Regardless of the size of your organisation, at some point you will look at how using a marketing agency could benefit your business. As your business grows so do the demands on your marketing resources. Plans develop and encompass new ideas and ways to reach customers. The level of marketing activity goes up. And your visibility increases, making it more important your marketing reflects the growing stature of your enterprise.
Which all make for very good reasons alone for looking for external marketing help in supporting your business objectives. But you may encounter some colleagues who don’t share the view that your business needs to engage an agency. They may have the view that internal resources should be able to deal with the workload. Or they may think that marketing is something anybody can do. We’ve been there. It happens.
So you need to have solid commercial reasons for looking to bring in an agency. And you need to be confident you are making the right decision too. We’ve put a list of benefits your business can enjoy when using an agency to augment your marketing which apply whether you already have an existing marketing department or nobody looking after the function.
Cost
When you look at using an agency you need to weigh up the cost against hiring staff to do the same work. That is far more than looking at wages. There is additional costs for equipment, software, subscriptions and a time-lag during onboarding. It means you have additional staff costs which can far outstrip an agency’s billings.
Expertise
One thing you will notice when you look around marketing agencies is the talent and expertise they provide. As they work for a range of clients across different markets, they have a huge pool of knowledge about the details of their work. Contrast this with trying to develop those same skills in-house. If you choose to bring in junior-level staff it takes time for people to become equipped to the same level of expertise. If you look for seasoned pros then you will need to pay much higher rates. In some marketing fields – SEO/SEM being a good example – the best talent work in an agency or are freelancers. You simply won’t get them to join you as an employee.
Another important point to make here is the agency takes on the responsibility to make sure their staff have the latest training and skills to handle your work. And those training costs are not to be sniffed at, nor can they be ignored – unless you want your staff to become less effective over time.
Get What You Need
Marketing today is a wide landscape. While digital marketing gets a lot of attention, the classical discipline – from PR to direct mail and all points inbetween – remains vitally important.
Finding marketing staff with real-world experience across both classical and digital marketing – and have the skills do it well – is extremely difficult. You would need to prepared to dig deep for their wages too. Finding an agency who can cover these needs is, by contrast, quite straightforward.
There When Needed
An agency doesn’t need to be a full-time partner. If you have a specific project that needs experts working on it, then an agency will do the job just fine. You can then go back when you have another project where their skills will produce better results.
In some cases you may want to have an agency on retainer. This is where they are required to undertake a set amount of work each month for a fee. Some aspects of social media, or SEO/SEM work, are good examples where having an agency on retainer is more beneficial for you. But remember, you can still include options to have contract service reviews, which can give you the ability to stop a retainer if the agency is not performing or results are not as desired.
Flexibility
Using agencies also allows you to scale up – or down – the amount of marketing activity for your business. For some businesses demand for marketing services may be seasonal. For others, they might be piloting certain ideas and, as these grow, need more resources to handle the workload. And if you have marketing employees leave, you need someone to pick up the workload until you find a replacement. Using an agency in these situations is ideal.
The Magic Second opinion
We’ve mentioned before how an agency employs experienced and skilled staff. This comes to the fore when you’re looking to evolve current marketing activities or introduce new ideas to your business. An agency exists outside your bubble. They have an independent, dispassionate eye. And that is invaluable when you need insight and non-partisan feedback. You might have an idea which you think is utter brilliant – but if your agency spots flaws, it’s wise to listen to their concerns.
Agencies Improve Your Marketing Function
You will be surprised how an agency can make your existing marketing department more focused and dynamic. It’s all about utilising your internal skills to your best advantage, and bringing in an agency to do the work your staff are not trained to handle. And the working relationships that are built can help develop your staff too, making them more productive.
So there’s 7 good benefits to using a marketing agency such as us. And here at Greenwood Solutions we have the skills and experience to help you discover a new edge to your marketing that will deliver real results.
