What advice do you have for an entrepreneur creating an Inbound Marketing Agency (the second one in my country)?

Hi,

I'm Ed. I'm Head of demand generation for a Uk startup. I've built our blog and academy area from 0 to over 20,000 hits per month generating over 500 leads/month.

This sounds like a brilliant idea. Especially in a market where it's not so crowded. I'd say the key points are to:

1.) Make sure you fully understand the companies you are working with so that you can create really high quality content

2.) Do some work for free initially to get some really great case studies. You will need the social proof to convert clients.

3.) Make sure you track the ROI on your content marketing as closely as possible. In the end this is what is important. Don't focus on traffic, focus on quality leads.

4.) Make sure your content marketing has a very clear next step. This may be a CTA at the end of blog posts or a drip campaign with other relevant marketing after someone has signed up for an ebook and given your email.

5.) Don't just focus on the content. Design is extremely important.

6.) Always spend time on marketing your content. Many people forget to do this after sending a huge amount of time creating the content in the first place. You have to work at it to get great content seen.

There's a great company in the UK called distilled that are hired to do a lot of really creative content marketing for companies around the world. I'd check them out.

Let me know if you're interested in chatting further and we can potentially set up a call. Good luck!

Ed

I also own a remote marketing agency with inbound marketing component. I'm responsible for most of the business development, so I think I know enough to give suggestions (to reduce the amount of deadends that you have to face).

Given your market is not overcrowded, your social proof at previous startup with excellent results, you have experienced copywriters in your team, and managed projects for bigger companies, I don't think you need more social proof from free work locally to succeed. (only offer it to one or two if this is indeed a problem, and your previous successes are disregarded by your market, but this rarely happens unless you haven't proved your expertise enough in solving their problems)

Here's the order of business development tactics I would use in your situation:

1a) Direct mail outreach - I assume Chile has a postal service, right? If so, this can cut through a lot of noise (digital marketing, cold-calls, print advertising) while getting their dedicated attention if done properly. I would study campaigns like this ( http://www.getvyral.com/2010/07/dan-kennedy-3-letter-sequence-magnetic.html ) to get your prospects' attention. That said, you gotta have the right message, prospect list, and distribution channel.

1b) Cold-canvassing / cold-calling - This is an alternative to 1b, especially for less sophisticated markets. If your market is not crowded, you won't be in danger of appearing desperate pitching your services this way. As soon as more players enter the market, if you're perceived as desperate, it will be harder to get the sale. Even if you get the sale, your profit margin will likely be eaten away.

2) Strategic alliances - If you're starting out, you likely won't have a ton of capital available to buy advertising and send direct mail. You can work together perhaps with TV, radio, and print advertising people to make marketing campaigns work together between all the different channels. The possibilities of partners are endless. This is done by Fortune 500 companies all the time.

3) Online advertising networks - If you have some cash to spend, I would suggest building the assets in this order (social media advertising network, retargeting display advertising network, search engine marketing). The former would be more economical right now to test your funnel and offers, and you would want them tweaked properly before attempting to make SEM pay. Keep in mind, even though people searching for marketing help on search engines have urgency, they may be struggling financially (to the point of unable to hire you!).

Remember, if you have a good number of retainer clients on your books, and you price properly, it wold solve a lot of problems you will face later.

That's all I can think of. If you'd like me to clarify any of my feedback for your situation, we can book a call and walk you through the process.

Hello and congratulations! I have been operating my agency for about 15 years and I wish this type of platform was available then. It would have saved me years of wasted time and countless dollars.

First, know who you are targeting and who you are not. It will be tempting to take the wrong projects and lose sight of the right ones.

Second, know what you do and what you don't do. If you are focused on driving visitors through content, don't dabble in web design. Stick to your core competencies.

Third, know your internal processes for 1) attracting new customers, 2) your sales process, 3) your contract process, and 4) your on-boarding and reporting

These are the areas most agencies fail, yet are highly predictable and avoidable.

I'd love to help further. Let's setup a call!

One of the crucial things in Inbound Marketing is “Brand.” You never market a product; you market a brand. Therefore, what is critical is that you develop a clear understanding within your organisation as to its personality and values, and then ensure these are apparent both visually (logo, twitter background, email template, etc), and in your actions as you establish your online reputation.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath