Determining how to manage your marketing online can be difficult if you don’t already have a team ready. You not only have to think of what the most cost-effective way to do it, but also how to maximize your efficiency without losing valuable time. At some point you’ll have to consider what makes the most sense; is it better to hire individual marketers or is hiring a digital marketing agency a smarter choice? No two companies are the same, but here are some things to consider when deciding whether or not you should outsource your inbound marketing.
Why Partner with an Agency?
1. Cost Effectiveness
An experienced in-house marketing hire can be quite expensive, potentially ranging significantly in annual salary depending on role and location. When you hire a digital marketing agency, you can gain access to a full team of experts often for a comparable or even lower investment than hiring, training, and retaining a single senior employee.
2. Marketing Expertise
Effective marketing requires knowledge across a variety of disciplines, and an outside firm offers comprehensive expertise. You get access to expert content writers, social media professionals, SEO specialists, web designers, paid media managers, and much more. Hiring an individual in-house marketer who excels at everything required is rare and potentially risky. Because of that, the best marketing campaigns are often executed by a team of specialists rather than one person trying to cover all bases. A digital marketing agency stays up-to-date on new innovations and ensures your campaigns fully leverage current capabilities.
3. Consistency
Starting and maintaining an effective in-house marketing program from scratch can prove difficult. Internal employees are often pulled onto other projects that take focus away from marketing campaigns. Digital marketing agencies dedicate their time solely to marketing activities, allowing them to focus fully and consistently on your campaigns.
4. Process Driven
When you hire a digital agency, you are hiring a team that integrates its established processes into your organization. They know what questions to ask, what data to analyze, and what steps to focus on during process development. A reputable digital agency has refined the processes needed to succeed and will ensure comprehensive coverage, from onboarding and strategy development to execution, measurement, and reporting.
5. Technology and Tools
Numerous marketing tools are available today to increase efficiency, productivity, and performance analysis. Unfortunately, subscribing to multiple premium tools (for SEO, analytics, social media management, automation, etc.) can be cost-prohibitive for many small and mid-sized companies. Digital marketing agencies typically already invest in these systems and possess the expertise to extract maximum value from them for their clients.
6. Current Strategy is Broken or Stagnant
It’s not uncommon even for successful businesses to have aspects of their marketing strategy that aren’t working or have hit a plateau. When referrals slow down, growth stalls, or you need help taking your business to the next level, getting a qualified, objective set of eyes to help refine strategy and execution can mean the difference between significant revenue increase and stagnation.
7. New Perspective
One way to fix a broken or stagnant strategy is with a fresh perspective. It’s easy to get stuck in established routines or overlook new opportunities when working solely from the inside. Internal employees might become attached to certain ideas or feel hesitant to suggest radical changes. With a digital agency, you collaborate with marketing strategists who assess your situation and generate new ideas, often bringing valuable insights from the perspective of the consumer and experiences in other industries.
8. Experience
This could be one of the most crucial aspects of hiring external help for your digital marketing. Hiring and training a new internal employee means months of onboarding and ramp-up time, representing lost opportunity cost. In contrast, experienced digital marketing agencies are ready to jump right in. They execute marketing strategies every day across multiple industries and know where to begin and how to drive towards success efficiently.
Ready to Grow?
If you’re ready to enhance your digital marketing efforts, you could continue managing it internally, or you could explore partnering with Upward Engine. You can often achieve more with your marketing investment by hiring an experienced digital marketing agency to guide and execute your strategy. It’s what we do.