It is essential for businesses, big and small, to reach out to more people in an effort to turn visitors into customers. It’s the biggest obstacle they face on their journey toward success. For businesses to garner new customers, they need to implement marketing tactics that are successful in appealing to their audience.
For small business owners, the question becomes not where the marketing needs to be done but should they handle the marketing on their own or hire someone or an entity to do the work for them?
A marketing agency can help small business owners in four key ways:
- They will streamline your business strategy
- They allow you to handle other aspects of the business
- They reduce your payroll costs
- They can offer long-term results
Every business that wants to be successful must have a comprehensive marketing plan that can be well-executed. Business owners understand the need for the plan, but few know what one is and how to make it work for them.
With a marketing agency at your side, they can develop a marketing plan that can be successfully put into action. With the work that goes into it, you can turn your target audience into sales and increase your chance of growing and succeeding.
4 Reasons A Marketing Agency Makes Sense For Your Business
Streamline Your Business Strategy
Thanks to the Internet and the rise in the number of social media networks, businesses have had to change how they reach their target audience and provide solutions to customers’ problems.
Previously, businesses were using outbound marketing techniques – commercials, print ads, yellow page ads, etc. These methods helped lure customers to the business. Now, modern technology – smartphones, tablets, etc. – have changed the way people do business. Most don’t want to visit the store in person; they’d rather see what the business has to offer online.
They want real-time information that will determine whether or not your business is right for them.
For that to happen, companies must have a well-laid-out marketing plan with user-friendly, easy-to-find websites. The idea is to turn the traffic into visitors then into leads and customers. This is called inbound marketing. What tasks are necessary to have a successful inbound marketing plan? They include but are not limited to:
- Market research
- Website development/redesign
- Mobile marketing integration
- Graphic design work
- Content development
- E-newsletters and brochure development and production
- Paid advertising
- Social media marketing
- SEO/keyword research
- Targeted email campaign
There is so much that goes into a successful marketing campaign, and the latest technology and apps are constantly changing. Small businesses don’t always have the time to stay apprised of all the changes facing their industry.
Handle Other Aspects Of Your Business
The majority of entrepreneurs have the “do-it-myself” mentality, meaning they’ll finish the tasks without experts’ assistance. It’s not unheard of for people to learn new tasks and put what they learned into action. This takes a bit of time and effort on the business owner to ensure a proper marketing strategy is carefully carried out and positively impacts the company.
For someone with little to no experience, developing a sound marketing strategy can be a tedious task. Even if a business owner opts to learn, this leaves them with little opportunity to focus on the business. On top of that, changes occur every day in marketing – be it the technology or the techniques – and it’s impracticable to think they can do it and stay afloat.
A business owner has just two choices – employ a marketer to handle the task or outsource the work to a marketing agency.
Reduce Your Payroll Costs
Business owners often hire someone for the sake of “that’s how it’s always been to address an immediate problem.” Another reason is the mistaken impression that it costs less to hire an employee than to hire a marketing agency. However, if a business owner has nothing to compare it to, how do they know that a marketing agency is more expensive?
What happens is the salary versus hourly comparison that business owners make is flawed. Most marketing agencies work on an hourly concept where business owners will hire a person for a salary position. The flaw is the unaccounted-for costs such as hiring and keeping the employee, payroll taxes, retirement plan matches, health insurance contribution, sick days, vacations, etc.
Ancillary costs add up quickly!
What actually happens when the two are compared?
The Marketing Manager position was used for comparison. Most marketing professionals focus on a single aspect of marketing, such as social media marketing. They don’t have the comprehensive knowledge marketing managers usually have.
Marketing has many aspects to it. We went with inbound marketing that addresses many of the listed items. The following information is the national average salary of a U.S. Marketing Manager (info found on Salary.com)
*NEW INFOGRAPHIC WILL BE INSERTED HERE*
On top of hiring an employee, there is the investment of software such as graphic programs, pay-per-click management apps, business metrics software, etc. These are upfront costs that some businesses cannot afford.
On top of that, business owners may find it challenging to find a person that can handle every task of their marketing strategy. Outsourcing may still be necessary to ensure tasks are completed and carried out. Or, business owners may find themselves having to hire more marketing staff.
In the grand scheme of things, a marketing agency is a sound money-saving decision.
Offers Long-Term Results
Business owners may think they are saving themselves money by handling the marketing themselves or hiring an employee. Still, the long-term results of a marketing agency far outweigh those “potential” benefits.
There has been a dramatic shift in the pricing, and many marketing agencies clearly lay out their pricing structures and offers low-fee marketing retainer agreements.
There is no set standard in the industry, but most qualified inbound marketing agencies will run owners anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 a month. This sounds like a lot, but considering the costs of doing it yourself or hiring additional staff, it’s really a bargain.
Some long-term benefits of using an experienced marketing agency including but not limited to:
- Experience with the market niche
- Experiencing in carrying out marketing strategies
- Saves money to address particular needs
- No need to train employees
- Immediate execution of marketing plan
- No HR issues
- Tax deductions
- Urgent projects immediately addressed
With the help of a marketing agency, you can focus on running your business and profits rather than building a website, building a social media following, etc. Ask yourself how much money you are losing by trying to handle these and other business-related tasks. From that, you can discern that an experienced marketing agency is the best course of action to boost your bottom line.