Why Hire a Digital Marketing Agency?

Marketing is an essential part of any business. Some companies invest a relatively large proportion of their income into marketing to grow their business. Digital Marketing in particular is a rapidly changing and complicated sector. 

Whilst there may be a temptation to hire a team of experts to work in house for you. Most companies will struggle to find the budget to do this well. Ultimately you may end up with an under-resourced and struggling team that costs too much, without seeing the results you hoped for. 

This, along with several reasons outlined below, is why hiring a digital marketing agency may be the best option for your company.

1) Creating a digital presence by yourself isn’t always an option

Most businesses or organisations, no matter their sector, need a digital presence. Gone are the days of the yellow pages, they have been seen off by Google. This search engine heavyweight dictates who finds you and how easy it is for them to find you. Your customer’s first port of call when looking for a product or service will most likely be Google, so you need to make sure that they are finding you and not your competitor.

Simply having an online presence is not enough. To get value out of your website, it needs to be strategically built and filled with good SEO content. It needs to be well maintained, up to date and show that you are an authority in your industry. All of this is time-consuming. If you do not have existing expertise in your organisation you will either have to recruit individuals to do this or struggle to keep on top of a growing and changing digital landscape. 

This long term commitment may not be an option for some companies, who could instead benefit from shorter-term assistance and advice from an external agency.

Approaching an established digital marketing team with several services at their fingertips helps you bypass this recruitment process and gives you access to a pool of experience and talent.

2) Creating a Strategy and providing Direction

Ok - so you have a website or have created a social media account. Why? Was the decision taken based on assumptions or research? Are you simply responding to what you see competitors doing? Or are you forging your path based on strategic goals? 

Creating channels for communication is essential (as discussed in reason 1) However it's important to put thought and planning into choosing which channels you engage with and why. 

To do this you need to have a clear understanding of where you are and where you want to be, with measurable goals for success.

An experienced digital marketing agency will be able to help you build a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. This should take into account:

• What your user journey may look like
• Who your competitors are and how they behave
• A wider knowledge of different brands’ approaches to marketing
• What realistic options are available to you dependent on your price point

Having a strategy from the beginning will help you approach digital marketing in a way that is smart, efficient, measurable and ultimately effective. It will help ensure every channel you invest time in, is helping to generate more leads and convert these to customers.

3) Agencies give you more value for your money

As mentioned in reason 1, employing a team full time, whose sole purpose is to maintain and update your various digital marketing channels can be expensive and unnecessary. It will also be a small team, or even one person, who will be limited in their skill set as a result. 

It’s unrealistic to expect one employee to be able to do it all and building a team with a wide skill set is costly and time-consuming. Having someone with design experience is brilliant, but they are then unlikely to be well versed in analytics, SEO and pay per click?

A good Digital Marketing agency will have done the work of building a skilled team for you. This means that they should have the skills tailored to each channel available to you, without you having to pay for it full time. For smaller businesses, it’s unlikely that you will need a full-time SEO specialist to work for you so it can save costs to be able to tap into one for the set number of days you need.

4) You get to Focus on the Bigger Picture

Thinking up great ideas for content, quality copy for SEO content or conducting research all take time. Precious time that very few business owners have. In all likelihood, you started your business because you were passionate about your sector and your customers, not about the intricacies of google.

By trusting your digital marketing to someone else you are not only investing in an insightful, reliable service, but you are also giving yourself the gift of space and time to focus on the bigger picture.

Engaging with your followers on social media is important, but it often isn’t the most important thing for business owners to focus on. 

Whilst an in-person response from the top boss can be great for networking in real life, it just isn’t necessary for digital marketing and networking. If you find that dealing with the minutia of your social media channels is taking up more than a couple of hours each week, then it may be time for you to start delegating it to someone else.

5) Analytics, Reporting and Measurable Results

When your marketing is digital, it means that any interactions or leads generated are much easier to track. Being able to measure your progress and generate reports not only helps you to understand what is and isn’t working but also to explain your decision making to any key stakeholders and team members. 

By having clear metrics to track your progress through you can see how you are achieving year on year. Good data which shows proven returns can make difficult decisions much simpler. However, capturing and deciphering good data is a skill in itself.  

A good digital marketing company will provide succinct, clear periodical reports. Keeping an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs) and showing the results of their efforts to allow you to keep on top of your wins. This will help inform any important decisions you need to make about your future spending on any digital marketing.

6) Greater Freedom to Scale-up Quickly 

So you have received your latest report and your digital marketing has shown more and more new conversion of leads through Instagram. You may not have the capacity in your workforce to be creating even more content for social media. Hiring someone would take time, money and training (if you can even find someone appropriate). By using an agency you can pay to extend your agreement, picking up extra hours as needed.

It can also work in reverse. It may be that something that started out well is starting to look less fruitful. If you have hired someone to cover that service it can be quite complicated and stressful to make an employee redundant or to change their contract. With an external agency, it is easier to explore other avenues or reduce time spent on that area of marketing.

Having the flexibility to do what is best for your company can help you be responsive and forward-facing.  

So there you have it. Six great reasons to start looking for someone to take on your digital marketing. If you are starting to think that you may need a helping hand with your digital marketing then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team today.