Marketing Overload Or Stalled Growth? Wondering When It’s Time To Hire A Marketing Agency?
There are many reasons why you may start thinking about getting marketing expertise from the outside. For example, you may feel that your staff cannot handle all of the marketing tasks that keep piling up, Or you may think that your business would have expanded more rapidly if it wasn’t for not-so-efficient marketing strategies.
Still, no matter how valid our reasoning can be, we don’t always take immediate action, when we probably should. To avoid doing that, let’s dive deep into all the red flags that will tell you when to bring in a marketing agency as quickly as possible.
17 Signs That Say It’s Time To Hire A Marketing Agency
We can split these signs into two categories: the ones that are connected with the human aspect of your business, and the ones that are more about numbers, metrics, and goals.
Personnel-Based Signs
You Need New Ideas And Strategies
Growth department performance is known to drop without a regular influx of fresh ideas – with consumer preferences and market conditions changing all the time, you need to stay ahead of the curve. So you will definitely benefit from another source of marketing ideas to tackle these changes.
Marketing agencies usually know more about trends than anyone, not to mention, strategic, long-term planning is their specialty as well.
Digital Marketing Isn’t Your Strength
Not every business is capable of effectively managing its digital marketing. Some simply lack the skill or time to implement a content marketing plan and as a result, they make haphazard efforts that yield subpar outcomes. To avoid making these mistakes, you can always offload those responsibilities to a marketing agency and focus your own efforts on other vital tasks.
Your Team Doesn’t Enjoy Marketing
Another example is when some level of expertise is there, but your staff would be simply happier and more productive if they handled something else.
A half-hearted approach to social media, uninspired emails, landing pages, and blog entries will not produce the desired outcomes. So when a fully dedicated marketing team steps in and commits to the needed marketing activities, it will show.
You Want A Good Marketing Team, But Don’t Have The Budget
It quickly becomes expensive to employ an inbound marketing specialist, a content writer, a social media manager, a PPC specialist, and a graphic designer.
The specialists’ salaries and taxation can burn a hole in one’s marketing budget, and not everyone is willing to take that risk. However, you can still gain from all of that experience and expertise by hiring a marketing agency, which usually costs much less.
Your Marketing Team Is Stretched Thin And Can’t Handle All Tasks Effectively
It’s natural that the quality of your employees’ output declines as their workload increases. Their abilities are being strained, and the stress may cause them to perform poorly. Transferring some of the digital marketing activities to an agency will enable your internal team to refocus and thrive at what they are strong at.
Business Goal-Based Signs
Marketing Spend Far Outweighs Your Income
Ineffective marketing is often the cause of bad sales numbers. And it doesn’t matter how good your services or products are, or how competent your sales team may be – if the marketing isn’t done right, revenue will suffer.
Marketing agencies often offer free consultations to tell you what you’re doing wrong at the moment and give you some invaluable advice. If you click with them, you may want to consider hiring them to implement said advice as well.
You’re Unsure Of What’s Driving Your Sales
Imagine this – if all of a sudden you register a spike in website traffic or phone calls, will you be able to tell where they come from? If you can’t, you’re probably missing out on chances to achieve even greater success or wasting your time on marketing tactics that you don’t know are useless.
What effects are your marketing efforts having on prospects and website traffic? Let a marketing firm answer that question on your behalf if you are unable to do so.
Your Company Is Growing, You Need More Resources To Market Your Product
Sometimes, due to the nature of the market, a company can get a chance to jump at an opportunity at the right time and reap numerous benefits. Internal hiring entails posting job ads, conducting interviews, and providing training. This process typically takes longer the bigger the firm.
However, digital marketing agencies already have the personnel, resources, and expertise required to bring about change.
In the time it takes an HR department to approve a new job posting, its employees can swiftly assess a company’s needs, devise a plan, and begin implementing that plan because they are accustomed to working together.
Your Competitors Are Outpacing You In Marketing And Customer Acquisition
If you see your direct competition appear on Google search results higher than your business, or if you see the ads for their products all the time, chances are they have a good marketing team behind all of this.
Which means, they’re likely getting more customers than you. The good news is that you can easily bridge that gap or even go ahead of your competitors by hiring a proven marketing agency. They are usually very good at competitor analysis and can pinpoint which steps to make in order to beat your rivals.
You’re Unsure How To Track Marketing Success Metrics
Efficient marketing also comes from knowing how to use the most advanced analytics tools to make important marketing decisions. Traffic volume, keyword difficulty, domain authority, open rate – if you’re not sure how to get these vital stats, you’re best advised to leave it to a marketing agency.
Agencies leverage the power of such tools as Google Analytics, SEMRush, Ahrefs, and many others to guarantee that your digital marketing efforts remain functioning and relevant.
Your Website Is Not Generating Enough Traffic Or Engagement
Chances are, you’ve invested a lot of money into making your business website top-notch, visually and technically. But if the website doesn’t get seen by anyone, it will feel like a very bad investment and the website itself will serve little purpose.
An experienced marketing agency can help you drive revenue from your website using a whole array of complex marketing techniques, which you may not be familiar with.
You’re Having Difficulty Generating Or Converting Leads
If your salesmen are capable and diligent, but you’re still lacking in contracts signed or products sold, it’s possible that your current marketing activities aren’t yielding enough leads or these leads are low quality.
A competent marketing firm will familiarize itself with your sales procedure and connect its marketing with your sales force. They will improve and modify your marketing depending on actual outcomes with the assistance and involvement of your sales staff.
You Need Help With Targeting And Segmenting Your Audiences
It’s uncommon that every one of your customers would have the same profile – businesses like to target multiple demographics within their audience that they mark as potentially interested.
However, targeting and segmenting the whole potential customer base can be a mountain to climb without the proper experience, expertise, or tools. A good marketing team will definitely have all of the above and will help you understand your customers better.
You’re Not Seeing A Good ROI From Your Marketing Budget
Not all problems get solved just by throwing enough money at it – it’s quite common for businesses to invest fortunes in marketing without getting much in return.
Why? Because the way marketing is handled internally is simply inefficient.
Outside marketing teams normally have a lot of experience in managing all kinds of marketing budgets in a way that you get to minimize expenses and maximize output.
RELATED: How To Outsource SaaS Marketing Tasks On A Budget
You Want To Be Up-To-Date With the Latest Marketing Trends And Techniques
Google Search frequently modifies its algorithm, sometimes even nullifying marketing activities that have been effective forever. It occurs much more often than you might imagine, thus keeping us with the latest marketing updates is essential.
And it takes a lot of work. Digital marketing agencies can take this work off of you, looking into and managing these changes. Don’t let the need to keep up with fast-evolving trends prevent you from concentrating on the other aspects of your business.
Your Marketing Efforts Aren’t Automated
A lot of businesses still operate in a manner where a good chunk of marketing tasks are done manually.
Usually, that is either because the marketing department isn’t very experienced or innovative. Marketing agencies, on the other hand, tend to have mature, established, and, most importantly, automated processes for most of the crucial marketing activities.
You Need Help Creating A Compelling Value Proposition
You may have a top-of-the-line product or service, but hardly anyone is going to buy it if you’re telling potential customers the wrong story. Thus, customers may fail to see the value in buying something from you, and through no fault of their own. Let an experienced marketing agency assist you in creating an appealing package for what you sell, so it sells well.
Conclusion
Any business is bound to have its downs at some point, it’s natural. It’s also something that you shouldn’t be afraid of if you know how to deal with the problems that occur.
And if these problems happen to be marketing-related, be it poor ROI, lack of fresh ideas, or simply no expertise, one of the best things you could do for your company is to turn to a professional, dedicated marketing agency.
