By Carly Murphy, Published November 14, 2014
Does your company want to establish authority in its field? What about increase site visits, convert leads, and gain new customers? Inbound marketing is a great way to achieve all of these goals. However, like other marketing tactics, you won’t see results overnight. It takes time, but if you’re patient, the results are well worth the wait. Hiring an inbound marketing agency is a great way to get started with this type of marketing. The length of time you commit to your inbound marketing agency will vary from company to company, but below are some questions to keep in mind when deciding the initial length of time to commit to.
How long does it take to see an increase in ROI with inbound marketing?
Ideally you should sign on with an inbound marketing agency for at least a year to see the full impact inbound marketing has on your company. At the very least, you should work with your agency for a minimum of six months. Why? According to HubSpot:
- 85% of companies using inbound marketing increase traffic within 7 months.
- 83.9% of companies using inbound marketing increase leads within 7 months.
- 49.7% of companies using inbound marketing increased sales within 7 months.
See a trend here? It takes time to develop amazing content. It takes time to grow your ranks in search engines, and it takes time to nurture your leads properly and not rush them to buy when they’re not ready. Don’t sell your company short and quit inbound efforts because your inpatient in receiving the amazing benefits that inbound marketing will bring you long term.
What’s wrong with month-to-month contracts?
Inbound marketing is an analytics driven approach to marketing. With that, the best way to analyze metrics, is to look at trends over time and adjust your efforts accordingly based off those trends. It’s hard to see a pattern if you only look at the numbers from a month or two.
Additionally, you are going to have your good and bad months. Just because you had a dip one month doesn’t mean your inbound marketing efforts aren’t working. You just need to analyze the numbers, make improvements and move forward. If you have a record breaking month, and the following month has a slight decrease in numbers, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Numbers may still be great, just not record breaking like the previous month.
What can yu do to get the most out of the contract with your agency in the fastest amount of time?
Like most things in life, you’ll get results from inbound marketing based off how much time you put into it. While your agency will be doing everything in their power to give you the results you’re looking for, a lot of the responsibility to increase ROI falls on you as well. Here’s how you can speed up the process:
- Streamline your approval process. This will make your life and your agency’s life so much easier if there is a smooth approval process in place on your end to get things turned around and approved quickly. It shouldn’t take you longer than two days to get a blog post turned around and a week for premium content revisions. The faster you can get things out the door, the faster you’ll see results.
- Stick to deadlines. To follow the last point, it is very important to stick to deadlines. It can be easy to move something aside when you don’t have a hard deadline like a print issue date you’re up against, or billboard creative that is due no later than COB. But inbound marketing deadlines shouldn’t be treated any differently than other forms of marketing. It’s very important to stay on schedule to optimize the effects of your inbound marketing efforts.
- Be consistent and dedicated to the content. Your results will increase as the number of posts per week and premium content you put out increases. Aim to post at least three blogs per week. In addition to your agency being sticklers about deadlines, Google likes consistency as well and will recognize when content is being provided regularly, which will help your SEO. Plus, the more premium offers you release, the more chances you get to bring in more leads.
Even with your help to move the process along, it is still a good idea to stick with your agency long-term, rather than on a trial basis. They can help you monitor your metrics, analyze trends and plan a strategy to increase your ROI for you. They can recommend plans to help you stay on track and keep you working toward your goals.Bottom line: Inbound marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. While staying with your agency for at least six months is recommended, signing a contract for at least a year is preferred.
Bottom line: Inbound marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. While staying with your agency for at least six months is recommended, signing a contract for at least a year is preferred.
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