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As a business owner, you have a lot on your plate. Lists here, to-dos there, and all the while your competitors are nipping at your heels—or you’re chasing theirs. Keeping your head above water is challenging enough but you know just getting by isn’t how you get ahead.
One of the best ways to get ahead (and stay ahead) is to hire a digital marketing agency. They clear the big-ticket, time-consuming tasks off your plate and help set your brand up for long-term success. Not exactly set it and forget it but certainly a more hands-off way to grow your brand through an agency’s expertise—and reduce your stress levels.
After all, a well-planned digital strategy establishes your brand’s online presence, which every brand needs these days. Not to mention, it defines your most profitable marketing channels, helps you reach a wider audience, and gets you more leads, conversions, and sales.
From new ecommerce brands to established enterprises, every business can benefit from having a team of marketing specialists on their side. If your digital strategy could use a leg up, consider these top ten reasons to hire a digital marketing agency for your brand:
Table of Contents
More Leads, More Conversions, More Sales
All brands share one goal in common: more sales. Perhaps you focus more on your website conversion rate to download gated content and collect more email addresses for email marketing campaigns. Maybe you want more leads for a newly-launched service within your existing brand.
Whatever the case and whatever your goal, working with digital agencies helps you achieve all of that with tangible, measurable results. From shortcomings in social media marketing to web development or any other area that is crippling your conversion rate, an agency is the best way to patch those up in no time.
Gain Access to Subject Matter Experts
Hiring in-house takes time for any position in your business. Hiring digital marketing professionals who are experts in SEO (search engine optimization), web design and development, or any other of your current needs takes longer—and will cost you.
Credo founder, John Doherty, joined Video Case Story to discuss key criteria for hiring a digital agency.
And if your staff doesn’t have the expertise required, that means training, professional development, and more resources to invest in their growth. Hiring a digital marketing agency gives you access to qualified experts with no need for training or additional investment.
[Hire 68% faster—and double your growth. Find pre-vetted, top-tier teams right here.]
Gain Access to New Technology & Marketing Tools
Any good marketing strategy requires the right tools and technology to get the job done. For many business owners, the problem is that these tools don’t come cheap, the learning curve is steep, and there are far too many options to choose from in the first place. Options are good but how do you choose one digital marketing tool from the hundreds of others?
Professional digital agencies make that easy—you don’t need to make any of those dizzying decisions. Digital agencies have the tools that work best for them. From APIs to automated email marketing software and SEO tools, they have a system that they can implement tailored to your brand’s most glaring needs.
[Related: Check out our Ultimate Guide to the Best Digital Marketing Tools]
Stay Up-To-Date on Search Engine Algorithms
Google, and even Bing, depend on complex algorithms that are constantly evolving to meet consumer demands and cater to changing trends in the way we search. Marketing tactics that work today might be obsolete by tomorrow. The digital industry can and does change at warp speed. Just don’t blink…
Simply put, most brands simply don’t have the time or know-how to understand the intricacies of Google’s latest update or the changing trends in consumer behavior. Search engine marketing specialists constantly have their ears to the ground. After all, it’s their job to stay ahead of the ball. And that is to your benefit.
Fit Your Project to Your Size and Budget
Be transparent with your budget limitations from the start. Most providers (and all of Credo’s partner agencies) are not out to take advantage of you.
In fact, one of the biggest advantages of partnering with marketing specialists is the flexibility and scalability of their services. No matter your budget, there is almost always a marketing team that can cater their services to fit your project scope. Then, as you grow, the service packages can adapt and grow alongside you.
Keep this in mind: there might not be a perfect match for every brand but there is one for your brand—with experience in your specific industry. Not quite a turnkey approach that requires no time or attention but they will already know how to work with your budget, meet your goals, and capture your target audience’s attention.
Plus, if you only have the budget for a limited engagement, you can hire an agency to do a marketing audit and put together a strategy document for you. A small budget for ongoing marketing services will often render limited results, but a limited engagement for an audit and strategy provides outsized value.
Track the Metrics That Matter
Hiring an agency doesn’t stop when the contract is signed. You need straightforward, data-driven metrics that you can grasp and understand to gauge the effectiveness of your partner agency’s work over time.
The best agencies will help you define these metrics and set up your analytics dashboard. Usually, this is Google Analytics. Metrics here include unique website visitors, bounce rate, CPC (cost per click) if they run PPC (pay per click) ads, SEO tracking, and more. They can also explain these in detail!
An agency can also define metrics such as ROI (return on investment), ROAS (return on ad spend), and KPIs (key performance indicators). By tracking these metrics, you figure out how your marketing campaigns perform in relation to your objectives.
They will identify set-up metrics to follow across your marketing channels to monitor the effectiveness of each one—including monthly or quarterly reports that summarize individual campaigns to help you make better marketing decisions.
Free Up Your Time & Reduce Stress
From content marketing to email marketing—and much more—a team of digital marketing experts is a surefire way to get needle-moving results. With the help of an agency, you have a team of professionals constantly working to improve your digital presence, letting you focus on managing all the other aspects of your brand.
Suffice it to say, if you need to choose between hiring an agency or stepping in yourself, choose the former. You don’t need to heap any more jobs onto your plate!
Stepping in yourself to straddle an individual marketing role is rarely the answer. In most cases, you won’t be able to manage the role with all the focus and attention that is required. Metrics will suffer as sales slow—and stress grows.
And while automating your marketing strategy can save you upwards of 32 hours per week, setting up that process with the right marketing tools can take weeks in itself. Bear in mind, that’s even if you’re familiar with the technical aspects of the software or code required to automate your strategy.
Identify Areas for Improvement
Even the best brands have room for improvement. From Fortune 500 brands to greenhorn start-ups, having digital marketing experts on the case is the best way to patch up any holes or gaps in your digital strategy.
The best place to start that process is with a marketing audit. As mentioned above, this is a cost-effective way to get a top-level view of what your brand is doing well and where it can improve. For the marketing layman, such an overview can be a difficult task—but for the best digital agencies, it’s their specialty.
[Ready to start with a marketing audit? Find the right partner—fast and for free.]
Improve Your Current Marketing Team
Beyond improving your brand’s overall digital footprint, an agency can also improve your in-house marketers. (Or whoever is currently managing your marketing efforts.) An agency can also fill in gaps if a team member departs on short notice or if the gaps in expertise are starting to slow down your potential for growth.
Some scenarios where you might consider an agency to shore up your team:
- A channel owner just quit or is taking leave, and you need someone with the same skill set to operate and manage the channel.
- You have the budget to hire full-time employees, but you don’t have the time to go through the laborious hiring process with interviews and reference checks.
- A team member has tried to learn a channel, but they still need to improve their skills. An agency gives them time, and a possible mentor, to learn from.
To avoid major setbacks and fill in the gaps in your current team’s expertise, you can hire an agency first to work alongside you and your team to get projects off the ground and heading in the right direction. Then, you can bring in an in-house specialist to own the channel—if you decide to move away from the agency.
[Related: How To Hire The Right Digital Agency For Your Brand]
More Cost Effective than In-House Hiring
Now, let’s be clear. There’s no rule that an agency will always save you money over a full-time employee. Realistically, agencies may end up costing about the same as a part- or full-time employee—but with stark differences in what’s rolled into that price.
You’re paying for expertise and the ability to scale the number of bodies on the project so that you can save time. Short term? You will likely end up paying more than hiring one full-time employee. If for no other reason than to speed up the process of hiring.
But it’s worth noting the important difference between an agency and a full-time employee. When you hire an agency, you’re effectively hiring a full marketing team for the cost of one full-time employee. And generally speaking, the team excels at what they do and will be ready to hit the ground running.
There is no training or onboarding required and only modest management of their work. Your digital marketing strategy is handled by the agency’s team and will get your results faster than all of the requisite work that goes into hiring new staff.
[What to pay for digital marketing services? Read our 2022 Digital Marketing Pricing Guide.]
Before You Go, Consider This
Now that you understand the many reasons a digital agency can help grow your brand, here’s one simple mental model to decide if you’re ready to hire a marketing partner:
- Don’t have expertise? It’s going to take time and money.
- Don’t have money? It’s going to take time and expertise.
- Don’t have time? It’s going to take money and expertise.
All three variables are elemental to the success of any brand. Of course, money is the lifeblood of all businesses, but expertise and time are often what separates those that succeed from those that fall short.
In the end, hiring a marketing agency is how you make sure you have expertise on hand, freeing you up to manage all aspects of growing your brand to its maximum potential.
Ready to Hire?
If you’re ready to hire a digital agency, Credo has pre-vetted digital agencies ready to fill in any gaps in marketing expertise. We’ve vetted and approved them before we introduce you to them, and that is the time-saving power of our platform.