Marketing provides a way for your business to expose the products or services you offer to your target audience in hopes to increase sales and grow your business. Small and medium business owners understand that marketing is an essential piece of the puzzle when aiming for success. You know you need a marketing plan but how do you go about it? Do you hire an in house team or outsource to a marketing agency near you? While there surely are circumstances in which an in house team is beneficial, more often than not a marketing agency is the way to go. The purpose of this article is to address some common misconceptions business owners have about marketing agencies and to highlight some of the perks of working with a local marketing agency.
Marketing Agency Myths
It’s cheaper to hire an in house marketing person
According to salary.com, the salary for a marketing manager in Louisiana starts around $77,000 a year. This cost does not include your marketing buys. Depending on your budget, agency fees can approach that figure on an annual basis but you get an entire team vs a single person. This means an agency provides a much larger capacity as well as specialists in different areas of marketing. Unless your single individual is able to design, develop, produce, create and implement marketing strategies, an agency will be more cost effective and produce a higher return on investment. Even if your star marketing manager is able to carry out all of those tasks, having them do so alone is a sure route to burnout and requests for a larger team is around the corner, increasing costs.
Bigger the agency – Bigger the results
A common misbelief is that the best of the best have the largest agencies. While larger agencies can have access to more resources, a smaller agency is more likely to provide a personal tailored experience. The corporate environment that often comes with very large agencies leads to templated strategies and you become just a number. Smaller agencies, like Klout 9, have the ability to become an extension of your brand and team. A hands on representative who is able to sit down and learn your brand becomes like an off site employee which has the potential for a much higher return on investment.
Outsourcing equals loss of control
When working with an agency it is actually very important that you remain heavily involved in the strategy side of your marketing plan. While an agency will learn your brand and how it should be represented etc, the more involved you are in the content, the better. Can your agency come up with all the content ideas for you? Of course but there are seasonal trends in your industry that you know much better than anyone else. When the agency you work with operates as an extension of your team, everyone takes part in the planning and the agency does the heavy lifting with implementation. You can have as much or as little control as you choose.
Agencies Over Promise and Under Deliver
This unfortunately is not fully a myth. Marketing agencies have developed a bad rap due to the few that indeed promise the world knowing the limitations of what they can deliver. It is important to have multiple sit downs with the agency you are considering to discuss your expectations and their plans for both execution and result measurement before moving forward in the relationship.
Hiring an agency removes all work on the business’ side
An agency will take a huge load off by providing creativity, resources and implementation but as mentioned above, company involvement is a must. The agency needs a point of contact with the company to help with strategy, manage ongoing expectations, organize production shoots and more. Working with a marketing agency is a partnership.
Results should be immediate
This is one of the most common misconceptions in the marketing industry. While some services will drive quicker results, others take time to build momentum. If your agency is promoting overnight success, be cautious. At Klout9, it is just as important to us as it is to you to see positive results. If what we are doing is not working, we don’t want to spend your budget on it. This coincides with setting realistic expectations upfront. For example, if you launch a brand new website, you can expect SEO services to take a good 6 months to take off. A PPC campaign on the other hand will provide immediate traffic and can be fully optimized in as little as three weeks.
If you are on the fence about hiring a marketing agency to take over your marketing efforts, we recommend you take the leap! When you are with the right fit, an agency can effectively grow your business at an amazing ROI, allowing you to focus on the day to day operations and the agency to focus on growing efforts. Be sure to ask lots of questions – it is our job as agencies to overcome misconceptions like the ones mentioned in this post. If you have any questions or would like to see what Klout9 has to offer, contact us today!