Agency marketing offers your business an external marketing team that employs several internet marketing methods to build your business. The concern, however, is if you have the best choice for an Internet marketing firm.
Scroll down to study the reasons to hire a digital marketing agency and the possible disadvantages that you might face on the way too.
Pros
Proven expertise
A great aspect of hiring an outer marketing company is the ability to avoid diving into the intricacies of digital marketing. Agency employees live and breathe their craft. They have spent years mastering their professions and discovering tools and strategies, and at the same time continue to study specialized blogs, research, and news for several hours a day in order to keep their skills and knowledge refreshed.
Concentration on business
If you hire a marketing agency to promote your company on the Internet, you can concentrate on business processes without any stress. You are already doing a lot of work: Internet communications, transport services, repair of equipment and vehicles. For the most part, you outsource the maintenance of all this to third-party companies. So why should it be any different with digital marketing?
Again, with this approach, there is no need for management, adaptation, and training of the internal team, since all elements of online marketing are handled by the team on the side.
Access to cutting-edge technology and tools
Perhaps you already work with some kind of email automation tool (Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, Customer.io, or maybe even Pardot), but do you have applications for monitoring the ranking of your web resources in search engines for key queries? Are you using specialized tools to create and promote your landing pages? Have you budgeted for licenses for photo and video editing applications like Adobe? Can you calculate the ROI of your advertising campaigns and do a bunch of other things?
Digital marketing agencies use all of these tools and more because, without them, you can’t create a competitive product. Moreover, they don’t just use them, they master these tools at a professional level, which can be achieved only after several years of experience using them.
A clear marketing strategy
The agencies understand the importance of your business, and they also understand that you can terminate the contract at any time if you feel like you aren’t achieving the expected results.
Remember: marketing management is their niche. Most marketing agencies have someone on the team who is fully committed to the strategy. This strategy manager is the person in charge of managing your marketing. Agencies are much more advanced when it comes to your marketing management because they have a specialist for every marketing strategy, and their team consists of multiple specialists.
Cost-effectiveness
You may be surprised, but working with a digital marketing agency is frequently significantly cheaper than hiring in-house marketing. You pay a retainer to a marketing agency for the marketing services you receive. These are usually permanent retainers, but you can adjust them to meet the demands of your company. For instance, if you had some spare cash in the budget for one month, you could use it to invest in a new marketing campaign.
Collaboration costs with marketing agencies can vary from $20,000 to $200,000 per year.
For example, your company can engage in SEO services with a digital marketing agency that costs between $750 and $2,000 per month, or between $9,000 and $24,000 per year. This is far lower than what an SEO specialist would ask for with the average salary of $50,000 – $90,000.
Cons
Despite all the benefits, working with a digital marketing agency has some drawbacks, too.
Location & culture difference
You may locate agencies worldwide that are disadvantageous to companies who wish to engage with a local commercial enterprise. This might be a challenge if you want to set schedules.
Therefore you may work with one who is experienced with these types of customer connections if you choose to collaborate with an agency in a different time zone. There are some systems that can make it seamless to work with you. Cultural differences are also a thing, so keep this in mind to avoid misunderstandings.
You are not the only employer
You need to understand that you are not the only business the marketing agency will collaborate with. However, anyone you hire will commit their entire working day to your company. Clients at an agency require equal attention. A full-time employee is also more accessible because they are based in your building! If this is a big deciding factor for a business, hiring an employee is the best option.
Inconsistent control
You as a business would feel the need to control each and every detail, but that’s not how it always works with the agency. You will need to trust them and loosen up control once you decide to choose this path. The detachment from the personal connection is the first consequence of outsourcing digital marketing. What occurs is that agencies sometimes do everything their way and do not allow business owners to execute their work. As a result, you may feel as if you are losing control of your company.
Therefore, choosing an agency with a sustainable reporting process will be the best solution for your business. Typically, a digital marketing agency reports to the clients at least once a month. Marketing reporting will enable you to track the work progress and optimize a strategy.
Safety concern
Management of sensitive corporate data might be a problem. To decrease the chance of your marketing data being mistreated, choose an agency that you can trust.
One of the most valid ways to protect your business security when working with a marketing agency is to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). It’s a legally binding agreement that specifies how you will use confidential information and deliverables during the cooperation. Protecting your ideas, patents, non-public accounting statistics, and customer lists is critical to preventing product ownership and intellectual property issues.