Are you looking for an inbound marketing agency that can help you dominate your competition on the web and help you grow your business? Make sure you take a look at the list below – your agency should be providing many, if not all of these inbound marketing activities for you.
Creating Content: A good Inbound Marketing Agency will be creating content for you, but will also help you leverage existing content or content that you will be creating on your own.
1. Writing Blog Articles: Blogging is the most critical piece for driving new and repeat traffic to your website. New content allows you to target new keywords and increase the page count on your website – both help bring in more traffic.
2. Creating an Editorial Calendar: It’s important to see where you’re going and what content is coming down the pipe. You should have a strategy in place for targeting keywords now and over the next few months.
3. Building out Website Pages: Creating new pages on your website is going to increase the authority of your web presence. Make sure you’re agency is building your page count over time.
4. Photos: Your agency should help leverage photos in a couple of different places: your website and social media networks. Imagery can be very powerful for some industries.
5. Video: If your agency isn’t shooting video for you, they should be helping you optimize it and promote it. They should also be suggesting ways that you could incorporate video into your inbound marketing strategy.
6. Webinars: Webinars and seminars can be a great way to drive higher levels of engagement among website visitors and prospects. Your agency can help you create landing pages and also promote these events.
7. Presentations: Maybe you have a presentation you’ve done in the past. Your marketing agency can help you turn this into a valuable download for your web visitors.
8. Press Releases: Press releases are great ways to drive more links and traffic to your website. Your agency should be writing press releases for you periodically.
Optimizing Content: Optimization is one of the most important parts of the process. If you or your agency go to the trouble of creating some great content, you want the right people to find it!
9. Doing Keyword Research: This is the first and most critical step in optimizing content and your agency should be experienced in researching and selecting the right keywords for your business.
10. Optimizing Page Titles: The page title shows up in search results and needs to reflect the content on the page. Your agency should be doing keyword research (above) and identifying the best Page Titles for all of your pages.
11. Optimizing URLs for Website Pages/Blog Posts: This is often overlooked among SEO companies and marketers in general. However, it is one of the most important places to include a keyword.
12. Optimizing Images: Yes, images can be optimized as well…and they should be! IMG0457.jpeg doesn’t tell Google what your picture is and since Google can’t read images, you need to include keywords in your images as well. Your agency should be taking care of that for you as a best practice.
13. Optimizing Headers: Your H1 tag or Heading for the page should also include your keyword. It doesn’t have to sound awkward, but you want to include it here as well.
14. Optimizing Body Text: Google looks at the text on your page (whether this is obvious or not, so you should include your keyword at least once on the page. If your agency is spamming the keyword in the body text, but not including it in the URL…run!
15. Optimizing Meta Data: Meta data is still important. Google may not weigh meta keywords as much as they used to, but the meta description is still important and these are good best practices to follow.
16. Adding Tags to Blog Posts: Tagging your blog articles with relevant keywords and topics not only helps you rank for those words, but it is an extremely valuable step for user experience. Help your readers find the content they are looking for by using tags.
17. Adding Internal Links to Relevant Content: Adding links in your content to other pages on your website help Google identify what your pages are about and they also help your visitor navigate more effectively.
18. Building Inbound Links: Your agency should be helping you build links in to your website. The primary method should be creating really valuable content.
Promoting Content: Promoting content means getting your blog articles, videos, images, webinars, and anything else out in the social media world. Depending on the type of content created, it should be shared on different social networks.
19. Facebook: Almost 1 billion users…you should be sharing your content here. It’s a no brainer.
20. Twitter: Sharing blog articles, images and links to great content help build your expertise and show Google that your content is important.
21. LinkedIn: Your agency should be helping you optimize your profile, but also be sharing content and participating in groups.
22. Google+: An absolute must. Sharing content and getting visitors to share content on Google + will help you bring in more traffic.
23. Pintrest: It’s super hot right now, but it also makes a lot of sense for most businesses. Find ways to put great visuals out there and start pinning!
24. YouTube: Seeing as it is the 2nd largest search engine (after Google), you want to make sure your video is posted here and optimized so that the right people can find it. Your agency should be helping you accomplish this.
25. Creating a Social Media Calendar: It’s important to have a plan for sharing your content. You can always modify the plan based on real time events, but you need to be active and consistent when it comes to social media. Is your agency creating a social media calendar?
26. Sending Email Campaigns: Email isn’t dead. It can be create for nurturing prospects and leads that have already engaged with you in some way.
27. Running Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns: Paid ads can be great for promoting a piece of content or a download. Remember – your agency should be focusing on lead generation, not just traffic.
Conversion: My personal favorite…converting traffic into leads. This is one of the most essential pieces of the process and your agency should be helping you develop capture tools and items that appeal to your target marketing. They should also help you move leads down the sales funnel so that you can increase your lead to customer conversion rates.
28. Promoting Events Online: Do you have events sporadically throughout the year? Your agency should be helping you promote these events online. Offline events make great blog posts and social media content.
29. Creating Offers: Offers are absolutely critical to lead generation. Are you appealing to different parts of the sales funnel with your offers? Your agency should be able to educate you on this and help you maximize lead conversion.
30. Creating Landing Pages: Landing pages are focused on converting leads. They should be simple and effective.
31. Designing Call to Action (CTA) Buttons: Does your agency have a good eye for design? Are they creating CTA buttons that engage visitors and drive to those landing pages?
32. Creating Lead Nurturing Campaigns: Once you’ve captured some lead information, it is important to stay in touch with that lead. Your agency should lay out a plan for moving that lead down the sales funnel through email.
33. A/B Testing Call to Action Buttons: A/B testing where possible is essential to improving your overall website effectiveness. A/B testing CTA buttons lets you figure out what is drawing in more click to your landing pages.
Analytics: If you’re not measuring, how do you know what’s working. Your agency should be measuring key statistics about your website and inbound marketing process so that your website is constantly being refined.
34. Examining Landing Page Conversion Rates: This is a critical analytics measurement. Depending on the value of the offers on the landing page, you’ll see different conversion rates. Your agency should help you maximize conversion by testing offers and requirements for those offers.
35. Measuring Organic Traffic: This is one of the best measures of your success over time. You always want to be increasing the amount of free traffic to your site. It also should be the traffic you have the most control over in terms of relevancy because you’ll be targeting the right keywords.
36. Tracking Overall Traffic: Free traffic is great, but you also want to make sure you’re increasing your total traffic. Paid search, direct traffic, social media and traffic from other websites are great sources of additional traffic.
37. Tracking Leads: This is critical. Is your SEO or inbound marketing agency focused on lead generation? You should know exactly how many leads your website generates each month.
38. Helping You Analyze Leads: Getting leads through your website is a great feeling (especially if you’re never experienced that before), but you should also be able to see which leads are warmer or more engaged. Make sure you select an agency that will help you with this.
39. Tracking Sales Results: In addition to leads, your agency should be helping you track sales. However, they’ll need your help reporting back. They can’t close the business for you, but by working together, you and your agency can see exactly what you’re getting from your inbound marketing efforts.
40. Providing Reports: A good inbound marketing agency will give you monthly reports on overall progress. Depending on the activity level that occurs on your website, they may need to give you weekly or bi-weekly reporting. The reports ensure that you are improving or they point out areas for improvement.
41. Tracking Completed Tasks and Activities: This can come in the form of a separate report or it can be included with the monthly reports. Transparency is really important and your agency should be letting you know what they are doing on a monthly basis to improve your web presence.
Other: Well, let’s be honest…there’s some stuff that doesn’t fit into the above categories, but they are certainly important!
42. Setting up Your Google Places Account: If you’re not getting found in the local search, that’s not a good sign. Make sure to ask your agency about your Google Place Page and make sure the agency is helping you put a plan in place to get reviews.
43. Submitting Your Website to Major Directories: This is a great way to pick up some additional inbound links and your agency should have a list of some directories to list your website in.
44. Providing Website Support: In addition to all the inbound marketing activities your agency is providing, they should also be able to make modifications on your website and help you get it up and running if it goes down.
45. Responding to Your Requests QUICKLY: There’s nothing more frustrating than having an issues with your website and not being able to get it fixed or resolved quickly. Your agency should be able to respond to your emails in less than 4 hours, but certainly no more than 24 hours. Is your agency quick to respond and let them know they’re working?
46. Scheduling Phone Calls to Track Progress: Regular check-ins via the phone is extremely important. It’s important to develop a relationship with your agency and if you can’t meet in person, you should be speaking regularly by phone. Bi-weekly seems to work well and it gives you and the agency a chance to get caught up on important items.
47. Integrating Your Offline Marketing Channels with Your Website: If you do any offline marketing, your agency should be able to help building landing pages, mobile websites or track phone numbers. If you’re driving people to the website, you should know where they are coming from and which visitors turn into leads.
48. Learning Everything They Can About Your Business: Your agency should be your marketing partner. They should ultimately behave like they’re a part of your business. Over time, they should be making continued efforts to learn more and more about your business.
49. Changing Course When Things Aren’t Working: Even after an initial strategy session and a course of action has been laid, sometimes things just aren’t working quite right. Your agency should recognize this and make adjustments.
50. Helping You Achieve Your Marketing and Sales Goals: At the end of the day, your agency should be helping you achieve your marketing and sales goals. They were hired to help you grow your business. Follow their lead and pitch in where you can.
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Blog Post Written by Spencer Powell
Spencer is the Inbound Marketing Director at TMR Direct. Spencer specializes in helping clients create and execute effective inbound marketing campaigns.