Customers are getting smarter every day. It seems there exists this undercurrent of understanding that the companies delivering the best information on the front end will deliver the best product or service on the backend. Just this morning I was interested in doing a quick survey of the PR software industry. Vocus and Cision are leaders in this field, but I found this provocative and entertaining video put out by Cision discussing the ClueTrain Manifesto first published in 1999, with it's now famous '95 Social Media credos'. But the Cision video was just an appetizer for more inbound marketing content they provided, each pulling me into their funnel a bit further, including a Tip Sheet, a White Paper and an hour long interview of 15 industry influencers on the future of media. At this point, Cision was the industry thought leader in my mind. If I were to buy today, guess who I'd probably be going with?

Even as you read this blog, your potential customers are online looking for content about products or services just like yours that they plan to buy. Consumers want timely and relevant information that they can eagerly consume to help them make their own decisions. Will they find you or your competitors? Will your competitors do a better job of providing helpful, informative and engaging content to win market share?

Inbound Marketing Pricing, Staying Dry While Riding The Wave

Understanding your options is the first step to making a decision. The inbound formula is simple: attract targeted traffic, provide content they love, generate leads, continue to provide content they love, convert, analyze and repeat.

So let's assume you're already sold on the powerful benefits of Inbound Marketing. If you are a small or medium size business lacking an in house marketing function, you have two options: 1) hire a marketing department and train them on inbound marketing; or 2) employ an inbound marketing agency.

This is where you need to compare the cost of a marketing department versus that of an inbound agency.

Marketing Department Cost Center

A marketing department can be a tremendous asset, but also rather expensive depending on your industry, company size and organizational structure. Smaller enterprises may have one or two marketing employees, and larger companies may have a dozen or more marketing employees on staff.

Here are the critical roles that must be filled in your inbound marketing department:

• Chief Marketing Officer
• Web Developer / Designer
• Hubspot Trained Marketer
• Search Marketer (SEO)
• Content Creation Staff
• Social Media Director
• Creative Staff
• Graphic Designer
• Videography Staff

Let's say you're able to hire just one employee to handle each of these functions for an average salary of $50,000 per employee...you will spend $500,000 per year. You will also have to include the following costs: FICA, FUTA, Workmen's Compensation Insurance, Medical Insurance, and Life Insurance.

For most companies, it’s also reasonable to add other benefits like 401K and Profit Sharing plans at about 35% of the employee’s base salary before other perks—bonuses, Sick Days, and Vacations. Then there are the expenses of outsourcing certain tasks and on-boarding the new staff to ensure they adapt to the company’s inbound marketing strategy.

Inbound Marketing Pricing Value

Multiple studies document the growth in ROI experienced by transitioning resources away from traditional outbound marketing to inbound marketing. As more customers move online, businesses hire inbound marketing agencies to increase their visibility and energize their lead generation efforts.

When evaluating inbound marketing pricing, you will need to be sure to compare apples to apples, as every agency packages their services a little bit differently. One of the most important elements is the different types of content creation and the amount of content creation that is included in the monthly retainer. There are several different types of content to consider:

1. Traffic generation -- web content, blogs and social media

2. Lead generation -- landing pages with e-Books and white papers

3. Email campaigns -- for nurturing leads through the sales funnel

SQmedia has always realized the importance of video marketing to the inbound marketing model. Video acts as the engagement tool that glues the visitor to the site once he arrives, and allows him to quickly gather complex thoughts and ideas, which is what customer experience optimization is all about. Because it is so vital to the overall conversion marketing strategy, we include it in our retainer packages. Not that many agencies do.

You will find that most inbound agencies have a previous specialty they were engaged in prior to becoming an inbound agency, such as advertising, PR or graphic design. Many have a web development background such as SQmedia. We also bring a video production and business development background to the mix.

Our diversified business model includes a full-service video production house that manages all aspects of video production--creative, writing, direction, production and editing. These premium videos focus on demonstrating your business expertise in your industry niche. Our business development approach enables us to get to know the corporate stories that not only translate themselves well textually, but through the video camera lens as well. This creates the engagement factor, or CXO that your customers deserve, that the search engines reward and that your bottom line requires.

{We would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this subject. Please feel free to start a conversation and or share this with your network below.}