Digital marketing agencies are essential for companies that want to attract new customers, increase brand awareness, and generate more revenue. With a project-based mindset, marketers need to find the best agency that has experience in their specific service, industry, audience, and channel. Location and proximity are no longer a hindrance when it comes to managing a relationship. Brands don't need to spend time training and educating a partner on the specifics of their industry or audience either.
Today, digital marketing is essential for reaching customers since most initial interactions take place online. According to a report, 81% of shoppers will research a product or company before buying. If your SME doesn't have information published online or can't be found, you're likely to lose that customer to the competition. The same Fundera survey found that SMEs that used digital marketing strategies such as social media and email marketing were much more successful.
When brands engage with consumers through social media marketing, customers spend up to 40% more on average on each purchase. Advertising is a multifaceted industry and while initial skepticism is natural, a good agency fit can boost your brand on a goal-oriented, expert-backed, and ROI-driven journey. This article will provide an overview of how an agency can help and when is the right time to hire one. When you work with an agency, you benefit from each member's new perspectives, ideas, and creative skill set.
They can objectively look at your company, products, and services to create messages and visuals that represent your brand while engaging others. This keeps people interested and engaged. A marketing agency will be in charge of daily, weekly, and monthly monitoring and will provide you with the results on a regular basis. They can also use tools that automate many of your marketing activities such as sending email campaigns when prospects seem interested in your business.
Investing in research tools such as those that provide competitive analysis and keyword research can be expensive for smaller companies. Effective marketing activities are time-consuming and resource-intensive when you manage them yourself. You may not have the resources to invest in time-saving automation tools for your business on your own which is why your marketing staff is exhausted doing everything manually. When you're exhausted, you miss out on getting the most out of your marketing. For example, a social media marketing agency can partner with a web design company when needed. But what does that look like once the campaigns are underway? Marketing is a creative profession by nature so it can be difficult to define what a good job looks like if you don't have goals in mind yet.
For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness in the Northeast how does your marketing partner measure your progress? How long do you think it will take to achieve your goals and what does success look like in real numbers? Defining these KPIs ahead of time will give clarity to your partnership and allow you to recognize real success when it occurs. If you discover that you are not achieving your goals, you will have accurate data that will indicate something is not working so that you can find a solution. When you want to work with a new agency remember to start by first considering your business objectives and budget and thinking about your company culture. Outsourcing is when a company hires another company to provide services on its behalf. If a company wants to outsource its marketing they can hire an agency. Agencies can also outsource some of their work to another vendor whether through white labeling hiring external contractors or collaborating with other agencies. Let's say you have a dedicated marketer on staff even if they are the best marketing expert in the world they probably only have 10-30 years of industry experience.
Marketing agencies pride themselves on hiring only the best employees who usually have extensive experience in different industries. Agencies work with a wide variety of industries markets and campaigns and this knowledge can be adapted to new local campaigns saving time and effort from trying everything from scratch. You should know that you're getting the maximum ROI from your marketing investment: Vanity metrics or reluctance to commit to clear KPIs are a red flag. There are countless different platforms that companies and agencies use to manage marketing and advertising campaigns and validate results. Full-service agencies have experts who specialize in inbound and outbound marketing both of which are equally important for small business growth. For responsiveness quality control and more you should only hire a marketing agency that works directly on your account. Effective use of data can make a big difference in lead conversions and make the most of any marketing budget. You'll likely realize that you urgently need the help of an experienced agency.