Good, better, best. Platinum, silver, gold. Many HubSpot agencies currently have inbound marketing plans or have experimented with them. Certainly, signing up for a marketing plan can give you peace of mind and provide you with regular agency support. But is being locked into an inbound marketing plan or retainer best for your department or organization? The answer is...
It Depends
Some inbound marketing departments are new and small and may need regular marketing support as they grow or hire more people internally. It might make sense, in a scenario like this, to have a set agency plan to assure you'll have enough resources to meet your marketing goals.
Ultimately, a plan assumes you'll need certain things, which you may not need. Perhaps you're already using internal resources for reporting, there's no need to also pay for that in a plan. Similarly, you may have a writer, developer or graphic designer on staff.
When we have a conversation with prospects about their business needs and long term goals we don't have a good, better, best plan or retainer type in mind. We're simply trying to address their pain points. In fact, many of our long term clients started out as smaller hourly projects. Once we proved ourselves on the first project we moved on to the next project and the next one after that. After a series of projects concluded, we would look back at the hours we spent and identify efficiencies and areas for improvement. With our individual project successes we would agree to a retainer that included a set amount hours based on historical project data. It's not unlike building a relationship with another person. Each of you grows into the relationship and becomes more interdependent on one another based on your shared experiences.
Flexibility and Fit
At the end of the day, it's about flexibility. Need to focus on the SEO part of your marketing plan? Yes, we can do that. Integration? Sure. Advanced content or lead generation? Yes. We don't require any length of contract, either. We do make it very clear that results do not occur overnight and that planning is involved. If we're discussing the implementation of a year long marketing plan, that strategy and research will take at least a month. That's a month where even though nothing seems like it's happening there's tons being accomplished. You can't attack goals without a roadmap.
Fit is important too, we're interested in helping you with your strategy and not simply being viewed as additional resources. We've found the best relationships to be collaborative and consultative. If a client pays us for our expertise but doesn't listen to us it makes for a difficult road ahead. We are also not going to have the rates of a freelancer or an offshored resource.
If you're looking for a HubSpot agency be sure to speak to a number of them. Have your own checklist and requirements in mind. Don't be put off by agencies with plans as these plans could be starting points for a more focused solution. Start with the business problem and drive a solution from there.
