Why Should You Work with a Marketing Agency?

During the early phases of a company’s growth – especially in the case of smaller enterprises – stakeholders usually manage marketing and business development on their own. Then, they begin training one or two colleagues who only help at first but may take over marketing and sales activities later on.

This might work quite well until an inflection point in growth is reached: the appropriate way of generating leads and sales opportunities, as well as nurturing and closing deals “suddenly” require more time and attention – specifically, that of a full-time team.

When this point arrives, marketing and development priorities can get deferred, either due to the company being preoccupied by servicing existing customers or because there’s simply no overarching marketing and sales strategy in place.

This is the time when a company needs to start thinking about outsourcing marketing to a qualified, full-service agency. It will not only help avoid the possibility of marketing infrastructure becoming a source of disappointment, but it will also bring in several desired benefits.

You can opt to work with an agency even if you have an in-house marketing team: that’s the hybrid approach, which also comes with a set of great advantages.

But let’s see why you should work with an agency after reaching that ominous inflection point in growth!

Why choose a marketing agency partner?

Before committing to a partnership with a marketing agency, let’s discuss the top reasons why it works and helps with attaining better outcomes in marketing activities – especially if the agency is also proficient in digital marketing.

A Team of Professionals, Not Simple Consultants

There is still some confusion among companies when it comes to inviting a marketing agency. Some believe they get new talent in the form of consultants, however, it’s more than that: they gain access to a full team of experts who know the tricks of the trade inside out.

Such agencies are teeming with dynamic marketers who are all about solving their clients’ marketing problems. And since they are entirely focused on making you succeed and your business grow, they are involving additional colleagues and even talent outside the agency to deliver quality solutions.

Filling In Skill Gaps

With the number of new, emerging technologies and methodologies shaping marketing, it cannot be expected of any company to keep track of all and provide enough capacity to work on them. Consequently, many businesses experience talent gaps concerning new skill sets. At the same time, marketing agencies keep training their colleagues to master these skills. If you recruit an agency that heavily invests in this area, you can find out if the skills and tactics your company is currently lacking are worthwhile for your strategy or not. And if they are, you can decide later on to bring such competencies home by making your in-house team learn them.

Industry-Spanning Experience

Having access to professionals who have experiences outside of your industry is vital to achieve success. They will have seen tactics that you might never have considered to be applicable to your market but deliver outstanding results. At the same time, they know practically all the tricks and best practices (from social selling through content marketing to optimized paid search performance), having participated in lots of diverse projects. Experience of this quality and quantity ensures that their clients save time, money, and avoid potential marketing failures.

What are the benefits of “outsourcing” marketing?

But how is this cost-effectiveness, time-efficiency, and focused brand building achieved (all of them simultaneously) by working with an agency?

Cost-Effective Approach

While the hourly rates of an agency is often higher than what you pay as salary for your employees, however, in case of an in-house staff, also consider the costs of benefits, overhead, recruitment, training, and IT. In contrast, when you pay an agency for its services, all that money is allocated to the project and the achievement of deliverables you’ve agreed on.

When you break it down like that, you will see why it’s more cost-effective to outsource marketing.

 

A Comprehensive, On-Demand Skill Set

Implementing integrated marketing strategies require the expertise of numerous professionals. Whether you need someone to conduct market research, write quality content that attracts the attention of your audience and search engines alike, or build aesthetically pleasing websites with amazing UX, you can count that a full-service agency will have such talent at the ready in their cohesive team of project, marketing, social media, and key account managers, copywriters, designers, SEO professionals, and even programmers.

When you work with a marketing agency, you gain access to their entire talent pool on-demand. You also save a lot of money this way, since you are not employing them full-time.

Future-Proof Investment

You should always think of where your business will be in the future. Or rather, where you want it to be in 2-5-10 years. A future-oriented mindset that focuses on long-term goals helps optimize cooperation with a marketing agency, since hiring one is also an investment that pays off months after the contract is signed. We’ve talked about how you get a full-service team immediately at lower costs than if you built up an in-house team, but the ROI such agencies can help you achieve is outstanding.

For instance, one of our clients operating in B2B software development ultimately attained a ROI of 7500% by investing in Blackhole Media’s digital marketing services within 2 years of choosing our team to help with their marketing efforts.

Better Capacity Management

When working with a trusted agency, your workload as well as that of your employees can be reduced significantly, allowing your company to focus on projects that are of utmost importance. A good marketing agency will fill in the gaps and reinforce your team’s strengths and key competencies, while also bringing those attributes into the spotlight to gain your audience’s attention.

Data-Based Decisions

As marketing agencies are well-versed in using emerging technologies as well as applying the latest, most successful trends and best practices, you don’t have to divert capacity to monitor the forces that shape entire industries. But more importantly, the agency will keep you up to date about these events and trends, supplying your decision-making with in-depth analyses, statistics, research, and insights into your customers and the market as a whole.

Inspiration, Brand-New Ideas

By outsourcing marketing to an agency, you are bound to meet with talented, creative, and innovative people who are a delight to work with and who also spark inspiring new ideas that you just might not have thought of before. Ultimately, this translates to new, bold approaches that deliver great results and ROI.

Monitor Results and KPI

You can rest assured that a professional marketing agency only works with strategies that are based on facts and statistics, and which are aligned with your business goals. Improvements and KPIs are monitored from start to finish, ensuring that you can see your company grow in real time.

Should you work with an agency even when you have an in-house team?

Unfortunately, for many SMEs, in-house marketing teams are a blend of marketing and sales, which leads to sales and marketing misalignment, causing marketing activities to perform poorly or fail entirely. In other cases, marketing takes a back seat as more immediate priorities demand more resources, capacity, and attention.

This is where a marketing agency comes in. Not only will the agency be responsible for making sure the deliverables are achieved reliably and on time – thus reducing workload and pressure on your in-house team – but you can count on the fact that the work gets done. Moreover, your in-house team will feel more inspired due to the collaboration between talented creatives, and they will also do more to prove themselves as reliable and successful marketing professionals themselves.

While a full-service agency will work on projects like content creation, website coding and design, video shooting and editing, virtually creating anything your business requires at any given moment, you can also count on them to hold workshops and trainings for your employees. Ultimately, this will bring your colleagues up to speed on marketing best practices and the latest trends for your industry, allowing you to bolster your team’s ability to carry out marketing with outstanding results on their own.

However, should you need all hands on deck to work on the main business projects, leaving the marketing front devoid of personnel, the agency can jump in and shoulder a bigger share of marketing activities. You will be able to concentrate on succeeding in your company goals while the agency promotes your work from the background, showing your brand’s strengths and achievements to the target audience.

Conclusion

All in all, if you are considering bringing a marketing agency on board, the best first step you can take is to put down your needs and goals. If those are clearly communicated to the agency, you are already on the right track to get the most out of such a partnership.

And what about the rest of the steps?

Well, the agency will take care of that. Remember, they are highly talented professionals that want to prove they are worthy of your trust and business. They want to ensure that through their strategy and activities your company succeeds and grows.

Are you busy with high-priority projects? Does it consume your and your employees’ time and capacity so much so that you cannot generate enough leads, complete a market research, raise brand awareness, position your company as an industry thought leader through quality content, or carry out a full rebranding with a new website “on the side?” Then you definitely need a marketing agency to help with any of these activities.

We have worked with over 250+ clients, supporting their marketing strategy or building one from scratch, delivering them qualified leads, industry-specific content, full-on rebranding schemes, and more. Whatever they needed, we helped them attain it.

 

If you need a full-service marketing team right now, we’d love to discuss how we can help you.



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