Five signs your business needs a marketing agency
After focusing on product development and operations, marketing is an important arm that’s often neglected in a business.
And that can be an expensive mistake when you consider that your marketing efforts can significantly influence the success (or failure) of your business by driving sales.
So make sure you don’t fall for the common errors of forgetting to plan your marketing, and being lukewarm in your marketing efforts. The best way to ensure that your campaigns are successful, is to consider hiring a marketing agency.
But when is the right time to that? Let’s take a look at five signs you’re ready to hire a marketing agency.
1) You don’t have enough time
Marketing usually takes a considerable amount of your time, most especially digital marketing, which is relatively new. Even if you have an in-house team who is well-versed in digital marketing, planning and implementing campaigns can be time-consuming. And then you need to analyze the performance of your marketing strategies.
In order to produce quality content and effective marketing strategies AND run your business effectively, you might need to hire a marketing agency.
Working with a good marketing agency can help to refine your vision for marketing, and improve the branding of your products. An agency will also be more efficient and effective, giving you greater results.
2) You don’t have any sales leads
Marketing and sales need to be in sync in order to produce the right results. Having both marketing and sales running separately won’t give you the sales that you need.
If your sales team has no leads to work on, then a marketing agency can step in to work closely with the department. A marketing agency can align your sales team with your marketing strategies and campaigns, making them more effective.
What’s more, a marketing agency can analyse your numbers to identify any problem areas more easily. They can look into the current issues you’re facing and find solutions to get your sales back on track.
3) You have no budget for a marketing team
Hiring an in-house marketing team can be very expensive. To have a full functioning marketing team, you need people to handle lead generation, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), website design, inbound marketing, digital marketing, marketing strategies, and pay-per-click advertising – and more.
In addition, to ramp up your marketing team, you will need to invest in both your equipment (including software) and people. Taking all these into account, a full marketing team is an expense that some businesses can’t afford.
If you’re not ready for this kind of capital expenditure, then you’ll be better off looking for a marketing agency with an excellent track record and reputable skills in the industry.
With a marketing agency you no longer need to invest in equipment or pay the salaries and benefits of employees. Instead you can save money by hiring the agency for the work you need them to complete each month – and no more. It’s a one-stop shop for everything you need for marketing, while also working out cheaper.
4) You don’t have the skill set
With marketing, you need a certain set of skills, experience, and knowledge. You need to understand how to plan a strategy – and what it takes to implement it. Some of the skills and knowledge you need includes design, content creation, campaign optimization, SEO rankingsetc. If you don’t have these skills, then you’ll benefit enormously from hiring a marketing agency.
Marketing agencies employ experts in all the aspects of marketing you’ll need – leaving you free to do what you’re good at. They’ll also be on top of the latest digital marketing trends, and know which ones will benefit your business most. So you don’t miss out on any opportunities.
5) You don’t have a plan
Marketing isn’t a sporadic, day-to-day task that you do when you please. It requires insight, planning and consistent implementation according to a carefully considered strategy that is aligned to your business goals and target audience.
So if you don’t have a plan, nor an idea of how to put one together (or the time and inclination to do so), you’ll be wise to seek the services of a marketing agency to help you.
In the long run, your brand’s presence will depend on your marketing efforts, as these two aspects work hand in hand to represent who you are in the market. So it’s vital that you ensure your products remain front of mind with your target audience – something a marketing agency can help you with.
Are you ready to hire a marketing agency?
You only have a finite amount of time, attention and energy. And dividing that between running your business and running or overseeing marketing can be tough – if not impossible to maintain. So consider whether you might be ready to hire a marketing expert to take care of it for you.
