In the quest for increased sales while maintaining higher profit margins, the question typically comes up, “should I hire a digital marketing agency?” Ultimately, this becomes a matter of budgeting and an analysis of in-house logistics. On one hand, your business needs the marketing, but perhaps it is better to hire someone, rather than hiring a firm. Either way, there are a few key aspects to look at when considering a marketing agency.
Many businesses want to hire one marketing person to handle all of the company marketing. While this is possible, it becomes a question of quality. Is one person skilled enough in all aspects of marketing to fill all of the shoes necessary? After all, there are a lot of different shoes to fill, such as: SEO, content marketing, web design, and more. If you are going to hire for marketing, it is best to hire a small marketing department with a few people who have different marketing specializations.
In addition to the actual skills needed, the person hired will also need software. Usually, various software can cost thousands of dollars. Marketing agencies already have most software that is needed, although some software will need to be licensed directly to the end user.
Hiring someone randomly may lead to someone who is not as trained as you would like. It is difficult to gauge just how much someone knows about marketing with a few short interviews. Ultimately, more training may be necessary, especially if there is only one person filling all the marketing department shoes.
With an agency, the training is already there, because the agencies rely on employees being competent in his or her specialization. If training needs to happen, then it is usually happens in real time while on the job. Agencies foster an atmosphere of learning and skill trading, which is a win-win-win; win for the employee, win for the client, win for the agency.
Another tactic many businesses use is to delegate marketing responsibilities to existing employees. While this seems extremely cost effective, it almost certainly will affect your day-to-day productivity, because the employee now needs to spend time focusing on another task that takes time from the usual daily tasks. Using this tactic also puts more pressure on employees and could lower the level of employee happiness and in-turn have an even further negative affect on your existing internal efficiency.
Earlier, I mentioned that agencies foster an atmosphere of support. Agencies usually share ideas with their peers and talk about what is working, what is new, and how the marketing profession is changing. It is this atmosphere that a single marketer or small marketing team within a company often doesn’t have access to.
Keeping current with marketing trends can give you a competitive advantage if the right things are adopted and executed early enough. For instance, for many companies it makes sense to use SnapChat. Before SnapChat was big, there were some companies that used it to get exposure with that audience before others swarmed in.
While it is possible to run a marketing department within your own business, the budget needed for doing this indicates a larger medium sized business or a large business. There are exceptions, but many of these exceptions do not compare in quality to utilizing a marketing agency. Analyze your business, understand your budget, and determine the most optimal choice.
