Now more than ever, with so many small businesses operating in the UK, it’s important to implement the right marketing strategies, otherwise, your business could be unnoticed by potential customers.
If you’re a marketing director or executive who’s been thinking of your business’s marketing efforts recently, you may have asked yourself the question: “should I hire a Marketing Manager of hire a marketing agency?”
Both are costs you have to consider but which is the better investment?
Full-time digital marketing employees
Many businesses choose to onboard full-time employees to take charge of digital marketing efforts. It can be convenient to have a professional dedicated to your business who knows the brand well and depends on its success but the cost of onboarding and maintaining full-time employees can outweigh the benefits.
Small and medium-sized businesses often do not have a significant marketing budget so paying for marketing software overheads and salaries of full-time employees is not cost-efficient.
Hiring an agency is more cost-effective in this case as you'll likely pay a flat monthly fee and have access to a suite of marketing services under one roof.
There is also the risk of losing your employee and having to start from scratch. When you rely on one person to be the expert, but they quit the job, you lose their expertise and knowledge. You'll have to spend more money onboarding a new employee, training them, and wait for them to build their own knowledge base.
Hiring a full-time employee also raises the risk of certain areas of marketing suffering. Instead of having a team of experts who can all specialise in one area, you are relying on one person to do everything. For example, you might have great SEO but poor social media engagement.
Hiring a marketing agency
Relying on an agency to handle your digital marketing means that you won't run the risk of one person holding all the knowledge. You can also count on them to combine their expertise and efforts to give you a high-quality full-service experience.
A marketing manager is your full-time member of staff, but it's only one person. A marketing agency is your go-to, multi-skilled partner who's got you covered!
Here are 6 reasons why hiring a marketing agency might just be the best decision you make for your organisation...
1. Experience and management
Marketing agencies also have a ton of experience; they're implementing marketing initiatives day in and day out, and will know exactly how to identify your potential customers, build your brand and improve your online presence.
Additionally, if you work with an agency that has served clients in your niche before, they’ll understand your industry - bonus points!
A marketing agency will also have proven process to work through for multiple aspects of digital marketing - they have project and task management nailed (or so we hope!) They'll likely use a tool like Monday.com or Notion for so you can always see the next task your agency is working on.
Compare this to running your own internal marketing team, and suddenly you have to come up with not only your entire marketing strategy yourself, but also consider how you go about managing and implementing this strategy, not to mention, tracking it's effectiveness and optimising performance.
Another huge benefit of accessing a ready-made team of superheroes is the tools they have access to.
An agency offering content marketing and SEO services will inevitably have access to the best platforms to manage and monitor this which could save you thousands in subscriptions year-on-year for platforms like Semrush, Buzzumo and Adzooma.
2. Access to full-stack skills
The second reason you should hire a marketing agency is that you’ll be working with experts across multiple disciplines, from design and development to SEO and copywriting.
Whilst it's true that a marketing manager will understand the importance of all aspects of digital marketing, there's a very high chance they won't actually be able to deliver and implement design, content writing, landing page creation, campaign strategy, paid ads management, technical integrations, performance monitoring, video production, photography and everything else that comes with a comprehensive marketing plan!
Working with a marketing agency essentially extends the skills of your team without growing your team.
Instead of having to employ ten different people with individual skills, working with a digital marketing agency gives you access to a full suite of services so you’ll have an entire dedicated team with combined skills helping you.
This has two benefits;
Consistency across marketing touchpoints
For one thing, everyone handling every single aspect of marketing—from design to content creation—will be working together. As a result, every single piece of marketing that goes out there will feel like the same person created it. When it comes to building a brand that is consistent (and that clients will come to trust), this is one of the most effective ways you can be sure this happens.
Expertise across multiple marketing disciplines
Secondly, the amount of knowledge they have is extraordinary. Each individual will have their own skills that, when combined, provide you with all the marketing expertise needed to power your marketing.
These skills include copywriting, social media management, SEO optimisation, website design and development, graphic design, and much more.
If you were to hire an entire team to manage each of these elements of marketing, you would have to bring on a great number of people. But when you hire a digital marketing agency, these experts with all their skills are simply ready to go.
3. Faster production than an internal team
A big win for organisations working with a digital marketing agency is the rate of production.
This is MUCH faster than an internal team and there are several reasons for this:
- An agency will have processes set in place to keep up momentum.
- They don’t have to start from scratch - they've done it all before so no need for training.
- They’ll be able to pinpoint what needs to change in your marketing strategy and craft a plan of action to work through methodically.
- An agency will have all the resources they need at their fingerprints, including licenses for tools and software to handle things, fast.
- The whole team is used to working together and do so effectively, speeding up the production of your marketing materials.
4. A strategic approach
Working with a marketing agency brings a strategic approach to your marketing efforts. If you’ve been struggling to get your business out there, an agency can help you by creating a multi-channel plan of action.
First, they’ll audit your marketing efforts. Then, they’ll sit with you and talk about the different goals you have for your business. They’ll ask questions such as:
- What's your primary goal?
- Do you have a revenue target for the next 12 months?
- What's the LTV of a client?
Then, they’ll create a long-term strategy with you on how to reach your goals, including monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews.
They will also manage all the different aspects of marketing with these goals in mind, such as targeting a specific customer, improving your social content, growing your email list, improving your website’s UX, fine-tuning PPC campaigns and more.
Additionally, a marketing agency will break up these goals into milestones and tasks that are achievable, assigning aspects to different people on their team.
They will also check in with you consistently, to ensure that the strategy they have put together working. If any changes are needed, the agency will implement them seamlessly.
After you have worked with the agency for some time, you’ll start to see the results of their strategic approach and marketing efforts, from improved SEO in blog posts to a great influx of new customers.
Because they’ve done this so many times before, the results will be impressive.
5. Convenience
When you’re running your own business, there’s so much you have to take care of in addition to marketing. You’re getting funding for different initiatives, closing sales, handling your business’s cash flow, recruiting and a million other things. You’re also in charge of managing your entire team!
If you’re running a new business, it can feel like you don’t have time to sit down and focus on marketing. You might be able to make some efforts here and there, but, generally speaking, it can feel overwhelming.
Working with an agency, you won’t have to worry about updating your website or writing a new article around the next hot topic - their team will take on all the marketing work required so that you don’t have to.
Additionally, if your team isn’t big enough to handle all the demands of implementing a full-on marketing strategy, with a marketing agency, your team can focus on other tasks instead, making your business more effective.
Working with an agency can become a hands-off approach after the initial onboarding and strategy piece. As the relationship grows, you'll feel confident in letting them take a lead on things, quite literally publishing content while you sleep, and you'll always be able to see what's going on through a dashboard or project management tool like Notion.
6. Cheaper than hiring
If you’ve been thinking of hiring a marketing agency, then perhaps you’ve also thought of hiring someone who has the same skills as an agency's team. For example, you may have thought of hiring a Marketing Manager at your business or a Marketing Intern.
However, hiring someone for this role will cost you far more than hiring a marketing agency—in more than one way.
Lost time
First of all, you will lose precious time. Before a Marketing Manager joins your team, you will have to go through the arduous process of finding the right candidate for the role. You will spend hours drafting the job advert, sifting through applications, interviewing candidates and sending out job offers.
Even once you’ve hired someone for the role, they could decide it’s not for them—after which you’d have to start the hiring process all over again.
If you’re unhappy with their work or they simply aren’t the right fit for your company, the same will happen.
During this entire process, you’re not only wasting your time but also spending months focusing on hiring whilst your marketing efforts are not as strong as they could be.
Lost money
Hiring a new team member can also be incredibly costly. If you’re paying your new Marketing Manager a full-time salary, you’ll likely also have to provide benefits, as well as technology such as a new laptop. This all adds up.
If you choose to hire this Marketing Manager on a contract basis, you’ll risk not getting all of their attention. They will feel that their efforts must be shared between your marketing strategy and other clients’.
By hiring a marketing agency, you’ll save money. They'll have set fees that they charge for specific services. They’ll be transparent about the different fees they charge, and they’ll also be happy to work with you to find the right payment plan.
Lost effort
When you hire a Marketing Manager, even though they’re an expert in their field, you will still have to train them to understand how things are done at your business. You also might find that there are additional marketing skills they need to learn, especially for someone in a more junior position.
With a marketing agency, you won’t come across these problems. They have a large amount of experience with different clients, which means they’ll know how to adapt to your business’s needs.
Additionally, they won’t be lacking in any marketing skills. In fact, instead of you training them, they can help you understand a bit more about how to implement marketing in the day-to-day running of your business.
Need more information?
Now that we’ve answered the question, “Why hire a marketing agency?”, perhaps you're contemplating partnering with one...
In that case, you’re in luck. Our Agency Subscription offers a simple, flexible and transparent way to collaborate across video, content, SEO, PPC, design, CRM, email marketing, automation and operations to bring you more leads and sales.
Just a heads up, some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, meaning we may make a small commission on any sign-ups or purchases for the tools we recommend.
