Should You Hire a Marketing Agency?

Today, digital marketing involves a wide range of highly specialized skills, including web design, copywriting, SEO, coding, data analysis, and social media management.

Because of this, many organizations turn to marketing agencies to help them increase leads and retain existing customers.

Hiring a marketing agency can be a significant investment for a business but is the investment worth it in terms of ROI?

Reasons Why You Should Hire a Marketing Agency

Your Sales Aren’t Increasing

No matter what industry you’re in, your ultimate goal is to make money. To make money, you have to make sales. However, if you’re not making sales, then it’s essential to investigate why that is.

If there is a market for your product or service, your customer interaction is top-notch, you have a driven sales team, and your prices are competitive, then the reason sales likely aren’t coming in is because of ineffective marketing.

A marketing agency can devote much-needed time and resources towards things like blogging, web development, advertising, social media, and other important marketing methods that you and your employees likely don’t specialize in.

Effective marketing is what brings sales through the door.

You Don’t Have Enough Time

It takes a lot of work to run a business. On top of your own responsibilities, you have to manage other people and their responsibilities. You have to give priority to the jobs that immediately pay or the problems that need solving quickly.

Effective marketing takes a lot of time and energy, and, as a result, it is often swept under the rug.

Although many businesses employ salespeople, marketing tasks are often distributed amongst other employees.

For example, the person who handles reception may also be responsible for social media updates or a sales support administrator may manage advertising.

This results in patchy sales and marketing efforts, which are challenging to monitor and usually fail to deliver results that you can measure.

In addition, these haphazard marketing activities come at the expense of your employees’ primary jobs.

By choosing to work with a marketing agency, it relieves the pressure on your employees, the non-marketing experts who are struggling to promote your business while also working hard at their primary responsibilities.

Hiring a marketing agency means that you receive a marketing strategy and team with enough members and enough experience to see it through successfully.

You Don’t Enjoy Marketing

Some people don’t enjoy marketing. It is what it is. If it’s really not your cup of tea, then don’t even bother to try.

People can tell when minimal effort has gone into blog posts, emails, and landing pages. That kind of quality turns people away from your product or service.

On the contrary, marketing agencies love marketing. This is what they do! Allow them to marry their passions with your passions, and you’ll be amazed by the results.

Your Marketing Results are Hit or Miss

If you have been working hard on your marketing efforts but have found that results have not been consistent, then you might be thinking that marketing just doesn’t work for your business.

However, perhaps it’s your approach that hasn’t been working. If you hire a marketing agency, they will take a closer look at what your challenges are and what goals you want to achieve.

They will then put together a strategy to overcome those challenges and meet those goals.

You Can’t Afford an In-House Marketing Team

Hiring a marketing manager, a content producer, an editor, a social media manager, a PPC specialist, and a graphic designer all adds up to a very expensive team.

However, if you hire a marketing agency, you can still get the benefits of all that experience and all those skills… for about the cost of one employee.

Consider the cost of employing a marketing team yourself. There’s not only the expense of all the wages, but there’s specialist software you’ll need to buy for your marketers to be able to do their jobs.

Of course, there’s any training they might need, not to mention an office large enough for everybody to work in.

Hiring a marketing agency means that you get access to everything you need at a fraction of the cost, and the service provided by an agency is scalable to your needs.

If you need additional skills, they’ll source those skills from amongst their team, and you won’t pay for under-utilized staff if your requirements change.

You will, of course, need to bring an agency up to speed about your brand and business. However, if you were hiring an employee, you would have to do the same.

It really depends on what you are looking for and what your needs are. If it is just a small job and one person in the office can manage it, then employ one in-house person.

If you have a ton of money and can afford to hire a team of expert marketers, then go for it.

However, if you are looking to develop a complete, top-to-bottom marketing strategy, hiring an agency is the way to go.

Things You Should Consider When Hiring a Marketing Agency

When determining whether or not to hire a marketing agency, there are several things to consider before you give the green light.

The Expenses

Remember, a marketing agency is also a business which means that it needs to charge you to cover its own salaries, taxes, and other expenses. To do this, it has to set a price for its services and time.

An agency will rarely provide a service for free, even if you have been working with them for a long time.

Lack of Industry Knowledge and Experience

Some agencies specialize in certain industries, while others work in a broad range. If your business is in a niche industry, then there is a chance many marketing agencies know nothing about your area of work.

When you’re looking for an agency, keep this in mind and see if there is anyone who has worked with clients from your industry before.

When you first start working with a marketing agency, you will need to give them more guidance and monitoring. However, as time goes on, and they learn more about your business and industry, you will be able to rely on them for all of your marketing activities.

In fact, they might even be proactive in keeping up to date with your industry and be able to let you know what’s going on.

You’re Not Their Only Client

While you are focused on your business and only your business, you need to remember that your marketing agency is not solely focused on you. Marketing agencies have lots of clients that they work with.

However, a decent agency will set realistic deadlines and know how to manage their time and their clients, so that no client feels less important than another.

When looking at hiring a marketing agency, ask their account managers how many clients they handle to give you a good idea about their workload.

Depending on the number of clients they work with, they may be slower than an in-house team. However, marketing agencies bring their expertise to the table, as well as an outside perspective, which can prove to be invaluable.

Do They Have the Right Skills?

Modern marketing requires a lot of special skills, technical knowledge, and industry experience.

Services that a great marketing agency can provide include marketing strategy development, SEO, Google AdWords management, content creation, email marketing, sales enablement, and web design.

A good marketing agency also knows to get better returns from your investment.

So, if you don’t currently spend anything on marketing, then you have everything to gain from working with an agency. It will drastically increase your business profile in a short amount of time.

Know What You Want to Accomplish

Do your research, write out a plan, and be prepared for your first meeting with an agency. You need to have a clear vision of what you expect from the relationship. You are in the driver’s seat, and it’s your job to tell the agency what you want.

They will be able to help you achieve that, and they can also steer you in the right direction if you are unsure.

Research Previous Clients

Most marketing firms typically showcase previous work on their website or social media. They will hopefully feature case studies and blogs about the work they have done.

In addition, check out the agency on Yelp, Google, and LinkedIn to see how other professionals feel about their service.

Make Sure You Get Along with Their Team

The people who work at the agency may not be people that you employed, but you will still have to work with them to achieve success. If your personalities don’t click, that could lead to issues further down the road.

Remember, marketing agencies are not run by robots. Their company is made up of people, just like yours!

Read the Contract Carefully

Any reputable and professional marketing agency will provide you with a formal agreement and scope of work before getting started.

These documents usually include some legal terms, so make sure you read them carefully, as they are legally binding once you sign. If you’re unsure of anything, send the contract to a lawyer to review it.

Hire a Marketing Agency That Puts Your Business Before Themselves!

At RSM Marketing, our team is in the business of business. Your success is our success, which is why we work hard every day to transform your business into an industry juggernaut.

We pride ourselves on working hand-in-hand with our clients to determine what the best course of action is and the best way to achieve your goals.

Schedule a quick, 30-minute consultation with us today!