Want a fairly quick/low-effort-required method of adding value to your company’s marketing initiatives? Consider hiring a marketing agency. Here are 9-ish reasons why marketing agencies are a great way to make an impression with your company’s stakeholders:
In-house marketers who can do everything an agency does are unicorns.
In an economy where unemployment rates are low, do you have time to chase after people with every single skill you need for your organization’s marketing success, such as web development, marketing automation, graphic design, PPC, etc.? If you do find one or even two people who can do it all, will you be able to convince them to quit their current job and join you? If they join you, will you be able to retain them when your competitors are likely looking for someone like them, too?
This is when hiring an agency can help: Agencies usually already have these functions all under one roof—or at least the ability to call on their network of tried-and-true freelancers/contractors in a pinch. While catching the elusive unicorn can be a thrill, your stakeholders are counting on you to keep marketing efforts moving. Your safest bet is to get results fast is to get a team of pros—not just one or two “rock stars” that you’ll have to be creative in how you retain them.
Scale up or down at your own pace.
The only way to scale an in-house team up or down is to hire or fire folks, respectively. The latter is obviously no fun. With an agency, however, you can increase your monthly retainer or pay on a per-project basis when you need more help for, say, a product launch or a website redesign. Is business slow? The right agency partner can work with you to cut back on marketing activities that aren’t mission-critical for you until things pick up again.
The flexibility you gain is invaluable.
You get a wealth of different marketing functions at your disposal instead of trying to hire your own specialists. Typically, a full-service agency will have a diverse range of services. While it may not be justified, for example, to hire an in-house developer for full-time work, you can call on your agency to provide web development help when you need it.
It leads to new ideas and thinking.
Unless your company is open to remote-work arrangements, generally you’re limited to the talent pool in your immediate geographic area. If you hire a local marketing agency, you’ll have access to great marketing talent without going through a long, drawn-out hiring process. Instead of hiring one or two marketing professionals, you’ll be growing your marketing team exponentially. If you take a risk and hire a marketing agency in another part of the country — or even the globe — you can access talent in another geographic area:
- That has more experience or specialization in your industry
- That has greater technical chops
- That is more cost-effective than hiring an agency your region
- That still has “boots on the ground” in your area if you needed to meet with a representative locally
If your agency knows their stuff, they can make you look good. A good agency partner is focused on delivering value in an agile fashion that upholds quality. There’s nothing like showing your stakeholders that your marketing dollars are being well spent, generating leads/sales, etc. Your ideas can finally get out of your head and become finished marketing products that have an impact on your company.
Agencies can be easier to administer from both a people and technology perspective.
After the initial contract negotiation, agencies don’t need a performance review or uncomfortable compensation talk. Your retainer amount/project rate can always be revisited or renegotiated at any time. You pay one bill each month (or however you’ve arranged it with your agency). Similarly, agencies have their own tool stack that they rely on to keep the marketing going. You likely won’t be footing the bill for any of these, but you’ll reap the benefits of the numerous tools that your agency uses to deliver marketing assets to you. This makes putting your monthly expense report together a lot easier. You can always ask your agency for recommendations on tools if there’s ever a tool you prefer to bring in-house.
Agencies are portable.
Unless there’s some clause in your current employment agreement barring you from doing so, you can typically take and reboot your agency relationships with you to future employers. You can again start to deliver value to your new employer quickly because you’ve got a team of folks you already know and trust to get you results fast.
Agencies are nimble and can move quickly.
Because agencies are not under the same roof as you, they can give you unfiltered, objective opinions on what can and can’t be done. There’s a stronger chance that they’ll be focused on the “can” part of marketing. They won’t be thinking about the “can’ts” in the way you might be familiar with, such as the numerous approvals that your company might require before a deliverable can go live. You’re increasing your chances that you’ll get stuff done faster when you work with an agency.
Agencies are more likely to stay current with the trends. The nature of their business forces them to do so. It may feel like your agency is always pitching you on something, but that’s actually a good thing. Even if your budget can’t accommodate one more dime towards marketing, you should still hear your agency out on what they think the next “big thing” is. You may be missing out on an opportunity that other companies–or even your competitors–are already tapping into and achieving success.
I’m sure that lots more bullets could be added to this list of reasons. Did I miss any reasons that you thought really should have been here? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.