Nowadays just about everything is DIY or self-serve. Updating your bathroom? DIY it! Organizing your closet? DIY it! Building a website? DIY it! Between videos on YouTube, online tutorials, and self-service options, just about anything seems like it can be done as a DIY project.
So why would you need a marketing agency? I can think of a million reasons, but I’ll stick with my top five.
- Expertise. I teach digital marketing (to marketing majors, no less) and the lack of knowledge and experience that even they have by the time they graduate is startling. When you use an agency, you get the benefit of the collective depth and breadth of experience from the whole team; at our agency that’s more than 30 years of digital marketing experience. If you have an SEO question, a social media concern, or a website issue, chances are, someone at an agency has seen it, fixed it, or done it before.
- Software at scale. Agencies have access to all sorts of fun tools, software, and features. Because they use them for a range of clients, they can provide that access at a lower price. For example, if you’re looking at keyword tools like SpyFu, research tools like Semrush, reporting tools like RavenTools, dashboard tools like Geckoboard, social media platforms like Sprout Social, or PPC tools like Marin, you might have to pick just one of them because of their costs and the amount of usage they will receive. Agencies often have access to a whole host of tools and can defray the costs across their clients. Interested in software for yourself? Oftentimes, a smaller package or single option is cost-prohibitive, whereas you won’t notice the added price with an agency.
- Reports. When was the last time you checked your analytics? Like, really did a deep dive? It’s probably been a while. With an agency, their job is to review your analytics and reporting every single month. Their experts are reviewing ranked keywords, organic traffic, increases and losses over time, and so much more. The amount of time you save each month in not having to pull data, analyze it, and then make the actionable changes will save you a ton of time over the course of a year. For example, by conducting a deep dive of a client’s Google Ads report, we were able to save them hundreds of dollars each month on wasted clicks they had been receiving previously. The amount of relevant traffic they’ve received has caused revenue to increase tenfold in just six weeks.
- Modernization. A good agency keeps up with the latest tips, trends, and techniques. Whether TikTok ads make sense for you, Instagram Reels are all the rage in your industry, or new conversion settings for Google Ads are what you need, finding the right agency that can make strong recommendations based on what’s new and changing in the market is crucial in saving you time, money, and effort. It’s our job to stay up to date on what’s going on in the industry so that you don’t have to.
- Turnover. Frequently, we talk to companies who say they’re just going to have an intern or an assistant manage their marketing. This can absolutely make sense in certain cases when you have a reliable team member with some training or marketing acumen. However, we often ask these companies how long that person will likely be in that role. Will they leave in 12 months or less? Will you then have to retrain someone for that marketing position? These are important questions to ask. At an agency, there are systems in place that ensure that tone and voice are cohesive, optimization of ads is systematic, and that the marketing continues, even if team members change.
Hiring a marketing agency is a sound investment. Agencies also provide significant time savings by avoiding training or retraining employees, as well as cutting down the time to execute the marketing plan. Agencies save money, by providing access to multiple software tools and years of experience that would be cost-prohibitive to hire. Regardless of your motivation, we strongly recommend finding a great agency that can help take your marketing to the next level. If you’re interested in scheduling a consultation with our agency, give us a call at (865) 935-4698 and we’ll be happy to help out however we can!
