When you can’t see all your customers and clients you have to make sure to put in a little extra effort to give them an incentive to choose you over your competitors.  Many, if not most, company’s interactions with their clients are conducted on a remote basis.  Due to phones, emails or simply because of your website, the personal face-to-face customer relations marketing strategy has gone the way of the Dodo bird. 

As online marketing becomes a necessity for businesses, there are a number of agencies with self-proclaimed "social media experts" on staff to outsource this aspect of your marketing efforts to. An experienced and reputable inbound marketing agency can help to ensure that online marketing for your business is implemented efficiently and strategically to drive more qualified traffic to your website. 

Of course, you shouldn't hire just anyone for the job, which is why we wanted to share some helpful tips to consider when hiring an inbound marketing agency courtesy of HubSpot:

1. Does the agency practice what they preach? For example, if an inbound marketing agency prides itself on creating and maintaining an active social media presence and optimized website for its customers, you would expect that the agency regularly shares content with its followers via social media and is one of the top results on a search engine results page, right? Do your research simply by typing in the agency's name in a search engine. Do you like what you see?
2. Does your prospective agency have an understanding of your goals? Do they take the time to listen to what you want and customize in an inbound marketing strategy or do they just provide you with a standard package? Make sure that you clarify your expectations of the agency upfront before cutting any checks.
3. Which services does the agency provide in-house, and do they outsource any of their services? You will want the agency to be upfront with you about this in order to build a trustworthy relationship.
4. Is the agency up-to-date on your industry's latest trends? To truly be a valuable partner, your inbound marketing agency should keep you up to date on news and trends instead of the other way around. Ask which publications they read and what type of experience they have with working with customers in your industry. 
5. Would the agency bring value to your business or just take your money? An agency that is concerned about maintaining its reputation will be upfront with you and should let you know if they are not going to be able to deliver the quality of service that you need. Even if an agency admits to not having a certainly capability, it can actually be a good sign as they want to be completely honest with you versus give you a sales pitch that you will ultimately be disappointed with.

Hopefully, these questions will provide you with valuable factors to consider when interviewing inbound marketing agencies.

Have we left any of your questions on the table? If so, what do you think is important to ask a prospective inbound marketing partner?

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For the past five years, HubSpot has performed an annual review of inbound marketing trends and tactics to help gauge where the industry is headed and highlight areas of opportunity. Inbound marketing can be best defined as a holistic approach to marketing that utilizes strategies and techniques to help drive a specified target audience to a particular business. 

The 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report prepared by HubSpot includes information compiled from over 3300 marketers from 128 different countries. While you can download the 164-page report and read it in its entirety, we wanted to provide you with a summarized version of the current state of inbound marketing. And, since your inbound marketing agency should be a straight shooter and a trusted partner, we're going to tell you the good, the bad, and the downright ugly:

So, let's start with the good....

• 58 percent of the businesses surveyed practice some type of inbound marketing (i.e.: Search Engine Optimization, social media, and blogging).
• 54 percent of businesses agree that they generate more leads from inbound marketing tactics versus traditional outbound marketing (i.e.: direct mail, TV commercials, and cold calling).
• 48 percent of businesses have plans to increase spending for inbound marketing in 2013, which makes this the third consecutive year where businesses have increased their inbound marketing budgets.
• Inbound marketing tactics are 100 percent more effective with website conversions than outbound marketing efforts.

Now for the bad....

The SEO world is constantly changing to accommodate our increasingly digital world. While traditional inbound marketing tactics such as indexing, link building, and on-page content is incredibly effective today at driving qualified traffic, it's important to stay ahead of the next wave of SEO trends.

Search Engine Watch recently highlighted some areas where brands should focus on expanding their SEO efforts to be successful in the future. Some may refer to these areas of opportunity as "new school SEO," and we've shared a few of these areas for growth with you below:

• Local Search: Did you know that over 70 percent of web searches are for local businesses? Additionally, 59 percent of consumers admit to using major search engines such as Google at least once a month to find local businesses. According to Search Engine Watch, ad spending on local search is anticipated to grow from $1.2 billion in 2012 to $9 billion by 2017. Investing in local search is low hanging fruit for your business, and a thorough evaluation of your local, GPS, and business listing presence should be completed to ensure that you are making the most of your SEO strategy.
• Mobile Optimization: Perhaps you have heard of the popular buzzword SoLoMo? Essentially, this concept is gaining momentum with the increase of smartphone owners. According to comScore, nearly 130 million people in the U.S. owned a smartphone as of January 2013, and this figure is only going to increase. Going hand-in-hand with local search, your business can't afford to not have optimized mobile landing pages.
• Content Strategy: Do you know the keywords that your target audience is most commonly typing into a search engine to arrive at your webpage or your competitors? Also, what type of content does your consumer find to be the most engaging? Strategically planning out the content that you create based around these parameters is necessary for great SEO. Be sure to check out our recent post about social media tracking tools that you can't live without to assist in content creation that will make an impact.
• Apps Integration: We live in a multi-device type of world, which means that your consumer is likely using a smartphone or tablet with apps. While offering an app for your business may not lead to a drastic jump in revenue, it can help to add value to your business by making it easier for your target audience to find you online and make purchases using a handheld device.

Other ways that "new school SEO" is impacting content creation includes the integration of storytelling into content production. Consumers of today and the future want to be able to connect with brands online, and telling a story to communicate a point is an excellent way to actively engage with this audience. The quality of content has come a long way, which is why many businesses are choosing to outsource their content marketing efforts to an agency that is experienced in crafting optimized content.

All in all, the advancements in "new school SEO" are happening in an effort to build stronger relationships with prospective and existing customers. Taking a moment to give your business a "new school SEO" audit can help to set your business up for success in the future.

Are you currently taking advantage of some of the "new school SEO" practices to help your business stay ahead?

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In order to implement an effective inbound marketing strategy, you need to be able measure your success. Fortunately, in the content marketing world, there are a number of tools available to help you track your progress and make necessary tweaks along the way. The three most common ways to review your strategy is to take a look at sales revenue, leads, and cost per acquisition as they pertain to your inbound marketing efforts; however, this broad information can sometimes be misleading. 

To be the most definitive with measuring your online marketing success, we're sharing the 10 most important marketing key performance indicators (KPI) that you should be tracking:

1. Sales Revenue: While you may be placing a lot of energy around an inbound marketing campaign, can you pinpoint how much revenue this strategy has brought to your company? To calculate your sales revenue earned from inbound marketing efforts, use this calculation:             (Total annual sales) - (Total revenue from customers acquired through online marketing)
2. Cost Per Lead: You need to know how much it is costing you on average to acquire a new customer via online marketing.
3. Customer Value: Online marketing offers a unique opportunity for you to stay in front of your customer and encourage future purchases without being invasive. Use this formula to calculate the lifetime value of a customer:                                                                                         (Average sale per customer)*(Average number of purchases a customer makes each year)*(Average time in months or years that a typical customer is retained)
4. Online Marketing ROI: Using analytics on a monthly and annual basis to track your online marketing ROI is essential for shaping your future marketing activity.
5. Traffic to Lead Ratio: It is important to understand where traffic to your business is coming from, whether its through organic search or referrals from existing customers. Your online visitor conversion rate should be between 2 and 4 percent.
6. Lead to Customer Ratio: Once qualifying an online visitor as a lead, you need to be able to track how many leads you are able to actually close. Sales Qualified Leads are online visitors that filled out forms on the "contact us" landing page, and Sales Accepted Leads are leads that you are actively working to convert to customers. You should evaluate both ratios to determine how effective you are at converting new customers.
7. Landing Page Conversion Rates: You should be able to convert 10 to 20 percent of customers that provide information on your landing pages.
8. Organic Search: You need to know how much of your online traffic is attributed to organic search. This means knowing the number of leads due to organic search, the number of acquired customers due to organic search, the percentage of traffic related to branded keywords, and the percentage of traffic due to unbranded keywords.
9. Social Media Reach: How effective is your social media strategy with converting customers? You should know the number of qualified leads earned from each social media channel, the number of converted customers from each social media channel, and the percentage of online visitors that are directed to your webpage due to social media.
10. Mobile Traffic Conversion Rates: We've talked about the buzz on SoLoMo, which is why it is important to track leads and converted customers due to mobile traffic. It's also powerful to know the conversion rates related to your mobile optimized landing pages.

While there are a number of key performance indicators to track when it comes to inbound marketing, focusing on these 10 can provide you with a true indication of how you are performing and highlight areas for improvement.

In an effort to make the most of your online marketing efforts, you need to invest in a website for your business that will help drive marketing qualified lead (MQL) traffic to your page and encourage reconversions. Partnering with an experienced inbound marketing agency can help you optimize your website to assist with the lead conversion process. We’re sharing some additional ways that you can enhance your website to help improve its ability to convert online visitors to customers:

We often talk about ways to be more effective with your inbound marketing efforts; however, just as important as implementing a well-devised plan is measuring your success. Fortunately, there are a number of social media tracking tools available to track and analyze your various web and social metrics. In a recent article in The Globe and Mail, some successful young entrepreneurs outlined some of the their favorite social media tracking tools, and we wanted to share a few with you below:

For most companies, implementing a marketing strategy is an exciting, promising time albeit a long road. However, with Inbound Marketing, we've provided 10 tips to marketing strategies that provide quick results. For the first five, refer to our blog 10 Tips to Quick Inbound Marketing Results

Social media has ushered us into an age where most of us are connected to each other and to businesses on a multi-platform level.  If you have Facebook you probably have Twitter.  If you have Twitter, you probably have Instagram.  If you have Instagram, you probably have a blog. And if you have a blog (or, at the very least follow one), you probably have LinkedIn.

The world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is constantly evolving, and long gone are the days of creating webpages specifically for search engines and link building without the consideration of the content being linked to. In order to drive organic leads to your website in today's day and age, you need to create high quality content and more of it to implement a successful SEO strategy.

How has the standard of content changed?
For the best results, you need to create original content that is engaging, relevant, and resourceful to your target audience on a regular basis. Search engine algorithms are designed to rank new and fresh content higher on results pages, requiring businesses that want to rank well to make a full-time commitment to an SEO strategy. Search engines consider the quality of the content shared to be just as important with how often it is created. Ideally, the content that you create should entice your fans to share it socially with their networks, therefore helping to expand your online reach.

What type of content should you be creating?
This is probably one of the most common questions that businesses have, and the answer is that it all depends on your industry and target audience. For example, if you are marketing to a younger demographic, using images and "cool" infographics filled with need-to-know information can be extremely effective in increasing shares of your content online.

A helpful tip for assisting with your content marketing strategy is to look at what your competitors are doing online. Which keywords is your target audience typing into search engines to be directed to your competitors' websites? What type of content are they sharing and which content seems to be getting the best results in terms of "likes”, shares, and engagement? By performing a thorough competitive analysis, your goal is to look for gaps for content that works.

Fortunately, you have some helpful Internet marketing tools at your fingertips to assist your business with its SEO strategy, and we wanted to highlight a few of them for you below:

• SEMrush: By visiting this website, you can search for your business or lookup your competitors to see the amount of keywords they rank for and the overall search traffic that they receive each month. Most specifically, you should take a look at how individual keywords have ranked and the types of "supporting content" that appears most often.
• OpenSiteExplorer: To help you build the strongest links, this Internet marketing tool takes a look at what your competitors top link destination pages are. Essentially, which pages have the most links linking back to them?
• MutualMind: To find out what type of content is most appealing to your target audience, use this social listening tool to search for your competitors and find out what type of content is creating the most noise among your prospective customers.

All in all, making you aware of the type of content that is most appealing to your target audience is essential to implementing a successful SEO strategy. Creating relevant and informative content that your target audience finds meaningful is part one of the equation, and knowing which keywords and other metrics that search engines are looking for helps to optimize your results.