Pros and Cons of Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency

What are Marketing Agencies?

Marketing agencies help clients apply and oversee their marketing strategies to achieve business goals. Agencies will identify valuable approaches for a business by working with clients and deciding on the best ways to maximize their returns on investment (ROI). Furthermore, agencies implement marketing solutions by executing and managing campaigns for their clients and evaluating market results and data to improve campaign results.

The majority of digital marketing agencies offer a variety of services and will usually work with one client to satisfy a cluster of needs, namely;

• Creative Design

Agencies can help create different design elements, such as graphics for your website, layouts, logos, videos, and images to enhance the customer experience and drive sales.

• Email Management

Agencies create and undertake all email campaigns for businesses to improve brand awareness and open doors to collaboration opportunities.

• SEO Management

Search Engine Optimization helps to improve page rankings for the company blog, website, or other online presence platforms.

• Strategic Planning and Data Analysis

Strategic planning and analyzing online company data is a crucial step to help businesses decide what works well for the business and what the drawbacks are, as well as what the next marketing steps should be.

• Web Development

Agencies can help manage and develop aesthetic custom websites for businesses.

• Social Media Management

Social media management on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more.

What Does a Marketing Agency Do?

Agency work is tedious; however, every agency employs unique strategies that they believe are the most successful in driving sales for a business. While specializations and approaches differ amongst agencies, there is one goal that they all share; driving results. The only way for marketing agencies to stay in demand is to present employers with the desired results: typically driving more traffic and generating as many leads as possible. There are numerous pros and cons to hiring agencies, so some businesses choose to do their marketing in-house. However, most companies still prefer to seek the help of marketing agencies.

The Pros of Hiring a Digital Marketing Team

The chief goal of a full-service digital marketing agency is to help businesses reach a larger audience. They employ an abundance of proven tactics to record and forecast growth and create uniquely tailored strategies for businesses. Hiring a digital marketing agency is similar to outsourcing to a team of specialists who are all experts in the field and know just what strings to pull to make your business more appealing to customers. A few benefits of working with a digital marketing agency include:

Greater Expertise

Digital marketing agencies are likely to have more expertise in some specific roles or industries. Most agencies choose to specialize in one or two things like SEO or content marketing. Combined with providing services to multiple clients, it is likely that most agencies will have high competence and expertise within their domain. Agencies can also work with dozens of clients simultaneously, which increases the odds of them being well aware of the processes and peculiarities in industries that are similar or the same as your business’.

Diverse Skills

When a business hires an agency, they are not just hiring a single person, they are hiring a whole team including their network, which can sometimes be over 15 people. If an agency is hired to do work on SEO, it may be that other members of the digital marketing team will be able to advise on other factors, such as producing content or designing visuals that enhance user experience and this is a benefit as it brings more perspective. A diverse team can aid in solving problems a lot faster than a single person. In digital marketing, two, or fifteen is definitely better than one. This allows teams to see things from many different perspectives and help come up with creative and concrete solutions.

Agencies also offer more flexibility, for instance, if you need to expand into a different marketing channel or adapt your strategy based on a quickly changing environment. Agencies can offer a lot more flexibility with your marketing strategy than in-house hires, so if the social media marketing path does not prove to be successful in any way, you have the easy option of switching to something else.

Scalability

Two key challenges that come with scaling are obtaining the right talent and getting a substantial number of new customers. Scaling a business is not simple, however, by using the right digital marketing team can help lessen two key scaling challenges. In regards to the talent side, it will not be necessary to create a management structure for a given department. When scaling growth, it’s only a case of understanding what is already working within the agency and continuing to fully deplete that marketing channel. If a given channel stops working for any reason, the agency can simply test the diversity within its own team and try out new channels.

Credibility & Transparency

There are thousands of cases to confirm why transparency is important in a working relationship. If a business chooses to hire in-house, it may be difficult to accurately examine the quality of the hire. Firstly, it may be tough to fact-check the claims on the hire’s resume. References can be very useful; however, employers generally tend to stay safe and give positive references to avoid potential legal trouble. Agencies operate differently, and clients are usually incredibly transparent and outspoken if an agency has disappointed. These reasons make agencies results-driven if the agency that your business has hired knows that if they do not deliver appropriate results, the working relationship will be terminated and they will receive negative reviews, that will have a detrimental impact on their reputation, so they will try their best to provide worthy services. This means that the incentive is properly aligned, and there is a determination to make things happen, creating a strong strategic insight.

The Cons of Hiring a Digital Marketing Team

Depending on business needs, it may seem more logical to get help from an in-house marketing team. A business will automatically be adding to the salary expenses but will be completely in charge of how the marketing plan in the company is run. If a business can find a knowledgeable and experienced marketer, they can generally just about manage everything a business needs to grow and generate leads, generally at a slower pace. It is up to the business to decide which route they would like to take, and some prefer to stick to in-house marketing teams instead of hiring an agency. Below are some of the cons of hiring a digital marketing team:

Higher Short-Term Costs

It will usually seem as if a lot more money is being spent per hour when working with digital marketing agencies. Depending on how much work is handed over,, a larger budget can be spent than when working with an in-house expert. However, it should be considered that digital marketing should not be a process of instant gratification. Digital marketing is a long-term commitment, and it takes months to see significant results. Creating a solid foundation of a long-term marketing strategy that will slowly reduce costs and increase profitability is the end goal of every marketing strategy, therefore, high start-up costs should not be a deterrent.

Questions & Meetings

When a business hires a marketing agency, there will be numerous initial meetings, discussions, and questions when starting to work together. Every aspect of the marketing strategy needs to be agreed on and approved prior to starting any projects, which can sometimes prove to be a tedious task that businesses tend to avoid. Reviewing content and web designs for a website as well as approving ad campaigns is all very time-consuming but is a necessity for successful business growth. The digital marketing team’s strong communication skills and transparency will become an obvious advantage and help the business grow exponentially.

Time Consuming Familiarity

A good agency will make sure that it is very familiar with its hiring company’s clients before starting their projects. This process takes a lot of time which can sometimes put businesses off. However, the agency needs to understand and be sure of your brand, voice, and image. When signing collaboration contracts with an agency, you will seldom be able to hand over all the work immediately, it takes time to review goals, set objectives, and discuss previous marketing efforts with the new team. Once a campaign is completed, the agency will most likely want feedback, which is also a time-consuming task. Businesses value their time, but they should remember to value the process and how pedantic agencies are about producing solid results.

Should I Hire a Marketing Agency?

There are numerous pros and cons to hiring a marketing agency to help a business grow. Some choose to hire in-house professionals, while others prefer to hand over the work to experienced specialists. At the end of the day, the choice is up to the business, but objectively, a marketing agency will bring better results in the long run, even though it may not seem like it from the start. When deciding whether to hire an agency over an in-house specialist, it should be remembered that digital marketing is a marathon, not a sprint, therefore patience is one of the key aspects, as it takes time to achieve something great, especially in marketing. The reasons and facts stated above are simply guidelines to help businesses decide which route they would like to take in the future, with thoroughly outlined pros and cons and future trajectories to make sure that new and upcoming companies know what to do to become successful.

Matt is over 10 years in digital marketing. With his outstanding results in clients' projects - Matt can be named one of the best in the industry.