North Star Inbound

I’m the senior content marketing manager at a home advisory platform. I manage all of our SEO and link-building agencies and in-house staff.

We hired North Star Inbound to help us with our link-building and outreach efforts by providing content creation and digital PR services.

North Star Inbound basically creates blog content for our organization. They usually send us a pitch deck that contains around 5–6 article ideas that we can pick from. Once they submit those pieces to us, we publish them on our website. We focus more on publications when it comes to our link-building, which is why we have their team reach out to journalists to get them to link back to our site.

I work with around four people from North Star Inbound: the CEO, the director of content marketing, the director of outreach, and an outreach specialist.

I’m not sure how the company came to work with them; they were already signed on when I joined in.

We spend about $10,000 a month on their services.

Our contract started in June 2021, and it is ongoing.

North Star Inbound has produced hundreds of links for our website. The work they deliver is of high quality and requires very few edits, and the fact that we’ve gained so many backlinks through them proves how newsworthy their pieces are. They know what the trends are in our industry.

They’re super responsive and communicative, and compared to the agencies I’ve worked for and with, they’re very in touch with us. They also always deliver on or before the deadline.

North Star Inbound’s communication style has really set them above the other agencies that I’ve worked with. They’re honest and will openly tell us if they think something is not going to work out. We can rely on them to point out aspects that could be improved with our campaign as well.

No, not that I can think of. I’ve been very happy with our partnership so far.

Be open to their ideas and don’t try to silo them into only one area. The more creative you let them be, the more they’ll be able to produce quality content.

I’m the founder of an insurance initiative company.

I hired North Star Inbound to drive more traffic to my business’s website. I needed to acquire more links to the platform.

North Star Inbound provides SEO and digital marketing services. Their team completed keyword planning, but they focus on building opportunities within my competitive landscape. They create written content and graphics that fit my brand. Their team also performs outreach to acquire links that point to my website.

I’ve communicated with the company lead.

I received a message from them about four years ago. I had a conversation with them, which I remembered. As I thought about undertaking new initiatives, their company’s name stayed in my mind.

I’ve spent about $15,000 on their services.

We started working together in March 2020, and their work’s ongoing.

I’ve seen an increase in site traffic over the past three weeks. I’m at an all-time high for site impressions and leads are picking up.

They meet deadlines and their communication’s solid. With this project, I provided a set of goals and gave them room to work. I didn’t want to hold their hands and didn’t require them to keep checking in with me. I received project updates and they asked for my opinions when necessary too.

I’m most impressed by the quality of their writing. I was shocked by the content's depth and their team's thoughtfulness. There isn’t a lot of neutral information published about my niche, but they wrote as experienced professionals in my field. Their team writes with nuance and ties the content into current events. I haven’t seen this quality of work from any other digital marketing agency.

It would’ve been helpful to have more insight into their ideas. Again, I’m shocked at how close they came to the mark given the space they were given to handle the project.

Be open about your business goals. Be specific about what you want and where you sit in your competitive space. Provide business metrics outside of website performance to help them support you.

I’m the president of a firm that specializes in customization of logo products, like T-shirts, pens, or hats. Anything a customer could want to put their name or logo on, we can help.

We needed help with our messaging and outreach. We wanted media mentions and wanted to make our brand stand out in the crowd. There’s a lot of competition in our industry, and we need to build brand recognition.

They did digital outreach for us. They came up with content development ideas that would resonate with our crowd. It all lined up with our brand and what we provide and do . We either sponsored a study or provided a third-party with our products so they could evaluate it. We got in front of thousands of people and then combine that data to try and massage it and use it in unique ways and then pitch it accordingly.

I work directly with Nicole, and I work with 3–4 other people throughout the project.

We were referred to them by another prominent SEO expert.

We spent between $50,000–$199,999.

We started working together in October 2018 and it’s ongoing.

We’ve seen an increase in traffic. We were focused on brand awareness and impressions, and we’re pleased with the impact they has on that. I’m very satisfied with their work. They operate at an elite level.

They’re self-sufficient. They do a great job and know what they’re doing. They understand our needs and wants and don’t require much direction. They’ve never given us a reason not to trust them. It has been a great. We only have to talk 2–3 hours and a few email a month, which I like. They’ve never pitched a bad idea and it has always been very easy to work with them. They don’t waste time.

Their people. They do the right thing and they’re honest. I think a lot of other agencies charge a lot more and markup what they pay an outsourced team, but I don’t get that vibe from North Star Inbound.

There isn’t anything that I think they need to improve.

Set realistic expectations. You have to understand that you’re moving the needle little by little, and results can take awhile.

I’m a manager of a company that runs various different online rental websites.

In order to facilitate the acquisition of links, we brought in North Star Inbound, which specializes in link building.

North Star used analysis tools and a link building CMS. They focused on ascertaining what content resonated most with the types of websites that we targeted for link acquisitions. Their team also used best in class platforms for reporting.

We had a point of contact who acted as the project manager.

A colleague referred us to North Star. I reviewed a dozen different potential agencies and ended up signing with 4–5. When I talked with North Star's team, I understood that they were experienced. They answered most of my questions and addressed my concerns much better than the standard sales representatives from other companies.

We spent between $8,000–$15,000 a month on their services.

We worked with them between August 2018–December 2019.

I clearly articulated what I wanted and North Star Inbound delivered on it. Their team provided exactly what I wanted to see.

They delivered industry-standard reports, which were good.

They hopped on the phone at random times that we threw at them. Communication was one of North Star Inbound's strong points.

They could improve how they present additional offerings. There wasn’t a cohesive or easy way to understand their additional products and services. It would also be interesting to see slightly more advanced reporting. There are agencies, not necessarily in their space, that deliver much more robust levels of reporting.

We’re a promotional products company. We’ll put a logo on anything our customers need. I am the search marketing manager.

It was for SEO, and to raise our organic traffic.

They had two different strategies. One was a digital PR campaign—they came up with interesting questions and topics that were tangentially related to our business, and then they would create a survey. Then they would disperse that survey to a few thousand people, take the answers, and they would have a unique dataset. From there, they would write an article with rich infographics and pitch it to major media outlets to get us links and traffic. The objective was to improve our site’s domain authority so we would rank organically.

At least 3–4 people worked on our project.

We found them through a referral. We were working with another SEO provider that was working on the technical side of things, and we asked them who would be good for link building. They explained how unique North Star Inbound was and what they do.

We spent $60,000.

The project lasted from January–June 2019.

This project was very cost-effective. We were happy with the number of links we got. We paid them on a per-campaign basis, and they told us that some were going to be very effective, while others weren’t. But the digital PR campaigns did so well, that it drove the overall cost per link way down. They were able to secure some very high-quality links from .edu, and .org sites. We also got a ton of traffic out of it.

They were phenomenal. The projects that they were putting together were pretty elaborate. The communication was always on-point, we didn’t have any issues. We were always a part of the process, but they took care of everything.

I don’t think that anyone else provides what they do. The fact that they get such unique data, and develop a talking point that no one else has, it’s unique. The writing is unassailable, fact-rich, and the visuals are beautiful. They generate a lot of interest, which drives down the cost per link, and that’s what sets them apart.

Honestly, not really.

Be thorough in describing your business, what your goals are, and what you need. They’re very good about interpreting that and giving you the content that will be relevant for your company and your goals.