If you work in the corporate world you know that agencies can be aggressive with sales outreach.
I used to work for an eCommerce company and it seemed like half of my job was discussing things with agency salespeople.
It seems agencies are always on the cutting edge of sales. They’re looking for ways to generate the best leads for the lowest cost.
As a small B2B, it’s interesting to follow their path. I came across a new article on eMarketer citing a study from earlier this year done by RSW/US. The study was done with agency executives to get their thoughts on the best lead generating methods.
From Agencies Use Content, Case Studies to Generate Leads:
The first thing that stands out to me is that advertising is way down on the list. That’s interesting. You’ll see the occasional online ad for agencies, but I have to admit that I’m not really visiting their sites all that much. So the display advertising pixels aren’t following me around.
One thing to note is that this survey isn’t about spending. It’s about effectiveness.
With that in mind you can see that case studies, website content and blogging are the top three on the list.
From my view, these things are related and often the same. We’ve done case studies for ourselves and for clients often published as blog posts on the company blog. And I’m not really sure what content marketing on the agency website is. That’s probably landing pages or pages designed to address specific questions the target customer has.
And we have to mention blogging. Over 58% of the agency executives survey cite blogging as an effective way to generate new leads.
It makes me extremely happy to see that agencies are investing in their own content more than advertising and social media.
Again, with advertising you can generate leads, but there are two issues.
First, you’re interrupting people. You’re fighting an uphill battle to win people over this way.
Second, advertising only lasts as long as you keep feeding the beast. Once you stop paying money for the ad space you’re done. No more leads.
With website content such as case studies, landing pages and blogging you’re focusing on inbound marketing that your audience discovers via search, social and referrals.
And you’re also investing in an asset that you own and that’s always online and available for new leads to discover.
You can create an ad today and tomorrow it could be taken down when the budget runs out. You can create a blog today and it will forever be on your website generating traffic.
Agencies always seem to know the best ways to generate new sales. It looks like they are believers in content and blogging.
Are you?