When selecting a firm to perform inbound agency marketing services, you as a business owner or key decision maker need to ask yourself, “How will this firm help us increase leads and grow revenues?” But, those are just the overarching and obvious considerations.
In order to dive a bit deeper and help to ensure the marketing consultants you hire are an ideal fit, consider the following 3 questions BEFORE signing a marketing services contract:
Q1. Is this agency going to help me achieve my business goals?
Businesses hire marketing agencies to perform many activities, but the primary point of hiring one should be to help achieve business goals. These goals might be to simply rebrand a company or generate buzz and website traffic.
But most companies should also be discussing measurable goals such as lead generation, customer acquisition, and revenue increases with their agencies, too. Regardless of the short-term goal, each one of these business objectives requires different approaches, making it critical to discuss and agree upon them with the agency upfront.
Therefore, when selecting agencies, marketers must ask themselves, “What are my business goals, and how will this agency help me attain them?”
Q2. Are the agency marketing services they’re suggesting services I really need?
Similar to the last question, businesses need to look for agencies that provide services that will help them achieve their specific goals. For example, imagine a business that wants to increase leads from its website. There are a lot of agencies that do web design and on-page search engine optimization (SEO), but agencies with those two services alone won't generate more leads as effectively as agencies who are also experts at online lead generation.
So what is really needed to generate leads? Creating ongoing content, generating inbound links, and maintaining an active presence in social media are all needed to increase traffic month over month. In order to turn existing and future traffic into leads, an agency should be creating offers, landing pages, and calls-to-action on a regular basis. Marketers need to critically ask agencies how their services will help generate leads and new business, and determine whether the agency actually has the skills to deliver those results.
Q3. How will this agency measure and track ROI for the agency marketing services they deploy?
Marketing agencies just declaring they will increase leads and revenue is NOT enough. Businesses must require agencies to measure, track, and report their performance and the return on investment (ROI) for their services. How else will they know their money is being well spent?
Depending on the services rendered and outcomes desired, agencies should regularly report a variety of metrics -- not just website traffic, but also unique visitors, leads, landing page conversions, customers generated, etc.
By measuring and tracking performance, agencies will no doubt provide superior services that help businesses achieve their business goals and objectives. Most importantly, businesses will figure out what marketing activities work best for their business so they can become better, more effective marketers.
Mark Parent : January 7, 2015 1:51:00 PM EST
