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Before we discuss why you’d hire a digital marketing agency, it’s important that you know the difference between an agency and in-house team.
A digital marketing agency is an organisation who specialize in marketing, advertising, and selling to consumers through digital channels.
Services range from agency to agency but generally they will help improve your business’ visibility, following, and revenue.
It’s worth noting that digital marketing agencies are split between those who have micro specialities and those who cover everything. For example, there are digital marketing agencies which specialise in just TikTok and there are digital marketing agencies that cover everything from SEO to paid ads.
So why hire a digital marketing agency?
We’ve got 10 reasons why you should consider working with a digital marketing agency below.
The main reason why you’d hire a digital marketing agency is because of their expertise on the subject matter.
The likelihood is that they have a range of professionals who work on digital marketing projects day in and day out.
These professionals have worked with businesses just like your own and know exactly what needs to be done to get the results that you require.
The likelihood of you getting the results that you want is much higher when working with digital marketing professionals compared to going at it alone.
In a similar vein to the last point, it takes weeks if not months of full time work to learn how each platform works.
What works for SEO won’t work for TikTok and what works for TikTok won’t work for Instagram. There isn’t a one strategy fits all when it comes to digital marketing platforms.
Therefore, taking the time to learn everything that there is to know about digital marketing can take a long time.
Often that time would be better spent applying yourself in other areas of your business where you can generate a higher return on investment.
And on the other side of the equation, there’s nobody who’s going to get you faster results than those who do this for a living.
As we mentioned, through sheer repetition a digital marketing agency will know exactly what strategy you should implore and why.
The least cost effective thing you can do is spend months trying to get up to scratch with your digital marketing skillset and neglecting your current revenue-generating activities.
Now you’ve always got the option to hire a professional full time for your business but then you’re faced with the on-boarding costs and a salary that you have to commit to.
Not only that, if you’re not the biggest of businesses then it’s likely that your employee will need up-skilling too – yet another cost.
This is where the beauty of a digital marketing agency comes in. Most agencies operate on a monthly retainer meaning if you’re unsatisfied with that particular agency, you can cut your losses pretty quickly.
Furthermore, you can choose the level of service that you want from your chosen marketing agency. There will be packages that are cheap whilst there are also packages that can cost millions of pounds. And this leads us into our next point.
The next reason why you’d hire a digital marketing agency is the scalability.
If you’re a business new to digital marketing then you can look to ramp up as you go. You may have a set budget to work with initially and that’s fine because you can use that to start improving your visibility and revenue.
As you see returns, you can then invest back into your digital marketing agency to further scale your digital marketing outreach.
The beauty of this strategy is that the barrier to entry for a digital marketing service is incredibly low. You can start to bring in revenue off the back of just a few hundred pounds/dollars.
And then as you scale there are digital marketing agencies that generate results for the biggest brands in the world.
Signing up to be an entrepreneur means you’re also signing up to be very proactive during your days.
You can quickly become overwhelmed by day to day activities to have the energy to focus on implementing a digital marketing agencies.
Despite the incredible return on investment that a digital marketing campaign can provide, there are a lot of businesses that never get round to starting their campaign. As a result, they usually fall victim to their competition’s digital marketing efforts and never recover.
If you’re going at SEO alone, odds are that you don’t have the bandwidth to keep track of all the moving parts in the SEO world. And if you are able to track SEO metrics, working to improve each aspect whilst also running a business can be quite exhausting to say the least.
Some of the best things about working with an SEO agency is they track everything for you, send compiled reports every month, and do the work to improve each aspect too.
It’s worth noting that digital marketing agencies also have access to industry-leading tools. These tools give them information about everything from your engagement to your average customer acquisition cost.
These tools can help identify problems and opportunities for your business that you never even knew existed.
Because SEO is largely dependent on following best practices with search engine algorithms and algorithms are always changing, it is essential that you keep up to date with SEO.
What many outside the digital marketing landscape don’t realise is that it takes a long time to “figure out” a platform.
And then there are so many platforms already, along with new ones rising in popularity too. For example, you’ve already got: Google, Bing, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X.
And then you’ve got new platforms rising in popularity such as TikTok.
Any seasoned digital marketer will tell you that what works for one platform will not work for the other. In fact, if you’re going at it solo, don’t expect to crack a platform within 6 months, you’ll be setting yourself up to fail.
One of the most popular sayings you’ll hear in the SEO world is “content is king”. This is because great content can do so much for your brand.
Great content can draw in hundreds of thousands of people to your brand. Great content can build a loyal following for your brand. And most importantly, great content leads to direct purchases.
However, if you’ve ever tried to produce a valuable piece of content for your community you’ll know exactly how hard it is.
A mid-level 1500 – 2000 word piece of content can take days to plan and produce (and that’s assuming that you work on it full time). And if you’re looking to top the rankings with a piece of content, it can take weeks to put together.
You could always put out rushed content but you need to think about what kind of impression you’re giving off to your target audience. Without a level of professionalism and effort, you’re going to struggle to make a lasting impression on them; you may even make them think twice about engaging with your brand in the future.
As we mentioned earlier, there really is no one size fits all approach when it comes to digital marketing. If there was, we’d be selling the secrets straight away!
But the truth is going after different demographics require drastically different solutions. For example, an approach for attracting a beauty product’s target audience is going to differ to a b2b saas solution provider.
The likelihood is that the generalist information regarding digital marketing on the internet will not allow you to compete at the top-end of the rankings. This is because the companies that draw in a-lot of traffic usually have a digital marketing team solely dedicated to that niche.
That’s where a digital marketing agency can come in handy. Most agencies have worked with hundreds of clients in the past meaning they’ve seen it all.
They know what works with regards to each industries and demographics because they’ve had to figure it out before. You can then leverage their experience to get yourself in front of your target audience.
The last reason why you’d hire a digital marketing agency is it makes for an easier transition to bringing everything in-house.
Only through experience will you be aware of what deliverables can be set and what realistic expectations are from a marketing campaign.
Not to mention, you’ll become aware of the small things such as what monthly reports should look like and how top-level marketers think in terms of operations.
And most importantly, you’ll become aware of what metrics are tracked and why. You’ll never make progress when it comes to digital marketing if you don’t know what you should be looking at. Working with an agency will educate you on stuff such as conversion rate optimisation, search traffic sources, and much more!
Just to make it clear, the agencies own portfolio is very much different to their client portfolio.
Ask yourself does this TikTok agency advertise themselves on TikTok?
Do the SEO agency rank for their desired keywords on Google’s search engines?
Does the Instagram agency have a strong Instagram presence?
If they don’t advertise using their own “specialist skillset”, you can consider that a massive red flag.
Why hire a digital marketing agency that doesn’t showcase results for themselves?
Once you’ve established that they can do a good job at marketing themselves via the platform they specialise in, the next thing you need to do is look at their client portfolio.
It’s incredibly difficult to consistently get results across different niches; every targeted demographic requires a different digital marketing strategy.
Therefore, always ask for proof of results within your specific industry. Look for metric progress and deliverables achieved with each project along with reviews from each client.
If there’s one thing you shouldn’t do, it’s pick the first agency you see.
And educated customer is a smart customer. We definitely recommend that you jump on as many Zoom/Teams calls as possible to learn about each agency and how they operate.
You’ll start to become aware of what you can expect from your budget in terms of the level of service. Furthermore, you’ll start to find agencies that align with your business’ core values – one of the most under-looked factors of collaboration.
And last but not least, the more characters you meet, the higher the likelihood that you find someone that you genuinely get on with and enjoy working with.
If you’re looking for an agency, odds are that you have some marketing goals in your head regarding what you want to achieve.
You’re not going to stick with an agency long enough for you to see results if you harbour resentment towards them for not meeting these non-negotiables.
This is why it’s of the upmost importance that you communicate your priorities and what you expect out of that marketing campaign.
They can then direct you towards what that package will cost and what that service will look like. Then it’s back over to you to decide whether you want to continue!
If you’re a small business then one of the most important factors is likely the costs of hiring an agency.
You’ll find a lot of variation regarding payment options and payment models so it’s important to think about which suit your business.
Most agencies will offer monthly payment plans along with one time fee payments. The monthly payment options tend to require less money upfront but are more expensive in the long term whilst the one-time fee’s are the exact opposite.
Another popular payment model is the pay-for-results offer. These plans require no up front payment and you only pay once the agency delivers revenue-generating results. It sounds great but these payment plans eat into your profitability on a long term basis. Whilst the agency will be bringing in revenue for your business, they will be pocketing a large portion of it!
And the last payment model is to pay on completion of a project. This is where you set out deliverables that you need to see from a project and then agree a fee that you’ll pay upon completion of the project. This is how businesses at the higher levels operate and can be great for both parties despite being expensive.
The more ways you can track, the more ways you can win. And the number one thing you should be tracking when it comes to your marketing efforts is their return on investment.
A couple of years ago, marketing ROI was solely dependent on the increase of revenue. And whilst it seems like an obvious way to do things, there are a hundred and one factors that could affect your revenue outside of your marketing efforts.
Luckily, this generation’s marketers have now put together frameworks and formulas to measure exactly how effective each campaign is. These metrics then let you know whether your money has been well spent and allow you to make forecasts regarding what you could achieve in the future.
The first thing you need to look at is the KPI’s associated with the objectives set for your specific campaign. For SEO, these often include: unique monthly visitors, organic revenue, and cost per lead.
Then you need to ensure that the data collection is clean meaning you’ve got everything set up to track these factors. Any inconsistency can lead to incorrect reports regarding the effectiveness of your campaign.
And last but not least, you then need to reflect upon the campaign to see whether the impact on your business actually fit in with your long term vision. For example, was setting a goal of increasing unique monthly visitors actually helpful to the brand – did it bring in the revenue we desired?
It can be hard to figure everything out yourself so here are a list of industry averages that you can work towards to identify whether your campaign was effective.
For Google Ads, an average conversion rate across all industries is around the 2.5% mark. As for the top 10 percent, they achieve a conversion rate of just over 11%.
The average SEO ROI is thought to be $2.75 for every dollar spent (a 275% ROI). Whilst the top 10 percent achieve an ROI of 1220%.
The average for social media campaigns are estimated at $2.50 for every dollar spent.
As you can tell, the averages are all fairly similar no matter what vehicle you choose. It’s a case of choosing one and sticking to that path.
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As an agency we’d love to convince you that you should join the agency life and reap the rewards but the truth is that there are benefits to each side.
The first benefit of going down the in-house route is you have much more control regarding marketing budgets and timescales. Agencies have to manage a number of clients so they can’t be quite as flexible as in-house teams.
Another pro of the In-House route is your team have the chance to develop industry expertise to a higher degree than an agency. For example, if you have an SEO team working around the clock solely on gardening SEO then chances are they’re going to become incredibly good at such a niche SEO path.
The time needed to see results from an in-house team is generally significantly longer than when working with an agency. Firstly, you need to find and on-board the talent which can take weeks if not months. Then you need to upskill them on your particular industry and target audience. You may not see results for years to come.
As we mentioned earlier in the article, agencies tend to get results MUCH faster than in-house teams. We have teams of marketing experts ready to deploy at any given time who have experience with delivering results quickly.
Working with agencies also tends to more cost effective for businesses that are in the small to medium range since you don’t need to pay all the costs associated with keeping your employees on the books.
Having less control over your marketing campaign is one thing that comes with working with an agency. Since we need to work out profitability for ourselves, the resources needed for each project, and timescales, we need to try harder to please each party.
On the flip side, you can tell a marketing in-house team exactly what needs to be done and what budget they have to work with. They’ll then get started right away regardless of whether it’s profitable.
Hopefully that article has been helpful with regards to explaining why you’d hire a digital marketing agency.
And now you know why you should hire a digital marketing agency, if you want to work with the best agency in the world (slightly biased opinion), shoot us an email. Our quote forms can be found on all of our main pages!
If you want to learn more about why you should hire a digital marketing agency, this post from The Brains Marketing is a great resource.
And last but not least, be sure to check out our other articles such as this one.
