Untangling Inbound: how to know your inbound agency is working for you

Untangling Inbound is a four part series exploring the basics of inbound marketing. In this, the second article in the series, we explore how to know your inbound marketing agency is working for you.

In the first article in this series we told you about what to look for in an inbound marketing agency. But once you’ve found one, how do you know your inbound agency is actually working for you?

As a reminder, an inbound agency’s job is to help potential customers find your business and, once that’s done, turn that early awareness into brand preference and, ideally, revenue.

Those agencies generate, capture, and convert leads by bringing a number of digital channels — including SEO, blogging, email — together and working them in unison.

It therefore seems pretty simple to tell if the agency you’ve chosen is working for you: if you’re getting more business, then it must be working right? Thing is, it’s a fair bit more complicated than that.

Here’s what you need to know about figuring out whether or not your inbound agency is really working for you.

It’ll know you

An inbound agency’s job is to increase the amount of business coming into your business. It can’t do that effectively unless it’s willing to take the time to get to know what you’re about as a business.

We’re not just talking about your revenue model here either. The agency should take the time to find out about your business philosophies, what your current target market is, and what kind of customers you’re looking to attract in the future.

If an inbound agency comes in offering you quick fixes without first learning about your business, you probably shouldn’t bother with it.

It’ll give you the numbers

A good inbound agency will provide you with regular reports on the work it’s done, especially with regards to leads and conversions. Hubspot, generally recognised as a top authority in the space says that 78% of its Gold Partners provide regular progress reports to their clients.

A great agency won’t just send you those numbers though. It’ll tailor its reports show how the work it’s doing is relevant to your specific business needs. The reports should also include projections on how the campaigns it’s running for you will pan out.

Those projections should never be static either. You inbound agency should constantly be resetting its goals based on how the programme it put in place has performed. Just as every business is different, so every inbound programme is different. And like your own needs, it should adapt over time. A good inbound agency will recognise that and adjust its projections and the programme as a whole accordingly.

It’ll give you the right numbers

Of course, all the numbers in the world won’t help even a little bit if they’re not relevant to your business. This comes back to the agency knowing your business. By understanding your business goals, it can work out the key metrics that’ll help inform both its tactics and its reporting.

Remember, an inbound agency’s job is to help you achieve your goals. If it can help you quantify those goals and then, later on, use those metrics to show that the work it’s doing is paying off, then you’re onto a winner.

Ask an expert

Perhaps the best way to tell if your inbound agency is worth the money you’re paying is to take the results it’s been sending through (along with an outline of its programme) and have a reputable name in the industry look over them.

If you’re worried about someone deliberately downplaying the results because they work for another agency whose only interest is in poaching you as a client, then you could always take it to an independent consultant. Even if they think the programme is mostly fine, they may have a couple of ideas that you can take back to your agency.

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Untangling Inbound is brought to you by Incite New Business. Over the last decade, Incite has delivered tens of thousands of real new business opportunities that its clients have converted and made many millions of rands in revenue.