Why you should use an inbound marketing agency

By Woven Agency, Monday May 13, 2019
7 minutes

You know what inbound marketing is, right? The idea that to attract prospects and convert them to customers, you’ve got to give them something of value first?


Which could be that useful blog about the importance of knowing your buyer persona. Or that treasure trove of money management tips and business insights. Or that lol-inducing social media channel that barely even talks about its own business.

Instead of interrupting people’s lives in the way that TV, radio and magazine ads do, inbound marketing makes marketing content a more organic and useful part of people’s lives.

Educational, entertaining and underpinned by best SEO and PPC practice, inbound marketing is there as a resource when people need it, not as an annoyance when they don’t.

So, why use an inbound marketing agency?

Inbound marketing helps businesses engage more people, generate more leads and inspire greater customer retention. And an effective inbound marketing strategy can be done by a well-run and knowledgeable in-house marketing team.

But there a number of reasons why an inbound marketing agency is perfectly placed to plan and produce your inbound campaigns.

Inbound marketing requires a wide skillset

From marketing strategists to SEO specialists, writers to designers, videographers to VR technicians, creating engaging, educational content – the heart of inbound marketing – requires a lot of talented specialists.

The fabled Dollar Shave Club ad might look rough ‘n’ ready, as if anyone could have done it, but the brilliant script and expertly shot video took a team of writers and videographers days to perfect.

And whilst most of us won’t work to such scale, producing any form of content generation takes a considerable amount of time. Nearly half of blogs take between two to four hours, with over a quarter taking even longer.

Even short videos need a range of equipment (decent smartphones or cameras, gimbals, tripods, mics, editing software, lighting), an experienced videographer, a designer and plenty of time put aside for writing scripts, shooting and post-production.

And once you’ve made the video, what then? Will your SEO copywriter write a Google-topping blog piece to accompany it? Can they turn it into a downloadable ebook? Can your PPC expert ensure ad revenues are well spent. Will your social media experts effectively promote it across Linkedin, Instagram and Twitter to generate traffic to your site? Can your designer create an eye-popping newsletter with the video embedded into it to send to your readership?

(You can learn more about producing video with our guide to video content marketing.)

To succeed at inbound marketing, you need to create target audience-focused content, repurpose it across different media channels and ensure it’s seen by the right people.

As an inbound marketing agency, we bring to bear a full-service team of designers, photographers, animators, videographers, digital marketers, strategists and writers to create effective campaigns for your social media feeds, newsletters, websites and experiential marketing.

Inbound marketing takes planning

Content may be king, but it’s the time and effort that goes into planning that helps it sit on the throne. If it’s not underpinned by insight, strategy and planning, your content isn’t going to hit the mark and have the long-term effect to make the time and effort worthwhile.

Insights are crucial because they unlock the truths that connect customers to brands. They present the problems customers face so that you can work out how best to present yourself as the solution. Insights also help you understand where your competitors lie so you can work out the messaging that sets you apart from them.

Once your insights have been uncovered, you can work on your strategy – which is planning how the why, what, who, when and how of your campaign.

This incorporates market research, brand development, competitor audits, building buyer personas and content mapping – and that’s all before you put fingers to keyboards and come up with any content ideas.

Content may be king, but it’s the time and effort that goes into planning that helps it sit on the throne.

Oh, and we’d be remiss not to mention the importance of SEO at this point. Let’s face it, there are a lot of voices out there and in order for yours to be heard, it needs SEO support.

This means undertaking keyword research to optimise your on-page SEO, finding backlink opportunities to improve your domain authority and ensuring your technical SEO game (website speed, image optimisation and so on) is strong.

The right inbound marketing agency will not only have a comprehensive team of creators, they’ll have experienced strategic planners and SEO experts that ensure the content hits the right audience on the right channels to deliver short- and long-term impact.

Inbound marketing agencies save you time, money and space

If you’re not planning on using an inbound agency and don’t already have in-house resource for your inbound marketing campaigns, then you’ll need to bring them in.

Which means spending weeks shortlisting, interviewing and hiring a whole team of inbound specialists. Who, selfish beasts that they are, will probably want payment, perks and pensions.

An inbound marketing agency will bring a diverse array of ideas and fresh perspectives, combined with always-up-to-date knowledge of the industry’s latest changes and improvements.

They’ll want desks, too, so you’ll need to find space for them. And they’ll want to stay on top of the latest changes in SEO, PPC, CRO, growth-driven design, web development, social media and so on, so you’ll need to give them regular training.

As you’re probably appreciating, putting a team like this together takes time, money and office space. Whereas hiring an inbound marketing agency saves you committing resources across all three.

On top of this, an inbound marketing agency will bring a diverse array of ideas and fresh perspectives, combined with always-up-to-date knowledge of the industry’s latest changes and improvements.

And because inbound marketing relies on generating defined, measurable results – improved web traffic, social media engagement, conversion rates, sales – you can easily determine how effectively your marketing budget is being spent and what works and what doesn’t.

This is especially important when you learn that proving the ROI of marketing activity is the second-most-important marketing challenge, according to HubSpot.

Inbound marketing agencies do it quicker

Inbound marketing isn’t a quick fix. And if that’s what you’re after, it might be time to book that pricey TV slot or A4 print ad. (There’s nothing wrong with those, by the way; in fact, we highly recommend traditional marketing in conjunction with an ongoing inbound and digital marketing strategy.)

It’s not that you can’t see immediate results with inbound campaigns – you can. But successful inbound marketing means taking a longer-term approach, where content creation and an optimised digital presence is seen as an integral part and natural extension of your ongoing work.

Depending on your starting point, internal teams should typically allow for between one and two years before seeing game-changing results.

However, with a dedicated inbound marketing agency on your side, producing content that’ll resonate with your target audience, you should expect to see results in half the time.

In fact, as our Ultraframe case study shows (23 new business opportunities generated within two weeks), the right agency can achieve incredible results in next to no time.

At Woven, we help you scale your marketing, attract more qualified leads, close more deals and improve your customer retention.

Why go Woven?

Okay, time for the sales pitch. Woven is an award-winning inbound marketing agency with a full spectrum of strategists, SEO and PPC experts, content creators and account managers, all adept at planning, executing and optimising successful inbound campaigns.

The result? We help you scale your marketing, attract more qualified leads, close more deals and improve your customer retention.

Essentially, we believe in inbound marketing for others because it’s how we market ourselves. And, hey, if it’s good enough for us…

We’re also HubSpot inbound marketing specialists. As a HubSpot gold partner agency, we’re trusted by one of the world’s biggest inbound marketing platforms, HubSpot, to offer exceptional service to our clients.

Get in contact with our marketing team to see how our inbound experts can help you attract more prospects, generate more leads and keep customers coming back to you.

Speak to a member of the Woven team about Hubspot today Click Here to get in touch