This week Austin Lawrence was officially granted “Silver” status in the HubSpot partner program, recognizing both our growth and client satisfaction with us as a HubSpot Certified Agency Partner. It’s been a wonderful 2014 so far, during which we’ve met and started working with some of the most interesting and thoughtful clients.

As we’ve met with, proposed to, on-boarded and started generating new leads for these clients, I've often found myself a little surprised about how smoothly and quickly we go from that initial meeting to becoming deeply involved in their businesses. It’s so unlike what we used to do in the “Outbound Marketing Salad Days,” when we would pitch an advertising or public relations campaign and investment that, upon reflection, was so far removed from the actual business processes associated with generating sales.  Sure, we wanted to increase sales leads with b2b content marketing, but we had very little idea of the sales process and usually little connectivity to sales leadership at our clients.

What's so different about Inbound Marketing is where the conversation starts, usually in two parts: “who are your ideal customers, why and what’s important to them?” and, “tell us about your sales process, closing rates from different lead sources, cost-per-lead and cost of customer acquisition.”

From there, the relationship is set on a course for success. We’re talking about the way marketing can contribute most directly and identifiably to greater sales and profitability, and that seems also to resonate with CEOs and business owners, sales leadership and CMOs/VPs of Marketing, too. We get everyone on the same page.

It’s actually more than on the same page. They get really excited and engaged in the process. For the first time, CEOs who write the check for marketing see the same kind of accountability to increase website traffic and b2b sales leads that they expect from everyone else in their organizations. There’s an expected outcome, analytics, fine-grained reporting and repeatability. And when we don’t perform as well as hoped, we can discontinue the kinds of activities that aren’t meeting expectation much earlier than ever before (fail fast, and learn). When something exceeds expectations we can likewise do more of the same.

What does being recognized by HubSpot mean for you, our customer? Most importantly, it demonstrates that we know Inbound Marketing pretty well, as the recognition is not purely a sales number. A good HubSpot Partner Agency also has to have good “Customer Happiness Index” or CHI scores. This semi-secret number is basically a measure of using the full product capability and (we think) lead generation. Secondly, it’s a measure of our commitment to growing our team's skills, staffing and delivery capabilities as an Inbound Marketing Agency. In order to fuel our growth and fulfill our commitments, we’re just gonna have to hire some great people (and yes, we’re hiring).

If you’re wondering if Inbound Marketing can help you to grow your business,  please consider our free and no-obligation Inbound Marketing Assessment. It’s a great way to learn more about Inbound, your sales processes, opportunities to improve your Web lead generation and social media footprint and a lot more. We promise your business will get a lot of value from working with us on your Inbound Marketing Assessment.

Just click the button below, and you’ll be on your way to more Website traffic, leads and sales!