Inbound Marketing or Lead Generation Agencies specialise in helping businesses generate revenue from their websites. However, hiring a lead generation agency isn't for everyone. In much the same way as some businesses like to build their own websites, something that seldom goes well, so it goes when it comes to making that website work for the business.
If you'd prefer to build your own team here's an overview of the skills you're going to need to stand a chance of success.
Let's Set The Scene
I'm guessing you know that your website has the potential to generate business. Like most people you probably use Google™ when you're looking for products and services for home or work and you assume people do the same when they're looking for your products and services. You probably also realise If they're not finding you, you're missing out. I realise I'm not telling you anything you don't know here.
If you've decided that, for whatever reason but probably cost, hiring an agency is not for you, perhaps you've reviewed website and inbound marketing costs and decided it's not something you can afford, then you're going to need to build your own team to deliver what your business needs.
So What Skills Do The Team Need?
Now the scene's been set, let's look at the skills the team's going to need.
- Strategic Thinking - If you're going to generate leads from your website you're going to need a strategy. Jumping straight into tactics (writing blogs, creating videos etc) is a bad idea. You need someone who'll be able to step back from that, see the big picture, know what success looks like and how to achieve it.
- Marketing Skills - A key aspect of a strategic plan is developing a detailed understanding of who's going to buy your products and services. You need to know your market.
- Design Skills - The web is a visual medium which means design plays a big part in most aspects of what you're going to do.
- Coding/Development - Creating useful widgets like our lead generation calculator can be a great way of attracting prospects.
- Writing - Fabulous content is at the heart of web based lead gen. You're going to need to enjoy writing and be reasonably good at it.
- Data Analysis - It's important the team can review data and use it to improve what you're doing. Inbound marketing provides ongoing feedback so you know what's working at what isn't.
How's This Looking So Far?
Are those agency costs still looking steep? Are you still confident you can create your own team more cost efficiently than the costs involved hiring an agency? I'm thinking not, but I would say that wouldn't I. You could even argue there's no risk to simply having a go, what's the worst that could happen? Well, read on and I'll tell you.
Consider The Opportunity Cost Of Getting It Wrong
Being an inbound marketing company we get a lot of enquiries from businesses large and small who've got their whole on-line strategy spectacularly wrong. Agencies like us spend a lot of time picking up the pieces of failed websites, failed Google Ads campaigns and singularly parlous search engine optimisation or SEO projects.
The opportunity cost of these failed projects can be measured in cold hard cash, and I'm not talking about the wages of the people who didn't deliver the goods. Using tools like SEM Rush you can see the value of the traffic your competitors are getting.
To illustrate this point, whilst protecting the innocent consider the following. Mr "X" recently signed up for one of our great free e-books. I investigated. Turns out he works for a company based quite near to us, a company in fact who we spoke to 2 or 3 years ago about a web project. His job description is "Digital Marketer". He's been with the company for over a year. I'm going to assume he's on a salary of between £30k & £40k.
I punched the companies website into SEM Rush and to my surprise, the value of the traffic their website receives is £1. That means it would cost £1 per month to buy, using AdWords, the traffic they receive through organic search. Not great.
Incidently, if you want to see what yours looks like, you can try the tool by typing your domain name in the box below.
Over To You
So it's your call. If you think you've for what it takes to propel your website into a lead generation machine then go for it. The prize is an economic moat around your business that will lock your competitors out and drive business in. But remember, you're always 6 to 9 months away from success and 6 months wasted means you'll still be 6 to 9 months out.
