You may have a Marketing plan in place, or you may even have some Marketing experience. Maybe your experience was positive, and you are looking for some fresh eyes. Perhaps you have had a poor experience, and the Marketing agency you hired did not provide what was expected. Maybe you decided to hire in-house and wonder how to manage your new staff member, and you need an agency to help. Choosing and hiring the best digital marketing agency for your business can be a worthwhile investment if done correctly. This article outlines the things to look out for if you consider hiring a digital marketing agency for your business.
1. As an owner or manager, you are spread thin or trying to do everything
Running a business is difficult and challenging. If you are working 60+ hours a week and haven’t seen your friends and family in some time, you may have built yourself some golden handcuffs. Remember why you started your business or took that management position. If marketing is consuming you, it might be time to find some help.
2. The diversification of ideas, strategies, and tactics
You and your business excel at your core concepts, but you may need help with those extra activities outside your primary strengths. You may want to hire an agency to help with overall marketing plans, SEO, Paid Advertising, or Website Design to help with your needs.
3. Specialized knowledge
Knowing everything is impossible, and as a business owner, this becomes more apparent the more experience you have. Specialists and agencies can have experiences you haven’t had yet. They might know a few pitfalls that you are heading for and can help guide that. They can also provide the expertise you are looking for.
4. Saving on salaries, time, and training
In-house employees require knowledge, time, and money. This includes their salary, benefits, hardware, software, and training.
Sometimes it makes sense to hire in-house— whether that be project management, marketing direction, or you have the budget and have grown to the size that hiring more employees makes sense. We’ve seen it far too many times where a client hires a college student or a fresh Marketing grad with all the ambition and swagger to sell them on the concept of running the marketing for their company. This typically never works out without help from experienced professionals. In all fairness to the hires, they do their best. We have great empathy for them as they typically approach the problems head-on with youthful vigor only to be outmatched by a website glitch, unplanned strategy, wasted Ad spend, or inability to understand the analytics. Don’t get me wrong; we love interns and fresh graduates but if you bring them in, give them the tools they need to succeed and evaluate the cost of them failing at the tasks you are delegating.
When you evaluate the hiring cost, be sure to take all the skill sets required to succeed. It’s easy to hire a jack of many trades but masters of none. When you hire an agency, you can employ skills that complement yours. Maybe you are a decent writer but can’t design your way out of a paper bag. Perhaps you have a basic understanding of PR, but you don’t know how SEO works. Maybe you’ve moved to a leadership position, and you can do all these things but simply don’t have the time. Those are all excellent reasons to bring in a digital marketing agency.
Outsourcing your digital marketing can help you save time and effort to get the work done and do it well.
5. When you are too busy, and your marketing is not getting done
Sales, Operations, and Finance can all take up a tremendous amount of time. It’s only natural that when you are busy, marketing efforts fall short of completion. I mean, it’s okay, right? You are staying active. But is your business genuinely doing what it needs to do to grow? Will you be in the right place if sales decline? It’s essential to have a plan and be executing at the level your business needs.
6. When sales growth is stagnating or, worse, declining
Do you have a system for getting marketing to sales? Are your sales stalling out or taking up too much time to educate. This is a good sign that your marketing could use some help. An excellent digital marketing agency can help evaluate the efforts you currently have and can work with your Salesperson or Sales team to make a plan to improve.
It’s always better if you can address this before your sales start to fall off. Sometimes it just takes an outside eye to correct your efforts.
Finding the right digital marketing agency for your needs can have a huge impact on your business goals. We hope this article helps you on your journey to finding the best digital marketing agency that meets those needs. Full disclaimer: Big Storm is a digital marketing agency in Bozeman, Montana. Find out more about our marketing services.