You’re a good-sized business, with a healthy marketing budget of 8-12% of your gross revenue, now you need to allocate it. First question is where and how do you spend this money to achieve the best return on investment (ROI)? This is a question we answer daily at Ontario SEO. Everyone wants to see results and grow their business, lucky for you this is exactly what we do.
We’ve spoken with several companies that were debating hiring an internal team to handle their marketing efforts, or partnering with an agency to do it for them – both options have pros and cons however one stands out as the right choice… and we promise it’s not just because we are an agency.
Agency Experience
The first and foremost benefit of hiring an agency with your marketing budget is of course the experience. Agencies work with a wide range of different companies, executing different strategies for each depending on the company’s goals, industry and budget. Chances are if you are speaking to an agency that has been around the block a few times they have worked with a business like yours. Not sure? Ask – you may be surprised at the extent of experience we have in your industry already.
Knowing how to spend money is easy but knowing where you will see the best ROI comes directly from experience. Whether you are in a competitive market with a limited budget or in a less restricted market with plenty of budget there is always a “best way” to do the job – experienced agencies have the knowledge, skillset and ability to provide the return you need.
Cost Savings
With all the experience you get with an agency it seems crazy that cost savings is our next pro – but it’s true. To attempt to match the experience of an agency you would need to hire an entire team of experienced marketers from Web Developers and SEO Specialists, to Advertising Specialists and Coordinators and of course you can’t forget the creative team. Finding quality people to fill even one of these roles is tough and of course costly. If you spent even 60% of the money it would take to employ an internal team with an agency the results would be unparalleled… if you picked the right agency of course – but that’s another blog.
Fresh Insights
Hiring new employees or converting current employees to your marketing team can quickly become stale. Working with the same brand consistently can trap your marketing team in a rut of doing the same annual campaign you always do. Agencies naturally combat this as we are consistently running new campaigns with different strategies for all our clients. This provides insight into different or new tactics that could benefit you and could include overhauling a campaign strategy completely to simply introducing a new tactic you hadn’t previously thought of.
No Internal Distractions
For many companies we have noticed that the marketing team can also play a role within the company outside of their marketing duties. No matter how simple or complex this additional role is, it causes distraction from your marketing which you simply cannot afford.
An agency’s only role is to grow your business, we won’t be handling any filings, or worrying about the big pitch you have coming up next week. All we are concerned about is getting you your next opportunity.
Recommendation
Hire an agency. And if you don’t have time to manage the correspondence with the agency hire a Marketing Coordinator to manage it for you to keep things running smoothly.
Coming from us you may take this bit of advice with a grain of salt which is your prerogative, however before you toss this away as another agency trying to sell itself, think about the last campaign you ran. What was the ROI for that campaign? If you can’t easily answer that question an agency (or a new agency) is the answer you are looking for – you were looking for an answer, right? Isn’t that why you landed on this page in the first place?
So, what are you waiting for? Stop mulling it over and start a conversation with us to see if we are your answer.
