inbound marketing strategy graphic
blog post | marketing

Inbound Marketing Companies: 8 Ways To Tell The Best From The Rest

Chris Mechanic Team Photo
Chris MechanicCEO & Co-Founder

What are the secrets of the best inbound marketing companies? What enables elite inbound marketing agencies to drive silly amount of traffic, CONVERT traffic into leads like it’s nobody’s business & CONVERT leads into customers like it’s going out of style?

Click on the video below to see Josh & Kristine revealing the juicy details to a room-full of WebMechanix hopefuls. (17 minutes)

NOTE: These WILL surprise you.

Don’t feel like watching? Here are the 8 things the world’s best inbound marketing companies do that the rest DON’T!

Focus unwaveringly on digital marketing ROI.

This is the most important! But all ROI is NOT created equal.

The BEST type of ROI, is one that “Snowballs,” meaning that it gets more & more juicy as time goes on.

Inbound marketing companies that suck will let you know they suck right off the bat. Just ask them what metrics they focus on most heavily.

If they start talking fancy-shmancy about SEO & social media metrics like traffic, ranking on specific keywords, increasing Facebook fans & Twitter followers, etc. and they don’t say anything about generating tons of warm leads, and they don’t bother to mention closing deals / making cold-hard cash… they’re not the inbound marketing agency for an ROI-conscious consumer like you.

Snowballing ROI is so important to us here at WebMechanix, that producing it for each & every customer is our singular, all-consuming mission.

Be an undercover (or better yet, overt) geek.

The fact is that inbound marketing companies should be data focused. There is so much data available that without being a geek, and having analytics tools that do the heavy lifting for you, it’s going to be hard to synthesize into actionable recommendations.

When you’re a geek, you LOVE the stuff.

It’s one thing to sit in a room & force yourself to comb through mountains of data. It’s quite another to joyously comb through data & tools like a true undercover geek. dream about it

Deliver legendary service everyday.

You will never by happy with a company that lacks excellent customer service.

Even if they’re posting good numbers, you’ll still have a bad taste in your mouth. The truth is that if a company provides lousy service, they don’t care about you. In order to be effective in this world that changes at the speed of light, you need a marketing company that acts like a true partner.

True partners care deeply about you.

They show this not just by answering calls & emails quickly, but by initiating the calls & emails. By issuing only recommendations that will truly & most beneficially help you. By displaying complete & total transparency at all times. By thinking & acting in your absolute best interest. By admitting when they’re unsure or don’t know something. By treating you with the utmost care & respect.

Be a true Learnaholic.

This one is simple, but so important that it’s impossible to underestimate.

Top firms are addicted to learning!

Their people go home after hours & read blog posts. Their leaders give training sessions everyday. They’ve got a badass blog where they publish valuable stuff for the masses. They educate you instead of overwhelming you with numbers & fancy talk.

SEO, PPC, social media & other inbound marketing tactics have one thing in common: They change at the speed of LIGHT!

Since you started reading this article, something has changed. Agencies that produce the best results are always adapting & changing for the times, and it shows.

If you’re agency is not a Learnaholic… you should fire them & hire WebMechanix. Yesterday’s techniques will not work tomorrow.

Leave your ego at the door.

Egos are very dangerous things.

They cause people to act foolishly. They cause people to fall in love with their own ideas, at the expense of the best ideas. They cause fights. Heck, they cause wars.

If an agency feels “high brow”, smells of pretention, or seems like they’re not listening… they may have an ego problem. Run for the hills.

Be like Nike & just do it

Ever worked with a company that talks a good game, but never really does much? Yea, they need to take a page from Nike’s book.

Be relentlessly persistent

Sometimes, things don’t work the way you thought they would.

The best inbound marketing companies know this. And while most of their plans pan out, they’re ready with a Plan B at all times.

“Give up” is not in the vocabulary. Regroup & try again, maybe. But refuse to stop trying.

This is a subtle way to guarantee success. If you never stop trying, you must succeed at some point.

Cultivate good karma & be a Mensch.

Mensch is a Yiddish term that means an upstanding, worthy, honorable human being. We got this courtesy of our friend & ingenius business consultant, Jon Goldman from Brand Launcher (who just happens to be a real Mensch :).

While this may not seem to have much to do with performance-based marketing, it absolutely does.

You need to have deep trust for your agency. You need to know they have your best interest in heart. Trust takes a long time to build & can be lost in seconds. Consistency is important.

The most fruitful relationships can take years to develop. Switching between inbound agencies can be an expensive & time-consuming endeavor.

How does your agency stack up?

If your inbound agency is slacking (or if you don’t yet have one), check us out.

We’ve been helping companies like yours generate massive, Snowballing ROI via inbound marketing since 2009 (that makes us about 50 in “Digital Years”)

We have dozens of happy customers & a 100% ROI-based money back guarantee to back it all up.

Click here, fill out the form & let’s get moving. Not quite ready? Learn more about inbound marketing services.

About the writer
Chris Mechanic Team Photo
Chris Mechanic | CEO & Co-Founder
Chris is co-founder at WMX. He spends his days coming up with big ideas, writing long memos & mastering the 3 Ps – planning, pitching & podcasting.

Most newsletters suck...

So while we technically have to call this a daily newsletter so people know what it is, it's anything but.

You won't find any 'industry standards' or 'guru best practices' here - only the real stuff that actually moves the needle.

You may be interested in:

Using Calculated Creativity to Drive Growth with Ryan Kam

Using Calculated Creativity to Drive Growth with Ryan Kam

Today’s guest is a dynamic, data-driven, and award-winning marketing exec with both public and pre-IPO experience in the B2B hyper-growth space. For more than 20 years, he’s developed brands, integrated marketing programs, and positioning to really drive business outcomes at companies like Salesforce, AppDynamics, Five9, and Logic Monitor.  Ryan Kam is the new CMO of...
Read this