The Marketing Agency Blueprint Part 12

Inbound marketing competency levels and time availability of your team to contribute.

Strength of compet.i.tion.

Commitment to vision and innovation.

Track Activities and Milestones Although inbound marketing is all about the new rules of marketing, traditional project-management principles still apply. However, software innovations and mobile applications have made it more efficient than ever to manage to-do lists and track milestones.

Although your agency's campaign timeline will vary based on objectives, strategies, personnel, and budgets, it is essential to have a solid project-management system to keep your team on target. As highlighted in Chapter 4, we use 37Signals' Basecamp for agency and client project management.

Consider an online project-management solution that enables you to edit and review campaign activities and timelines anywhere with an Internet connection, including mobile phones.

Measure and Evolve: Use a.n.a.lytics to Adapt Focus on meaningful metrics, monitored and evaluated in real time, that enable your agency to constantly adapt and evolve. As a result, you will experience increased efficiency, improved ROI, more leads, and higher levels of loyalty.

Start with the basics to ensure you have access to the data that will drive your decision-making and strategies: Install website a.n.a.lytics to enable real-time tracking of traffic, referrers, pageviews, and keywords.

Build unique landing pages that enable you to track views and conversion rates for content downloads, event registrations, contact requests, and other calls to action. Adjust your campaign strategies based on conversion rates.

Track marketing events and milestones, and monitor how they correlate to spikes in website traffic, inbound links, leads, and sales.

a.s.sign a team member to monitor website a.n.a.lytics and social-media activity daily. Review and update your campaign strategy monthly.

Does Inbound Marketing Really Work for Agencies?

I had my first conversation with Dan Tyre (@dantyre) of HubSpot in September 2007, shortly after Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah founded the upstart software company. Tyre talked to me at length about search rankings, blogging, lead intelligence, website grades, inbound links, and content.

I have to admit that most of it was new to a marketing guy who had spent his career focused on PR, strategy, branding, and communications. However, despite my uncertainty, I saw a tremendous opportunity to evolve our agency, and our industry.

It took two more calls with Tyre before we signed on with HubSpot, plus another 10 months, and countless conversations with Halligan, Shah, Tyre, and Peter Caputa (@pc4media), before we fully committed and began our transformation into an inbound marketing agency.

The Results We have worked with dozens of clients to build inbound marketing campaigns. Regardless of the industry-financial, insurance, technology, retail, professional services, software, sports, consumer products, and real estate-we have seen consistent success for organizations committed to inbound marketing.

Although we cannot share their a.n.a.lytics, I believe so strongly in the value of inbound marketing, and its importance to marketing agencies, that I figured what better way to prove it than to share our own results.

So, starting in April 2008, when we fully activated inbound marketing for our own agency development, here is what has happened: Our website grade (via www.WebsiteGrader.com) has gone from 57 to 98. A website grade of 98/100 means that, of the more than 3.5 million websites previously evaluated, its algorithm calculated that our site scores higher than 98 percent of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of more than 50 variables, including search-engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, and site performance.

We have seen dramatic increases in website traffic, driven almost exclusively by content marketing, search marketing, and social media partic.i.p.ation. Our average visits have gone from less than 1,000 to more than 8,000 per month.

Our blog has seen an increase in subscribers of more than 1,400 percent.

Inbound links have gone from less than 100 to more than 12,000, whereas indexed pages improved from less than 100 to more than 900.

More importantly, our revenue growth has consistently outpaced industry norms, with the vast majority of our growth coming from inbound leads originating from our website, social networks, and referrals. In short, inbound marketing works.

The social web and inbound marketing have leveled the playing field. Do not be afraid to completely evolve what you have spent years building. Listen to the markets, adapt to demand, and move where others are not willing or able to go.

Chapter Highlights.

Inbound marketing has given agencies the power to differentiate by doing. They are creating value, while demonstrating their expertise and growing their businesses.

We need more doers-agencies and professionals that drive change by practicing what they preach.

An effective Inbound Marketing GamePlan can lead to higher retention rates, greater profit margins, and goodwill.

A hybrid agency is defined by the collective strength of its employees' personal brands. Your job as an agency leader is to clearly establish the agency brand, and then give your team the freedom and support to build and evolve theirs.

When building your marketing strategy, be sure to think beyond prospects, and design a GamePlan to reach and influence all audiences relevant to your business.

Differentiate your brand and build a powerful, lead-generating website.

Agencies and professionals that focus on collaboration over compet.i.tion will have greater opportunities to thrive in the emerging marketing agency ecosystem.

Lead generation and loyalty building are the two primary goals of every marketing campaign, for both clients and agencies.

Strategize and manage integrated campaigns fueled by the four core inbound marketing strategies of search marketing, social media, content marketing, and PR.

Use search marketing to get found when audiences are searching for knowledge and services.

Social media is about listening, learning, building relations.h.i.+ps, and bringing value to the communities relevant to your agency.

Your core brand messages, vision, and values should be reflected in everything you publish.

The blog editor ensures that articles are posted on a regular basis, consistent with company messaging, and that all authors are pulling their weight with regular contributions.

When budgeting for an agency inbound marketing campaign, the greatest investment is often time, rather than money.

Look beyond traditional wisdom and conventional solutions.

Chapter 6.

Control the Sales Funnel Everything is sales.

Agency Sales System Essentials

In its most basic form, a sales funnel consists of leads, prospects, and customers. Agencies need to fill the funnel at the top, nurture in the middle, and convert at the end. (See Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1 The Basic Sales Funnel Consisting of Leads, Prospects, and Customers Every agency, no matter its size, can benefit from having a formal system in place to manage its new business development efforts. However, as we discussed in earlier chapters, growth in model agencies is driven by the need to attract and retain top talent. So it is important that agencies work to find balance when building their sales systems and plans.

If you grow too quickly, without the proper infrastructure and personnel in place, you run the risk of failing to deliver on promises to clients, stretching account teams too thin, and inflicting irreparable damage to your brand. Meanwhile, if you struggle to maintain a strong pipeline of qualified leads, you may face difficult challenges that can lead to cash flow crunches, cutbacks, and talent turnover.

The key is to concentrate on creating a sales system that meets your current needs for lead generation, and is scalable with your long-term growth goals. Let's start by considering some basic questions relevant to a.s.sessing and building your agency sales system. We further explore the following topics in this chapter: What are our top lead sources? Where are your leads coming from now? This may include referrals, service marketplaces, website contact forms, downloadable content, social media, organic search, networking events, paid advertising, and more. Your agency's Inbound Marketing GamePlan should be focused on activities proven to generate the highest quality leads.

How many leads do we generate per month? Know your current lead flow. Based on your conversion rate, are you generating enough leads to sustain growth? Agency leaders, even if they are not responsible for business development, should have 24/7 access to lead volume and opportunities in order to effectively forecast workflow, staffing needs, and revenue.

What percentage of those are quality leads? Qualified leads, also known as prospects, have appropriate budgets, authority to make purchasing decisions, and the desire to work with your agency. Unqualified leads, sometimes referred to as suspects, are nothing more than a distraction, pulling valuable agency resources away from more productive activities. If the majority of your leads are low quality, then you may need to revisit your lead sources and how your agency is positioning itself.

How do we rank and prioritize leads? As your lead flow increases, it becomes important to have standard methods to rank or grade your leads. These methods ensure prompt follow-up with high-priority individuals and reduce time spent on less desirable ones. If you use sophisticated sales software, lead scoring may be a built-in feature. Otherwise you can develop your own formula based on factors such as referring sources, industry, size, and service needs.

How do we track their progress through the funnel? CRM systems have made it efficient to track and report on leads as they advance through the funnel. Larger agencies with significant lead flow (and revenue) may rely on higher-end platforms such as Salesforce and SugarCRM, whereas others are able to customize simpler solutions such as Highrise, which was featured in Chapter 4. The key is to have a reliable platform in which you can post activities, track opportunities/deals, and segment leads based on their position in the funnel.

How do we gain intelligence into our leads? If you have the right marketing software, such as HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, or Eloqua, once your leads have completed an online form, you have the ability to determine key data such as pages viewed, number of visits, forms completed, content downloaded, and events they have registered for on your site. You can even have e-mail alerts sent to your team to notify them when a lead returns to the agency site. All this lead intelligence can be connected to client conversions to give greater insight into the true ROI of your marketing and sales activities.

Who is responsible for lead generation, nurturing, and sales? Whether you designate official t.i.tles or take a more informal approach, someone needs to own each element of the funnel. It is common for the onus to fall on the founder or leaders.h.i.+p team in the early growth phases of an agency, but that can become an undue burden as the agency expands and other priorities creep into their daily routines.

Are our sales people receiving the proper training and education? There is a rare breed of rainmakers who are seemingly born with the innate ability to sell, but most agency personnel will need formal training to excel in this area. Selling is both an art and a science that requires experience, education, and an intimate knowledge of the agency. In order to create a scalable sales system, agencies need to find and groom the right people for the job. We will review core competencies of top salespeople later in this chapter.

What are we doing to nurture leads? Adding prospective clients to your agency's monthly e-mail newsletter is not lead nurturing. Instead, use original content such as blog posts, ebooks, videos, and webinars to deliver value to leads and pull them along through the funnel. Also, evaluate marketing automation solutions, which make it efficient to stay top of mind with prospects.

How efficient and effective are your sales efforts? Do you know how much time it takes to convert a company from lead to client? Or how much new revenue is generated each year from your leads?

You can gain incredible insight into your business development efforts by applying the same time-tracking principles we discussed in Chapter 1. Enter every lead into your time-tracking platform, and track activities just as you do for clients. This creates a wealth of information that you can use to a.s.sess lead quality, nurturing processes, and the efficiency and performance of your sales team. It also enables you to adapt your Inbound Marketing GamePlan and make more educated marketing investments.

People, Tools, and Processes

The three core elements to an effective agency sales system are people, tools, and processes. Let's examine each of these areas.

People During my soph.o.m.ore year at Ohio University, my Marketing 101 professor challenged the cla.s.s to name a profession that was not sales. The room went silent for a few moments, then people started chiming in with careers such as doctor, lawyer, homebuilder, librarian, and professional athlete. He proceeded to demonstrate how, in fact, every one of them was in sales. He explained how their livelihoods depended on their ability to engage audiences and keep them coming back for more. His point was that everything is sales.

The same holds true in a marketing agency. You are always selling. You are selling an idea, vision, service, agency brand, personal brand, and belief that your firm is more capable and qualified than the next one.

However, in a professional service firm, sales happen at every level of the company. It is often the account executives that have the most direct client contact, and therefore, whether they are charged with it or not, they function as the agency's primary salespeople. They are the ones whose performance, behavior, and ability to build strong client relations.h.i.+ps determine if an account stays or goes, and whether clients provide referrals and testimonials.

Plus, as we discussed in Chapter 5, model agencies are built on the strength of personal brands. The presence and engagement levels of your team in social media are an enormous driver of awareness and leads. Their blog posts are the greatest source of inbound links and organic traffic, and their networking at industry events creates valuable connections, which can lead to referrals and new business opportunities.

In short, when building your sales system, your most valued a.s.set is your team. No one individual sales or business-development manager can possibly deliver the value and lead volume that you can create through a collective and strategic effort.

However, that does not eliminate the importance of having point people whose value and performance are measured in part based on their impact in growing the agency, specifically their ability to convert leads into clients.

Traits of Successful Salespeople Steve W. Martin, who teaches sales strategy at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and is author of the critically acclaimed Heavy Hitter book series about enterprise sales strategies, has interviewed thousands of top business-to-business salespeople. He has also administered personality tests to more than 1,000 of them, primarily in high technology and business services.

His findings indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling style and ultimately their success. In a June 2011 Harvard Business Review blog post, "Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople," Martin detailed the key attributes: 1. Modesty.

2. Conscientiousness.

3. Achievement orientation.

4. Curiosity.

5. Lack of gregariousness.

6. Lack of discouragement.

7. Lack of self-consciousness.

One of Martin's most interesting notes was that there seems to be a correlation between athletics and success as a salesperson. Top performers with sports backgrounds "are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete."

Evaluating and Training Agency Salespeople Kurlan & a.s.sociates was founded in 1985 by Dave Kurlan, a renowned expert in sales-force a.s.sessments, training, and strategic growth strategies, and author of Baseline Selling-How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball.2 The firm has helped companies of all sizes achieve growth, improve margins, recruit stronger salespeople, and develop high-performing sales professionals.

For the last several years, Rick Roberge (@RainMakerMaker) and Frank Belzer of Kurlan & a.s.sociates have focused on evaluating and training marketing agencies to grow their sales. Using a proprietary a.s.sessment process, Kurlan & a.s.sociates compares the skills and strengths of agency personnel to those of more than 500,000 salespeople who have previously been evaluated in the Objective Management Group Salesperson's Self a.s.sessment system (www.ObjectiveManagement.com).

Roberge and Belzer shared some of their key findings, based on the evaluations of more than 100 marketing-agency professionals: None of the professionals could conduct a consultative sales process or close sales consistently.

Less than 3 percent could adequately qualify a prospective customer.

Thirty-nine percent were not trainable. Trainable means that a salesperson has the incentive to change. If there is no incentive to change, any training that is offered will result in a less than optimum ROI.

Sixty-nine percent were uncomfortable dealing with compet.i.tion.

Eighty-nine percent were uncomfortable working in a straight commission environment.

Ninety-two percent could not be counted on to hunt up new opportunities.

One hundred percent were uncomfortable dealing with prospects that did not need their services nor want their services.