The Content Marketing Institute released a new study into content marketing services for agencies. The research looked into: 

• How many agencies have embraced content marketing as a service offering?
• How long have they been offering content marketing services?
• What types of services do they offer?
• What are their biggest challenges when working with clients? 

I went through it and I want to share with you the key findings that stood out to me about the growth and development of content marketing services by agencies. 

I've spent over seven years working in an agency or consulting agencies on how to grow their businesses and content marketing has become a top income source and service provided so a lot of the results don't surprise me, however, they certainly speak of the increasing trend where agency disciplines are merging. It's becoming harder and harder to differentiate between the marketing, PR and advertising agency as they all offer or can offer the same content marketing services. 

Now to the research. Let's start with some facts.

Since the Inbound PR book came out, there have been a number of agencies adopting the practice and creating new Inbound PR services to deliver better value to clients. 

I'm always eager to learn how PR agencies have transformed their businesses with Inbound PR and I know a lot of you're are interested in it too so I'm starting an interview series with agencies owners and CEOs who've made the jump to Inbound PR. 

First up is my now dear friend Maria Gergova-Bengtsson from United Partners - one of the first and most successful PR agencies in Bulgaria. 

Let's see what Maria has to say about how they've transformed their PR agency with Inbound PR and the results they've achieved so far.  

#1 When you first heard of Inbound PR, what did you think?

If you run an agency (or any business for that matter), you know how important sales is. After all, it's how you win new clients, expand your service portfolio and generate revenue. 

Through my experience as an agency consultant at HubSpot, I've found that every agency has different sales, service and account management processes. Unfortunately, many don't even have processes which is, put simply, bad business practice (or no business practice?). 

Don't believe me? 

I'll give you the hard facts. 

We recently surveyed over 1,400 agency professionals from around the world to uncover the biggest sales challenges and published those in a new report called 2019 State of Agency Selling. 

Through this survey, we found that 46% of agencies only have a somewhat defined sales process, while the next largest group of 31% doesn't have a defined sales process at all. 

Running a PR agency isn't easy. 

Clients press for results and often ask for free work just because they had a great idea; talent is hard to find, train and retain; the pace of change in communications and consumer behaviour is difficult to keep up with, and not to mention how little understood the term PR is. 

The World PR Report 2018-2019 looks at the state of PR agencies around the world, the type of growth and challenges they are facing and suggests areas of future-looking trends. 

I went through the report and wanted to share with you 7 areas that stood out to me the most. 

Here we go. 

7 Learnings about the State of PR Agencies 

The outlook for public relations in 2018 makes it clear that PR has work to be done to be fit for current client demands. 

Social media and digital has been one of the biggest areas for development in the PR industry over the last couple of decades. 

The PRCA releases a yearly report about Digital PR and Communications and how these are progressing among companies and PR agencies. 

Towards the end of last year, the 2017 findings showed some insightful learnings that I want to share with you today. 

17 Must-Know Facts About Social Media & Digital Within PR Services & Education