planning your inbound marketing investment
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Planning Your Inbound Marketing Investment 20132013
Planning Your
INBOUND MARKETING INVESTMENT
The Essentials for Maximizing your
Return on Investment
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Planning Your Inbound Marketing Investment
Written by:
Ramona SukhrajInbound Marketer
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GET STARTED
GET RESULTS WITH IMPACTIMPACT is an inbound marketing agency focused on generating more qualified traffic and leads from your website to ultimately drive sales and produce results. Request a free assessment with IMPACT below and learn how we can help you transform your marketing!
Strategic PlanningYour path to success starts
with a plan.
Convert LeadsBoost your brand visibility
& prove your expertise.
Campaign DevelopmentBuilding the tools you need to succeed.
Grow SalesBoost your brand visibility & prove
your expertise.
Drive TrafficBoost your brand visibility &
prove your expertise.
Marketing AnalysisBoost your brand visibility &
prove your expertise.
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ContentsIs Inbound Marketing For Me? .................................................................................5
How much Inbound Marketing Do I Need? .........................................................17
Planning for ROI ........................................................................................................22
Budgeting Your Time and Resources ..................................................................34
Efficiently Running a Profitable Campaign ........................................................39
Tracking Your Sales Funnel ....................................................................................43
Measuring Your ROI .................................................................................................49
Working With An Agency .........................................................................................55
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IS INBOUND MARKETING RIGHT FOR ME?
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When it comes to the implementation of any new marketing initiative, the value always lies in the ability to experience a positive return on investment.
Obviously, at one time or another you’ve asked yourself, “Is Inbound Marketing right for my company?” To properly answer this question requires a thorough understanding of what Inbound Marketing is, what it achieves, and what it entails.
Once you’ve attained this, you’ll have a much better understanding that the cost associated is actually a smart investment when implemented effectively.
ROIROIROI
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So what does that mean?
Traditionally, when we hear the word marketing we automatically think of commercials, advertisements, brochures, and direct mail coupons; yet all of these would be filed under the increasingly underperforming outbound marketing methodologies.
Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing does not force information on your target audience. In contrast, inbound marketing primarily uses the Internet to make you “easily found” by your prospects.
It avoids cheesy, forced sales pitches and tries to provide value via content to gain your audiences trust and ultimately turn them into a qualified lead.
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Outbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing
Cold CallingTv/Radio Advertisements
Sales FlyersDirect Mail
Trade Show
WebsitesLanding Pages
BlogsSocial Media
SEOPPC
EbookseNewsletters
PodcastsVideos
Whitepapers
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The BenefitsContent & CommunicationAs a “new approach” to marketing, inbound techniques have many benefits that keep the modern consumer in mind. These include two-way communication and non-disruptive content.
In today’s fast-paced world, no prospect wants to be treated like a moving target for product pitches. Inbound marketing is about providing valuable content and earning a customer’s attention and ultimately loyalty.
It’s designed to draw you back to one main website with all of the information you need and focuses on educating, entertaining, and obtaining your visitors contact information in exchange for premium content. Inbound marketing does not bombard you with disruptive, unwanted content via banner ads, sales flyers, or spam mail.
In addition, most inbound methods enable your target audience to engage in two-way communication. Unlike outbound methods that just lay out information, inbound methods like social media allow consumers to respond, give feedback, and often receive responses. This communication allows for better understanding of the target audience and, in the end, an even better solution to their problems.
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Lower Cost per LeadArguably the biggest benefit of inbound marketing is that it delivers a lower cost per lead than traditional outbound techniques. According to a survey by HubSpot in 2012, inbound marketing costs 61% less per lead than outbound.
More specifically, of the 972 marketing professionals surveyed, the average cost per lead for outbound organizations was $346, while the average cost per inbound was a stark contrast at only $135.
To better illustrate this, let’s take a look at one of the most expensive forms of outbound marketing: Trade shows.
Attending and participating in a trade show requires expenses on registration, signage, marketing
collateral, and even travel amongst other things. This can add up to hundreds,
if not thousands of marketing dollars for a one-time
event.
$135
$346
outbound
inbound
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If that’s not enough, 46% of professionals have reported trade shows as a major above average cost per lead.
Inbound methods such a blogs, social media, and SEO, on the other hand, were more frequently reported as below average costs per lead, as they are cheaper, yet more effective methods of lead generation.
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The Big PictureNo marketing campaign is worth your time if it’s ineffective. Inbound marketing software such as HubSpot offers comprehensive and detailed analytics regarding each marketing initiative performed as well as prospect behavior on your website. With this you can more easily track what is actually working, what isn’t, and make adjustments accordingly.
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Is Inbound Marketing Right for Your Business?For a business driven by sales-leads, inbound marketing has proven to be powerful. Once implemented, studies show that inbound methods generate more leads and ultimately more customers than any of their outbound counterparts.
The NumbersA recent report from HubSpot shows that after using their inbound marketing software, 92.7% of users experienced an increase in leads. 38.4% reported an increase of more than 100% in their leads and 83.9% of these individuals noticed the change within 7 months. 65.25% reported seeing an increase in as little as 4 months. In terms of sales, 49.2% of customers experienced a higher lead-to-sales conversion rate and 49.7% noticed it within 7 months.
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% Percentage of Companies that Report Customer Acquisition Through Social Media Channels:
Customer Acquisition via Company Blog:
57%Customer Acquisition via LinkedIn:
57%Customer Acquisition via Facebook:
48%
Customer Acquisition via Twitter:
42%These results are rooted in Inbound Marketing’s ability to draw in “qualified leads” that are already actively looking. There is very little time wasted on people who are just browsing or happen to be in the area as there would be with a billboard, direct mail, or other outbound methods.
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Are Your Customers Online?A better question is probably, who isn’t online?
Regardless of your industry, a strong online presence is a necessity in today’s business climate.
In our mobile and social media driven world, the Internet is almost always a consumer’s first stop when it comes to product/service research. They are shopping, looking for reviews, photos, news, whatever information they can gather before making a purchase, and at the core of inbound marketing is a well-designed, professional website that will provide them with this.
Google isn’t just a search engine anymore, it’s a verb and inbound marketing strives to make sure your target audiences are finding you and your resourceful content easily and effectively. Simply put, Google is the new Yellow Pages.
keyword
keyword
keywordkeyword
keywordSearch
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Should You Invest?Overall, inbound marketing is a more streamlined, integrated, and modern approach to marketing. You can more easily track your campaigns to plan and see ROI, engage your audiences in two-way communication, and reach more leads.
Though outbound marketing is not ineffective, its concepts are becoming increasingly obsolete as audiences learn to block them out. If your business is going to thrive in today’s changing market, you need to assess your current efforts and determine if they’re as effective as they used to be, or more importantly, as effective as they need to be.
In addition, it is important to note that the reach of inbound marketing is nearly limitless. Once you have established your presence and distributed content, anyone and everyone can find them, and costs to you remain unchanged. Whether you have 1,000 visitors a month or 1 million, the cost to you will stay the same.
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HOW MUCH INBOUND MARKETING DO I NEED?
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In order to identify how extensive a campaign your company needs, it’s important that you fully align your marketing goals with your overall business goals.
If your marketing goals reflect your overall business goals, you as well as your agency will have a much more focused strategy moving forward in regards to delivering an ROI.
Well-defined SMART business goals are essential in determining the resources needed when it comes to inbound marketing. SMART goals are:
• Specific• Measurable• Attainable• Realistic• Time Defined
marketingbusiness
GOALS
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For example, instead of saying you want more revenue, you could say, “In order to achieve a revenue goal of $600,000 within in the next 12 months, I need to generate 10,000 visitors, 500 leads, and 12 customers.”
This goal is definitive so you know what you need to achieve with your inbound marketing and how much you need is really based on how much you want to achieve.
The bigger your goals, the more you will have to put into it. It’s subjective.
How Aggresive Are Your Goals?In most cases, the more aggressive your business goals, the more aggressive your marketing should be.
For instance, if your business is setting out to double its annual revenue, how many customers does it need to bring in to achieve this? The higher the number of customers, the higher the number of leads you will have to generate. More leads means more visitors, and more visitors means, yes, you guessed it, more content.
If you have a more modest goal, such as increasing your revenue by only 25%, then the number of customers and leads are in turn more modest as well. It is all relative.
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Inbound Marketing Takes TimeInbound Marketing is about earning your audiences trust and loyalty, but like any other relationship, these take time to develop.
On average, most inbound marketing campaigns see return on investment after 6-9 months, but some start producing results in as little as 3. It varies depending on your industry and of course, your goals.
As mentioned above, the bigger your goals are, the more you as an inbound marketer need to put in to meeting them – this includes time.
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Being Dynamic - Inbound marketing is in no way “set it and forget it.” Once you have established a website, blog, and social media profiles, you need to maintain them.
They need to be dynamic, consistently offering new, fresh, and relevant content that makes people want to come back for more. If someone has seen everything you have to offer already, what incentive is there for them to return?
Building Authority - Being dynamic ultimately also helps you build authority and establish a web presence.
Unlike a commercial or magazine article that may only be in use for a few months, any content you create doesn’t just go away. With strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO), your content will live in the top search results of search engines, ensuring a steady stream of traffic over time.
Having other websites discover your content helps improve your authority. Simply put, your authority is what other websites are “saying” about you, how they interact with you. If sites with higher authority share or link to your content, your authority goes up in response. It’s a win-win.
What’s the best way to ensure that you reach higher authorities?Create content that is worth sharing and do it consistently. After even a few months of creation, you will have started to build a library of remarkable content that gets you found and helps educate and nurture your target audience.
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PLANNING FOR ROI
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All great investments are largely dependent on one thing only;
ROI. And depending on how well educated and prepared you
are going into the implementation of any given strategy will
dictate the kind of return on investment you can expect.
Identifying Your Target AudienceWhen it comes to positioning your campaign for success and achieving your business goals, it’s crucial that you’re working to generate the kind of business that makes a positive ROI an expectation rather than a hope. One crucial part of any marketing plan is identifying your target audience. This is done by establishing Buyer Personas.
Buyer Personas are detailed, often times fictional representations of your ideal prospect. By having a better understanding of whom your ideal prospects are and what affects their buying behavior, you can market more effectively to them.
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According to HubSpot, an effective Buyer Persona details the following information regarding your target audience:
• What are their demographics?• What is their job and level of seniority?• What does a day in their life look like?• What are their pain points?• What do they value most?• Where do they go for their information?• What experience are they looking for when shopping for a product?• What are their most common objections to your product/service?• How do I identify this persona?
Having these answers gives us a thorough profile of who it is we are communicating with and ensures that we are not wasting time reaching out to people who would not be interested in engaging in business with us. They also play a large part in Quality Lead Identification.
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Quality Lead IdentificationAt IMPACT, we narrow down your Buyer Personas even further to identify your ideal quality lead. In many ways, we create a picture of the perfect candidate for your product or service.
Once determined, we can devise “qualifying questions” to include on your landing pages and forms.
Can they afford your product? Where are they located? All of these factors and more can be identified to better prioritize and further segment your prospects.
The status of a quality lead may depend on a number of different characteristics. For example, depending on your product, you may look at:
• Annual Revenue• Specific Industry • Role at Company • Annual Capital Spending• Geography• Membership in a trade organization
BUYERPERSONAS
BUYERPERSONAS
BUYERPERSONAS
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Understanding your Prospect Buying CycleThe next step is having a strong understanding of your customer buying cycle, or in other words, the process that your customers go through when making a purchase.
Doing so helps segment your leads further as either Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) or Sales Qualified Lead (SQLs).
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Cont.
The Buying Cycle consists of 6 Behavioral/Mental states. To illustrate, let’s say your consumer is buying a new digital camera:
Openness – In this state, the prospect is exposed to a new or better experience, resulting from a pre-existing interest or curiosity, but may or may not be directed at a particular brand.
Realized Want or Need – Next, the prospect becomes aware of a particular product, perhaps through an ad or word of mouth. They also recognize the Internet as a useful tool to fulfill the newfound need.
Learning and Educating – The prospect enters a research mentality, looking to understand the fundamentals of making an educated purchase. In our example, they might type into a search engine “new digital cameras.”
Seeking Ideas and Inspiration – The prospect starts evaluating offerings across several different platforms. In this stage, our prospect may search “compare new digital cameras” as they look for a significant “players” to be considered in their search.
Also at this point, they are becoming a MQL. They are looking for more information and your content should fulfill this need.
1.
2.
3.
4.
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Research and Vetting – The prospect shows an inclination to a specific product or solution and gathers information to support this desire. Our camera MQL searches “Canon Powershot ELPH 320 reviews” or compare prices from various vendors.
Here it becomes obvious that our prospect has zeroed in on their top choice and are considering a purchase. In terms of qualified leads, they have become an SQL and are presenting an opportunity.
Post-Purchase Evaluation and Expansion – Having made their purchase, the consumer is now using and evaluating how they feel about it. They may post a review online or share their feelings with a friend looking for the same product.
5.
6.
Clearly, the Prospect Buying Cycle is no longer considered simple and linear. There are many emotions and situational influences that affect how a consumer makes a purchase in today’s world. Once you have an understanding of the different stages and mentalities at each stage you can create targeted content. The goal is to gradually get the prospect to trust in your brand, not force them into an uneducated purchase.
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Delivering Content and Resources for Your ProspectWhen done correctly, your content will push your leads further down the sales funnel (and through their buying cycle), closer to becoming a customer. Using the example from above, if your prospect is in the “Seeking Ideas and Inspiration” stage, offer comparisons or advice for choosing the best camera; if they are in the “Research and Vetting” stage, offer coupons or discounts.
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Let’s take a deeper look at how an inbound marketer might distribute through the 6 mental/behavioral states:
Openness
Realized Want or Need – Having become aware of their need, the prospect is looking for solutions. An inbound marketer would utilize SEO, Social Media, and Pay-per-click campaigns (PPC) to get your business’ website and content found.
Learning and Educating – Once found, a company’s keyword-tailored landing pages, blogs, and offers capture the prospect’s attention.
Seeking Ideas and Inspiration – Here it is the website and tailored content’s job to guide the prospect further down the sales funnel. As we mentioned, an inbound marketer may want to offer insightful product comparisons or advice on picking the best option.
Research and Vetting – As the consumer zeroes in on their purchase, a company could offer the deals, discounts, or premiums.
Post-Purchase Evaluation and Expansion – After the purchase has been made, a company should maintain contact with their customers via social media, personalized emails, or occasional personal outreach.
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
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Building Your 12-Month Strategy to Achieve Your GoalsAs discussed at the beginning of the chapter, if success is your plan, you must plan to succeed.
Before a client launches a new website or starts tweeting, we look at their current marketing efforts and help them develop what we call an “Inbound Marketing GamePlan” for the future. Your GamePlan should layout critical strategic information and identify benchmarks as well as various activity details for at least 12 months. A complete GamePlan should include:
Month 1 Month 12
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Analysis of Your Current Marketing & Brand
Outline of Your Business Goals
Competitive Analysis
Definition of Your Value Proposition
Quality Lead Identification Statement
Completed Buyer Persona
Definition of MQL’s and SQL’s
Definition of KPI’s
Campaign Development Strategy
Drive Traffic Strategy: Blogging, Social Media & SEO
Lead Conversion Strategy
Grow Sales Strategy: Marketing Automation / Sales &
Marketing Alignment
Marketing Analysis & Reporting Plan
A good 12-month plan results from analyzing past marketing strategies and their successes. Looking at and tracking old activities will help you better understand where your time, money, and effort should be allocated.
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Before making your investment, check out our sample Inbound Marketing GamePlan and learn how we outline
your campaign to achieve your business goals and deliver a positive ROI.
Download
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BUDGETING YOUR TIME AND RESOURCES
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Money aside, inbound marketing is a huge time investment for any business looking to strengthen its online presence and create the resourceful content necessary to attract more qualified leads.
Before starting an inbound marketing campaign you should take inventory and evaluate your capabilities in terms of time and resources.
As mentioned earlier, inbound marketing is a long-term commitment. Before customers can find you, you need to have content, and building an impressive library of content does not happen overnight.
Creating and tracking content is a lengthy process, but the time commitment does not end there.
Long Term Commitment
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Planning Before starting an inbound campaign, you need to factor in the time it takes to plan. Your team must evaluate your campaign data and ROI and decide what needs to be changed as you move forward.
Depending on the current state of your marketing strategy, the amount of time this takes will vary.
At IMPACT, we strive to get our client’s their comprehensive Inbound Marketing GamePlan in less than 30 days.
Learning & ImplementingIf you have never dealt with inbound marketing before, its platforms may be completely new to you.
Learning the ins and outs or dos and don’ts of blogging, Facebook, Twitter, SEO, etc. takes time and practice to fully understand.
Inbound marketing software, like HubSpot, can help you greatly in terms of organizing, tracking, and integrating all of your marketing efforts. Software like this, however, does take time to learn and get accustomed to as well.
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Maintaining & Evaluating Don’t start something you can’t finish. Once your website, blog, and different social media accounts have been created, maintenance is key. If you are going to harness their power, make sure you can set aside time to:
• Blog twice a week• Spend 20 minutes on each social media outlet, each day• Post a new call to action and offer twice a month• Learn something new from your lead data every day• Review your analytics once a week and make adjustments• Interact with audience across platforms (respond to comments,
complaints, etc.)
Create New Email
Create New List
Create New Report
Create New Contact
Create New CTA
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Inbound marketing is in no way a one-man job. According to Forbes, it takes 32 hours a month to manage just a single social media profile. Add blogging, ebooks, and whitepapers to the mix and you’ve got one unhappy and overworked marketing team.
Depending on how aggressive your goals are, you may need to assign multiple people to implementing and maintaining your various inbound efforts. The greater your goals, the more you need to put out, and the more people you will need to keep the plan running smoothly.
While each company and industry is different, you’ll inevitably face the same question; do I have the time and resources to execute a successful inbound marketing campaign in-house, or would it be smarter and more cost-efficient to hire an agency?
Do You Need to Bring in Extra Help?
32 hrs32 hrs
32 hrs
32 hrs
32 hrs
32 hrs
32 hrs
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EFFICIENTLY RUNNING A PROFITABLE CAMPAIGN
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Good Inbound Marketing HabitsA successful inbound marketer is both adaptive and also a creature of habit. To run a successful (and profitable) inbound marketing campaign, you need to develop an efficient routine and series of practices and work to consistently maintain them, however, you must also work to make adjustments on the fly when necessary in order to continually stay on track with KPIs (key performance indicators.)
Good inbound marketing habits include daily tweeting, creating quality content, interacting with your audience, viewing and sharing content of other industry leaders, and promptly releasing company news, but you also need to look at the bigger picture.
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Make a difference by integrating these general habits into your daily routine:
Actively Listen – In order to foster loyalty and gain the trust of your target audience, listen. Read their comments and complaints on social media or their views on blog articles. What are their grievances? What do they think about your brand? Pay attention to what’s being said about your brand and industry on a daily basis and you can be proactive.
Try New Things – Experiment with different types of content delivery, tackle an unconventional topic. Variety is the spice of life and it will not only diversify your portfolio, but catch your audience by surprise.
Share – Share your work as well as the work of others. If it’s relevant and worthwhile, pass it on.
Provide Value – Leverage your expertise and offer something of quality to your audience. Give them something that educates and entertains that others cannot.
Measure – Track and measure the results of your efforts; how many downloads, views, shares. Where did they come from? Look at your social analytics, web analytics, ROI, and conversion rates on a daily basis.
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Never Letting Your Campaign Go DarkWhile all important in their own right, all of these good habits have one common goal in mind – Never letting your campaign go dark.
You never want customers to stop “talking” about you. As a good inbound marketer you need to be constantly putting out new and resourceful content to engage your audience. It’s all about being consistent and regular. If all of a sudden you stop releasing content and disappear, so does all of the momentum that you have gained so far.
Leaving your website static for a long period of time will cause your traffic to dip and your number of leads to diminish in response. Also, when you “go dark,” any SEO growth you have already made will be reversed and you will quickly see a lull in sales.
Your campaign is like a celebrity. When they are consistently in the spotlight they gain a certain reputation and relevance, but if they fade away for an extended period, new competition is given the opportunity to come in and replace them and their public persona diminishes.
Trying to make a comeback is not impossible, but it becomes increasingly difficult. Stay on top of your good habits and campaigns and you’ll always be on the A-list.
PREMIUM CONTENT
PREMIUM CONTENT
PREMIUM CONTENT
PREMIUM
CONTENT
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TRACKING YOUR SALES FUNNEL
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Once you have aligned your business and marketing goals, you have in many ways decided your sales goals as well.
Even if you have an innovative, groundbreaking marketing campaign, it won’t be worth the time or effort if it does not translate into leads/sales. You need to know how many leads/sales you will need in order for your campaign to see an ROI and to meet your overall business goals. The best way to do this is by tracking your sales funnel.
VISITORS
LEADS
MQLSSQLSOPPORTUNITIES
CUSTOMERS
Top
Bottom
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Visitors
Leads
MQLs
SQLs
Opportunities
Customers
50,000
4,000
1,200
600
300
100
100,000
8,000
2,400
1,200
600
200
STATUS CURRENT YEAR
NEXTYEAR
If you have to double your sales from $50k to $100k, everything higher up the funnel must double as well. In other words, you need at least 100,000 visitors, which would ideally turn into 8000 leads, 2400 MQLs, 1200 SQLs, 600 opportunities, and ultimately 200 customers.
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Tracking Leads and Distributing ContentMuch like the customer buying cycle, your sales funnel can also help you with lead nurturing, or how you tailor your content in order to drive someone into being a customer. Depending on where they are in the funnel, you can better understand their mentality and decide what kind of content would guide them in the right direction. You wouldn’t market or communicate with an infrequent website visitor the same way you would an MQL.
The sales funnel also helps you organize your sales team’s priorities. With inbound marketing software, you can track your prospects activity and easily see how “sales ready” they are. While a MQL has downloaded and viewed a lot of content, they are not as sales ready as a SQL who has possibly requested a consultation or contacted you for more information.
MQL OPP.MQL OPP.
MQL OPP.
MQL OPP.MQL OPP.
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Is Inbound Marketing bringing in your leads?As we described in the last chapter, tracking your results is one of the most important habits and inbound marketer can have. Is your blog being viewed and shared? How many people are visiting and downloading content? What is the conversion rate?
These statistics are the black and white proof if your inbound marketing efforts are in fact working. Comparing these results with other campaigns (i.e. outbound efforts) help you evaluate your strategy and allocate your marketing dollars efficiently. If your blog is driving relevant traffic and profitable leads, but your magazine ads aren’t, take note and make a change. Invest in what works.
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Download
Inbound Marketing Checklist Lead scoring will help deliver more sales ready leads to your sales team, effectively shortening your sales process. Learn how to implement an effective lead
scoring strategy.
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MEASURING YOUR ROI
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The Cost of Inbound MarketingInbound marketing is an investment in your business’ future. From website redesign and landing pages to social media and blogging, inbound marketing is a powerful, full-service approach to helping companies achieve their business goals.
Adopting an inbound strategy has its price tag, but like any smart investment, it ends up paying for itself in not only ROI, but competitive advantage as well.
How much you actually spend is ultimately up to you. If your business goals are aggressive, you will need to spend more aggressively in order to achieve them. More content, means more leads, and more leads mean more sales.
In the long run, companies have reported saving on average 61% per lead compared to what they spent using outbound marketing methods.
In fact, 47% of companies surveyed by HubSpot in 2012 reported increasing their inbound marketing budget from the previous year with the most commonly cited reason being past success with their campaigns.
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Inbound Marketing Expenses to Consider:• Inbound Marketing Software• Time Management Software• CRM Software• New Staff • Hiring an Inbound Marketing Agency
Inbound Marketing SoftwareAutomated marketing software like HubSpot collects data from all of your individual platforms and integrates them to create one large picture of your inbound marketing strategy. This integration not only saves you time, but also enables you to see activity patterns and statistics that each platform individually cannot provide.
Software like this is a must. One of inbound marketing’s biggest trademarks is its ability to track and measure everything, and without automated software, this ability will be greatly hindered, if not eliminated. It is the most necessary tangible cost when entering inbound marketing.
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CRM SoftwareCRM, or Customer Relationship Management software, is another crucial expense. Inbound marketing is all about generating sales leads and CRM software, like SalesForce, is the easiest way to streamline the sales process. Like general Inbound Marketing software, CRM software tracks and measures campaigns over multiple platforms. They track lead behavior as well as clicks, responses, leads, and deals and offer metrics for evaluation.
Time Management SoftwareWith so many tasks to cover in inbound marketing, Time Management Software, such as Intervals, is an absolute necessity. Time Management Software helps schedule projects and track time spent on them amongst other things. This ability is crucial to measuring and evaluating productivity.
New StaffBecause time is so crucial in inbound marketing, more and more companies are opting to hire new staff to focus on their efforts. Depending on your work load, strengths, and budget, your company may be interested in hiring Online Community Managers, Social Media Directors, and Bloggers just to name a few.
The subsequent salaries, benefits, supplies, and overhead all need to be considered when planning your inbound marketing spending. Before making the move, you should compare these estimated costs to those of hiring or partnering with an agency. Is it more cost efficient than working with an agency for a retainer fee?
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Return on InvestmentThe best way to assess your inbound marketing campaign is through ROI. At IMPACT, we consider a good ROI to be 200% or more, and these results are fairly typical.
Example
Say after partnering with an Inbound Agency, hiring new staff members, and purchasing software, you invested $200,000 in Inbound Marketing last year and generated $800, 000 in revenue.
Using this equation, we can see that your ROI hit 300%.
= (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment
= ($800,000 - 200,000) / 200,000= 600,000 / 200, 000= 3 (300%)
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The ROI power of inbound marketing lies in its tracking capabilities and focus on qualified leads. With internet based methods, inbound marketing offers useful metrics that traditional, outbound methods do not. It is a full-suite of integrated services. All of its different aspects work together, allowing easier comparison and evaluation, thereby enhancing your ability to strategize, target audiences, and focus on the most promising leads. No team time or energy is wasted on prospects that aren’t ready to commit.
Your returns are heavily dependent on how much you put into your campaigns. Regardless of how many visitors you receive you pay the same flat monthly fees, so it is your job to take your investment as far as it can go. If you go the distance, so will your marketing, thereby bringing in a larger number of qualified sales leads, lowering your cost per lead, and increasing your ROI.
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WORKING WITH AN AGENCY
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Who Can Manage This for You?Having taken an in-depth look at the planning, daily habits, and responsibilities that come with inbound marketing, you’re probably asking yourself “who will manage all of this for me?” Depending on your business’ preferences, resources and financial status, you may either:
• Train Current Staff,• Hire New Staff, or• Outsource to or Partner with an Agency
YOU
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Working With An AgencyIf hiring a host of new staff members sounds out of reach or you are still mystified by the concepts of inbound marketing, you may want to consider working with an inbound marketing agency. You must remember however, that a good agency works with you, not just for you.
No one knows your business better than you do, and if an agency is going to create quality content that holds true to your brand and goals, your input is essential.
The BenefitsWhether you are partnering with an agency or outsourcing your entire inbound marketing operation, there are several benefits to working with an agency.
Some of the biggest to consider when hiring an inbound marketing agency are: expertise and time & resources.
ExpertiseTo be successful, you must be well versed in not only marketing strategy, but graphic design, web development, content creation, and social media as well.
Unless you are hiring seasoned inbound marketers, it is unlikely that your staff has experience with all of these disciplines. A full-service agency will have experts in all of these fields at their disposal and working for your cause.
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Time & ResourcesTime and resources are some of the biggest investments that you make with Inbound marketing. With planning, content creation, and analysis amongst other responsibilities, hiring an agency will free up your company’s time and personnel to complete other crucial tasks.
If you have not fully defined your value proposition, brand identity, or buyer personas, your agency will help you do so. If content creation is not your strength, hiring an agency will also present you with an experienced creative team that will keep your identity in mind and help develop relevant content.
The CostDepending on your needs and goals, hiring an inbound marketing agency can cost approximately $5,000 to $20,000 a month. And as we have mentioned, your spending is highly dependent on your unique business goals and what you want to achieve.
The more work you need done, the more you will have to spend to meet your needs, but like any good investment, your inbound marketing agency will make sure you reap the rewards.
$5,000/mo $20,000/mo
ROIROI
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