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The Inbound FinTech team was excited to be announced as a winner at the UK Global Agency Awards, on 17th November 2020, for Most Impressive Small Agency Growth. Having already won two HubSpot Impact Awards earlier this month, receiving another award of this calibre was a great boost. It shows how far we’ve come as an agency in a short period of time. Learn more about this latest award and how we’ve achieved such fast growth.
UK Agency Awards Winner - Inbound FinTech
This UK Agency Award for Most Impressive Small Agency Growth is a great accolade for Inbound FinTech. It was a big achievement just to be shortlisted, and to see off eight other finalists was awesome. It’s recognition for the rapid growth journey we’ve been on, and the hard work from the whole team, to scale at pace whilst managing a wide array of clients.
We were looking forward to attending the awards ceremony, but due to the coronavirus pandemic (like so many other events), it was held virtually. However, it was still great to see the big reveal with Inbound FinTech being announced as a winner - here’s a video clip:
What are the UK Agency Awards?
The UK Agency Awards recognise top-performing agencies from around the UK, from creative and design agencies to digital marketing, advertising and PR agencies. These awards celebrate exceptional agencies and their innovation, campaigns, strategies and growth. We’re psyched to be on the roster of winners!
The rapid growth journey of IFT
Inbound FinTech is expanding fast. We strive to deliver the most strategic, data-driven and high-quality campaigns for our clients, whilst maintaining a progressive culture and vibrant working environment for our team - getting the agency culture and team balance right is crucial.
Founded in 2016 (operational since 2017), the agency has grown rapidly. We’ve already worked with over 50 companies and won multiple awards along the way. Here’s a timeline of key milestones for the agency:
Inbound FinTech is a self-funded, hybrid digital growth agency (with a London HQ but a remote global team), specialising in the Financial Services industry. We’re a Diamond-Tiered HubSpot Solutions Partner.
How we have achieved this rate of growth
The agency had clear objectives and invested in a framework for scaling the business. The UK Agency Awards recognised the key initiatives we used to drive growth and build the right team DNA to achieve these objectives and maintain momentum.
Growth objectives
Here are some of the main objectives in the past year:
- Boost brand presence through off- and on-page SEO strategy
- Increase our client base by deploying online persona-targeted campaigns
- Reach Diamond status as a HubSpot Partner
- Grow the team by upskilling existing staff and acquiring new talent
- Increase client lifetime value (CLV) by delivering excellent service and support
- Enter new geos through targeted campaigns & developing strategic partner relationships
- Streamline operations by adopting and implementing new software solutions
- Meet new industry demands by adding a range of new service offerings
Investment in our growth ambitions
Growing a digital agency takes hard work, a solid strategy and investment - not just in monetary terms, but in committing to a plan, investing in people and dedicating resources to building a framework for success.
Here are some of the ways we invested in the agency’s ambitions:
- Strategic campaigns (SEO, Paid and Content)
- Brand awareness through thought leadership and collaboration with peers and partners
- Rollout of agile processes and tech stack
- Use of Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) for scaling & future-proofing the agency
- Increased focus on recruitment and staff retention
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Development of a progressive culture code to keep our team engaged and empowered
Key initiatives and methods
Agencies often struggle to apply the same methods to their own growth to those they implement for their clients - agency life can be hectic! We embraced the methodology that has been so successful for our clients.
These are some examples of the initiatives we used to drive growth:
- Embraced a data-driven, user-focused approach to lead generation
- Lived and breathed the inbound methodology
- Created a rigorous pitch process and gameplan for converting opportunities
- Utilised key trust factors, such as case studies, testimonials and partner programs
- Optimised the website for SEO and CRO to meet our persona needs across the customer lifecycle
Team culture
We know the importance of establishing the right team culture. We empower staff to learn, develop and upskill, with knowledge sharing, system certifications and training, to help them thrive in their role and as part of the overall team and agency journey.
As we expanded our portfolio of services, we identified the resource gaps and employed specialists to ensure we had the right mix of skills and experience.
Key challenges we faced
The UK Agency Awards win is a reward for our rapid growth, but we’ve faced various challenges along our journey. Here are some of the key challenges and details about how we overcame them:
The digital marketing space is highly saturated
We faced fierce competition from other agencies with bigger teams and budgets. Getting on the preferred supplier list of enterprise clients is difficult due to size, history and turnover. Expanding our reach and growing our specific, deep-sector knowledge of Financial Services, and the changing needs of customers, helped us stand out from the competition.
Women in a man's world
Being a female-led agency in the male-dominated Financial Services sector has obvious challenges. But by believing in our skills and overcoming fears around perceived barriers for women in the industry, we built our profile and become a trusted agency in our space. Our team is a healthy mix of women, men and individuals from various backgrounds.
We’ve been involved in various initiatives that champion female leaders, such as International Women’s Day events and participation in HubSpot’s panels and diversity initiatives.
Risk-averse industry with legacy processes and infrastructure
The Financial Services industry is notoriously risk-averse and many organisations are struggling with legacy systems, processes and strategies. We’ve helped countless businesses to shake off outdated mindsets and modernise their approaches. We demystify digital marketing to demonstrate the effectiveness of the inbound methodology and innovative software solutions.
Impact of the coronavirus
The pandemic has caused businesses worldwide to reassess their budgets and strategies. As an agile agency with a strong foundation for remote working and digital collaboration, we’ve been able to support existing clients to adapt and respond to the impact of the coronavirus. The pandemic has also changed their customer needs, so we’ve developed bespoke growth packages to reflect this and made our services more accessible by offering flexible plans.
Achievements and growth results
Here are some of our headline successes and growth milestones in the past year (at time the UK Agency Awards Submission deadline):
- Increased traffic by over 100% & improved conversion rate of visitors to contacts to 48%
- Increased the MQL to SQL conversion rate to 22%
- Gained 14 new clients
- Launched various new client websites during the pandemic
- Moved into two new sectors: Telco and SaaS
- Acquired three new US-based clients
- Expanded our service offering to include change management, CRM migrations and tech-stack integrations
- Reached HubSpot Diamond status. The average time it takes for a HubSpot Partner to reach Diamond status is nine years - we achieved it in three!
Agency awards and recognition
It’s been a positive year for the agency despite a tough 2020 for many businesses across the globe. We’ve worked hard to ride the storm and maintain momentum.
In early 2020, we won two HubSpot Awards, one for Sales Enablement and another for Website Design. Then we were named Best FinTech Marketing Agency in July in Wealth & Finance magazine’s 2020 FinTech Awards.
We enjoyed more HubSpot recognition in Q3, winning two more Impact Awards, for Marketing and Integrations. We aim for even more success in 2021!
Summary
The agency has continued to scale at pace during a challenging economic climate. We overachieved our forecasted KPIs by improving and optimising processes, and being passionate about what we do! We’re extremely happy to win at the 2020 UK Agency Awards, but our success is a reflection of our ability to help businesses to grow and succeed.
Inbound FinTech is one of the fastest-growing HubSpot partner agencies ever. We continue to evolve our service offering to meet new demands in a fast-paced sector, upskilling and deepening our industry knowledge and expertise of the right tools and techniques.
How we help Financial Services businesses to grow
We specialise in helping Financial Services businesses to supercharge their digital footprint, drive high-quality leads to their website through user-focused content and data-driven strategies, and align Marketing and Sales teams to ensure leads are nurtured, qualified and converted effectively. It’s a wholly collaborative process and we put the needs and pain points of our clients’ personas (ideal customers) at the heart of everything we do.
We have a wide range of services, from inbound marketing, content creation and SEO to PPC, ABM and sales enablement. And we offer growth-driven CMS builds and website redesigns.
Think your business could benefit from the support of an experienced digital growth agency? If you’d like to discuss how we could help you grow your business, get in touch with our team!
Inbound FinTech is an award-winning Financial Services and FinTech marketing agency and an Elite HubSpot Partner. But we’re more than just a marketing agency. We specialise in driving leads and growth for businesses through data-driven strategies. And we also design and build business high-performing websites and offer CMS and CRM migrations and integrations. Want to discuss a project? Speak to our experts today.
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