As a VP of Marketing or Business Development Director your focus is on achieving sales goals. This requires laser attention on getting more leads in your sales pipeline. Whether you are a senior living organization, professional or healthcare business or a manufacturing company, all types of businesses need to have an effective inbound digital marketing program in order to achieve the goals.
Challenges Challenges Challenges
If you are like most companies today, you are faced with the challenge of either fully understanding how to develop, execute and manage an inbound digital marketing program or you don’t have the necessary internal resources to diligently manage a program. Thus your challenge becomes deciding between hiring an agency or a full-time marketing employee. While having an employee in-house may seem appealing, the truth is there are many benefits of partnering with an experienced inbound digital agency with proven results.
Partner Benefits
Strategic Expertise-A successful inbound digital program is based upon understanding how to gather, analyze and turn data into meaningful information-the strategy.
61% of companies engaged in inbound marketing outsource some element of their program. Why-Because they lack an effective strategy and internal expertise to achieve success. (Marketing Matters)
Specialists Matter- Inbound digital marketing requires a wide spectrum of specialized skills including: content development (writing, editing & publishing), SEO, social media, conversion optimization, PPC, email, nurturing/automation, web design, graphic design, etc. In addition, with an agency comes the value of synergy; more strategic creative minds solving sales and marketing challenges.
Productivity & Performance – More than likely the marketing specialist you hire will have other responsibilities in addition to their inbound digital marketing tasks. This means they will not have the ability to be as productive and dedicate the time required to manage an inbound digital program compared to a dedicated team deployed at an outside marketing agency.
Marketing Automation System-The main tool in top marketers’ toolbox is a platform for automating their team’s inbound marketing efforts. Marketing automation refers to software that automates your marketing for you. The software is designed to help you prioritize and execute your marketing tasks in a more streamlined and efficient way.
An inbound digital partner can help alleviate the pitfalls associated with selecting the wrong system or poor implementation of the system that will yield lackluster results. Implementing an automated marketing system requires an understanding of what to expect from a system, the complexity of use and how it can help you improve productivity and efficiency while generating quality leads.
According to Hubspot, those who saw a higher marketing ROI in 2014 were more likely to have used marketing automation software than not. 
Micro Strategy
Obviously you will make the decision that is best for your business. Yet don’t close the door to looking at all of your options to help you achieve the highest return on your inbound digital investment. Your internal staff only has a certain level of inbound digital knowledge simply because they have other responsibilities, plus the digital elements are constantly changing and require constant vigilance to stay on top of trends. Do you know all of the elements to consider when developing a strategy? Are you fully utilizing your marketing automation or CRM system? Is there an opportunity to optimize your content and get more conversions? Don’t overlook the positive benefits that come with outsourcing your inbound digital marketing program.
