What Exactly Does an Inbound Marketing Company Do?

Have you ever wondered what an inbound marketing company does all day? We have no idea what other companies are doing (maybe they sit around eating tiny sandwiches and talking smack about people who win the lottery, who knows), but we can certainly give you a window into what WE do here at p80. 

Our approach to inbound marketing aims to grow businesses using the tried-and-true tactics practiced by the best of the best in our industry. We're just a lot more affordable.

Without further ado, in no particular order, here's a look at what exactly this particular inbound marketing company does.

Website Design & Optimization

One of the most common requests we get is for website redesign. There are still quite a few people who are just now discovering the value of a modern, optimized website. We're partnered with some very talented web designers who can make custom designs or tweak templates to capture the soul of a business.

When we take on a big redesign project, we spend a lot of time transferring media from a previous website to the new site, testing testing testing the new site, filling out content, setting up CTAs and landing pages, fixing bugs, getting testimonials and other customer proof, and much, much more. 

The site also needs to be optimized, so we work on keyword placements, alt tags, 301 redirects, XML files, triggered events, and so on.

SEO/PPC, Ads, & Keyword Research

Our guy Josh is the SEO and Google expert. He spends the majority of his time making sure our clients' sites are meeting all current SEO standards and best practices.

Here he is under a bush:

SEO is a constantly changing landscape. Google releases algorithm changes every few days. Some are tiny and barely noticeable, others are huge and impact the entire SEO economy. Both Panda and Penguin affected websites across the globe (though, theoretically, if you're practicing ethical SEO, your sites shouldn't be hit too hard by algorithm changes). 

We also use SEO intelligence to craft Google ads, paid social ads, and some other forms of advertising. (Paid advertising can be a valuablepart of inbound marketing as long as it's useful and relevant to your customers.)

Content Writing

Content marketing and writing is the basis for the entire inbound marketing system (that obviously means it's the most important job).  I, the Content Person, spend the majority of my time writing, editing, and managing content. 

Content is more than words - I also handle photo and video, infographics, social media, and other forms of content for p80 and for clients. 

The most consistent theme with all of our clients and prospects is a lack of time to produce valuable, high-quality content. They simply don't have enough time in the day to run their businesses and write anything beyond bare-bones website copy. We remove that weight from their shoulders and give them content that attracts prospects and generates leads.

Team Meetings

Donny, our captain and fearless leader, keeps us on track and in line. He throws out new ideas throughout the week, listens to our suggestions, and we meet once a week to discuss the new ideas and project progress. Donny also manages the "behind the curtain" business stuff, our IT branch OmnisTech, and does other business owner-president-boss stuff.

Here he is sniffing some flowers:

Sometimes he lets us suggest our own business ideas, like weekly donut meetings for morale purposes.

R&D

One of the most important things we do is keep up to date with inbound marketing best practices and apply them to the work we're doing for our clients. We spend some time every week examining metrics, expert predictions, and industry trends. We use that information to brainstorm new ideas for ads, campaigns, keywords, and content.

It helps to have years of experience behind us - we understand not only what the trends and best practices are, but also how to apply them. That's the hardest part.

Analytics

Marketing is nothing without measurement. Analytics are the only way to assess results from any campaign - one reason why we prefer inbound marketing. With inbound, everything is measurable. How do you know who's looking at your billboards, or if they're generating any proper leads? You don't. Because you can't. There's no way to measure it.

When we analyze our marketing efforts, we have accurate numbers to guide us in our next steps. Google AdWords, CRM systems, CMS, social media analytics - the metrics are endless.

That's how we know our strategies are working and our clients are getting results.

HubSpot

(Stressed out about your online marketing strategy (or lack thereof)? Apply one dose of HubSpot directly to your website to see amazing results. 

HubSpot is a pretty neat pile of services. We use them for our own site, and many of our clients are seeing the value in its ease of use, trackability, and transparency. 

When we first meet with our clients, most of them don't even have a proper CRM, nevermind the sad status of their website. They've got a list of customer emails in a Word document or a spreadsheet, and there's no way to track engagement or send out email blasts without sorting through them all and it's a Big Damn Hassle. They've got three active pages on their website and an average of two impressions a month. Talk about dropping the ball.

(Sound familiar? If you or someone you care about has a three-page website and stores customer emails in Microsoft Word, please contact us so we can stage an intervention.)

So we suggest adopting HubSpot to make everyone's life easier. It gives our clients a visual analysis of website and customer activity. It makes editing the website a thousand times easier, and it takes a lot of weight off their shoulders. 

There You Have It

That's what we do here at protocol 80. We're just a bunch of fun, good-looking people who want to help grow your business. If you like the cut of our jib, we're happy to work with you. Just give us a call or shoot us an email.

Cheers!