By Osky Blue | Published August 1, 2018
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
– Steve Jobs
If he who controls your marketing department determines the success of your company, why not let it be a full-service marketing agency? Wanting to have someone in-house handling marketing responsibilities is fine, but why leave that task to one person when you can hire an agency that has a team of diversified skills and ideas? Below are just some of the reasons why it’s better to hire an agency versus letting an employee handle all of your marketing needs.
What’s more productive: one person handling ten tasks or dividing those same ten tasks among five people? Working with an agency, you will have an entire team working on your marketing which means more projects get completed in a shorter time period. Good agencies not only employee highly-skilled subject-matter-experts, but they also foster a collaborative environments that result in more creative marketing strategies.
Imagine trying to hire someone who is an expert at hosting, building and maintaining websites, SEO, graphic design, social media, content writing, pay-per-click advertising, campaign strategy, data analysis, and email marketing. This would be a difficult person to find for sure! Often you will find applicants who are great at two of these, good at one or two more, and mediocre or even completely inexperienced at the rest. Not with an agency. They staff experts who cover all these disciplines and more, so you benefit from the experience and knowledge of multiple digital marketing professionals who are able to stay current in their specific areas of expertise.
An in-house employee can cost $40,000 – $50,000 per year (or more) vs. just $10,000 – $15,000 for a year of services from a digital marketing agency. The numbers do not lie; hiring an agency is almost always less expensive than hiring someone to do your marketing in-house and that doesn’t even take into consideration growth. What happens when your marketing needs extend beyond the scope of one employee either in workload or skill set? At what point do you hire another marketing person? An agency makes scalability easy and affordable by tapping into additional manpower and expertise simply be increasing your level of services.
How long will it be before your in-house employee is doing non-marketing projects? Although they were hired to be your marketing point person, budget cuts and increased workloads in other areas can result in your marketing projects being neglected. On the other hand, an agency will stay focused on executing the work agreed upon within the contract.
What happens if your employee gets sick, goes on a vacation or worse, leaves the company? Not only do they take with them the knowledge and resources your company relied upon, but now you must find a replacement which could cost the company more money and leave critical work not being completed in the meantime. When you outsource your digital marketing needs to an agency, they will have multiple individuals on staff who can manage the work responsibilities when someone is out, and it won’t take four months to get them up to speed.
One of the key advantages to hiring an agency is benefitting from their software tools. Because agencies work with dozens and even hundreds of clients, they typically use a variety of software tools to manage their client’s tracking, reporting, advertising, website hosting, etc. Tools that provide a great ROI for an agency are often cost prohibitive for an individual company to purchase.
Integrated marketing is an approach to marketing that involves creating consistent unified messaging and branding across all of a company’s online and offline marketing channels. It requires well-planned campaigns, team collaboration and the kind of communication that full-service agencies do best. When done right, integrated marketing is a great example of how the whole can be more than the sum of its parts, and this is where a team of individual experts using finely-tuned and well established processes can make a big difference.
Yes, there are potential benefits to letting an employee handle your marketing duties since they are on-site and immersed in your company culture, but as you can see, there are far more wins from letting an agency handle all of your digital marketing needs.
If you want to take your online marketing efforts to the next level, contact the digital marketing experts at Osky Blue. We specialize in custom and full-service digital marketing and have years of experience working with a variety of clients. Let us handle your online marketing efforts, so you can focus on your business.