how your campaign and your website are doing and to act accordingly to please your customers and make their experience with your company and your website even more enjoyable.
Hubspot helps you create buyer personas to understand your target audience better and to attract them in a relevant and helpful way.
After having created your buyer personas, you can use HubSpot's CRM to segment your contacts into relevant groups. By segmenting your contacts, you can provide a very personalised experience for every single one of your contacts, because you can provide them with the right information at the right time, depending on what they need help with and where they are in the buyer's journey. Hubspot helps you create meaningful relationships with the people in your CRM.
HubSpot's software also allows you to create workflows, to help your prospects progress in their buyer's journey, through CTAs, forms and relevant content (that they CHOOSE to receive by taking specific actions).
Hubspot also allows you to manage all your social media accounts and interactions as well as analyse these, with their software.
Of course, you can. But it's not the right question to ask. It’s not a case of ‘could’ you do it yourself, but ‘should’ you?
In these difficult economic times, marketing, like any budget, is being squeezed more than ever, so you need to be confident that any investment you make leads to actual results, improves your revenue and brings more people to your company and product.
Do you have the time, or the money, to advertise for staff, hire new people, train them and certify them? Probably not. Then let a team of professionals, at a digital marketing agency you trust, do the marketing heavy lifting for you, it’s what they do.
The whole point of marketing is to generate sales-qualified leads. But that is easy to say and often difficult to do. But great digital agencies know marketing. They understand it and by working with them and the power of HubSpot it can be achieved. They will be familiar with how the Inbound Methodology works, so it’s second nature to them.
That’s not to say it doesn’t take time, but the information held within your website and your sales funnel can be dissected, analysed and reported on by the agency consultants in a fraction of the time it would take for you to do it.
Note: Don’t be distracted or misled by an agency's enthusiasm for HubSpot. Yes, they should be a HubSpot-certified partner, but make sure that they are not offering you anything that they wouldn’t use themselves. In fact, they should use HubSpot as a platform for their campaigns. You want to know that they are committed to the platform and the inbound methodology and not just re-selling it as a profitable side-line.
1) It Saves You Time
Content production, copywriting, social media management and web design all take time. They distract you and your team and take focus away from the other important areas of your business. By partnering with an external digital marketing agency you can get on with running your business and the advertising agency services power your campaigns.
2) It Saves You Money
You could hire an internal staff member and it would cost about the same as bringing on board an external agency but it will take that person more time to get up to speed and they won't have the wide range of skills and access to resources that can be provided by a certified marketing agency. With a digital marketing company you are hiring the entire agency team and the ROI is clear, with a dedicated digital media agency on board you are getting the most from your marketing investment.
3) Certified Hubspot Partner Agencies Have More Experience With Hubspot Marketing Methods
They have to complete comprehensive training to become certified partners and the team will be using HubSpot every day for their marketing as well as their client work.
4)Hubspot Partners Are Well Connected
A certified inbound partner has access to internal resources and expertise that they can bring along to help their clients. They also maintain a dedicated direct line to Hubspot staff.
5) Tracking & Delivering ROI Is Built In From Day One
Measurable results are what all digital marketers are looking for. Being able to see what works (so you can do more) and what does not (so you don't waste time and money) is key. Experienced advertising consultants design campaigns that can be tested and tuned so that performance is tracked and improved, month after month.
6 ) Two Heads Are Better Than One
Working with a partner who has gone through the learning process and found the best ways to implement an Inbound Methodology is priceless.
Any new marketing campaign is a venture into the unknown. Will it work? Will it generate more sales? How do we measure it? Those are all perfectly valid concerns. By working with an award-winning marketing agency and HubSpot marketing software, you can reduce your risk.
You will have access to more relevant data, analysis and reports than you ever had. They will give you an understanding of your customer base that will be a revelation. Not only do you get to harness HubSpot’s software, but you also get a fully-fledged digital marketing company to manage it for you. Two factors to growing your business and helping you deliver an incredible campaign to new and existing customers.
Because certified top digital marketing agencies are well-versed in the machinations of the HubSpot platform, they can track and measure how well your marketing expense is performing. Historically the ROI on marketing and advertising has been difficult to quantify. With so many disparate aspects occurring together but somehow appearing disconnected.
The reporting mechanism they can analyse through HubSpot will ensure you will be able to see what’s working and in some cases what isn’t. This will ensure you’re not spending good money on bad services and it will allow you and your marketing agency to regroup and refocus where necessary on the areas of the campaign that need tweaking.
The power of HubSpot means that not only the agency can review and learn from the data, but you can too. From anywhere.
A great agency should ideally have a strong ongoing partnership with Hubspot, which means that they can access more features and resources within HubSpot than most people. That means you can leverage their knowledge, and their know-how, to create something extra special for your business.
1) Find tech-savvy partners
The agency you choose to fulfil all your marketing needs should be actively involved in marketing technology trends and innovations to be able to guarantee that they are offering you the most efficient and productive service there is, as well as continually increasing and optimising the service you can provide your customers and making you be able to compete in your line of work.
2) They have to be digital marketers
It is compulsory for social, search, mobile, web, email, and other digital strategies to be fully integrated, along with traditional activities, into every program and budget, since being digital and having the needed expertise is becoming more and more of a prerequisite for success.
3) Information on marketing strategies and results
Your marketing agency has to be able to work with data and information and turn it into intelligence and finally into new strategies and results, to guarantee that your business is reaching its highest potential. A leading advertising agency can build marketing campaigns with measurable KPIs and fulfil the goals they set for your website and their performance as your marketing team, knowing how to adjust and learn from their failures to improve.
4) Work with successful, trustworthy and competent people
The greatest value for your organisation is in working with award-winning agencies and professionals who drive change by practising what they preach. Trust agencies that have a track record of success, especially with their brand. If they have won awards for their work - even better.
Take a look at the strength of their website, their content and their reach and engagement on social media. Is that the kind of success you would like to achieve? Is their brand believable? Will they be able to help you and fulfil your needs?
5) Find marketing partners
The agency you choose to trust, with helping you and your business, should try and get to know you and your specific goals by building a partnership and a relationship full of understanding and trust. The agency and its employees should be focused on your success and should have you reaching your highest potential as their #1 goal. They should be trying to include you and make you happy every step of the way. They need to take time to listen to your needs and value your opinion and your feedback
6) Clear market strategy
A great digital marketing agency should have a clear strategy, that they can put into words and explain to you. They should be able to walk you through a logical process of how they create and run marketing campaigns to get the needed results.
7) Find a strategy partner
The marketing firm you hire should not blindly listen to everything you ask them to do, they should push back when needed and should be telling you based on their experience what they think you should do and how you should do it. After all, you hired them as professionals who know what to do and what is best for your company and your campaign. They should know your strengths and weaknesses and adjust your strategy accordingly.
The process to attract leads and then nurture them through their buyer's journey
What you need is a good blueprint. Take a look at our whitepaper overview of how to achieve a perfect inbound marketing plan.