A while ago, we published a blog on the many benefits of working with a marketing agency. But we want to explore the topic more because, depending on several factors – and you might not expect us to say this – you might not be in the right place to work with a marketing agency.
It may be better for your business to hire someone in-house… but there’s also a third option we’ll explore later.
Of course, agencies come in all shapes and sizes, with a range of marketing expertise and experience across specific industries. Finding the right marketing agency can take time and building trust with your chosen agency doesn’t happen overnight.
Marketing requires both creative and logical thinking, collaboration, experience and plenty of digital tools and software to facilitate the best results.
For individual businesses, it can be challenging to find the tools and experience for the job. From writing emails and social media posts, to designing graphics, getting copy on your website, making sure things are optimised for search engines, and then going back and analysing that work to make sure it’s working in your favour, marketing is a significant time expense and that’s even if you find someone with experience in all of that (they don’t exist).
Marketing agencies are often a much more cost-effective solution, giving you access to a full team of experts to bounce ideas off, with specialist experience across different areas in marketing and in executing campaigns across a wide range of platforms.
Before we compare the two options, let’s take a step back...
Why marketing?
Marketing is one of the best investments businesses can make. From building your brand presence to increase your influence in your industry, to growing new channels to engage with your audiences, marketing spans the length and breadth of your business and utilising it strategically can have a significant impact.
Large companies looking to continue their growth typically invest between 5-20% of their turnover (not their profits) into marketing, because they know it’s the biggest driver of sales.
Find out more about how investing in marketing can help your business.
Hiring in-house
If you’ve built your business without marketing and you want to start developing a strategy within your business, you might think “let’s put an ad out for a marketing executive, pay them a fair rate and they can sort it out”.
Or maybe you’ve already got a member of staff interested in creating marketing content or optimising your website.
But marketing is a little more complicated than that.
Just the cost of hiring a single experienced marketing executive would easily be over £2,000 per month – and that’s without factoring equipment, tools, office space and all the other costs that come with hiring a full-time team member.
If you want the experience of a marketing manager or someone more senior, that’s going to cost a lot more.
For that cost, of course you do get an individual who is immersed in your company each and every day. They can take the time to learn aspects of your business first-hand, building close relationships with your team...
However, single marketing team members are required to wear many hats, from CRM manager to graphic designer, copywriter and web designer, social media to SEO, PPC to budget management. Even if they do have the skills to facilitate that role, they only have 40 hours a week to achieve all that.
Too much work can lead to rushed output, added stress and poor results. And putting the entire marketing strategy on one person can leave people feeling stretched too thin to achieve anything concrete.
Working with a marketing agency
For businesses that haven’t tried marketing, working with an agency gives you a full team of experts, coming together to create strategies and campaigns, backed by years of experience.
It’s important to find a marketing agency that has experience working in your industry or in engaging your target audience. Some agencies might specialise in SEO, PR, digital marketing, social media marketing or other specific areas, whereas others (like us) are full-service marketers with experience in all forms of marketing and sales strategies.
They can take the time to work with you and develop strategies to support your business’s growth. Marketing agencies work best when you give them your time so they can quickly get to grips with your business.
At Flamingo, when we work with our clients, we become an extension of their team, dedicating our time to understanding the inner workings of your business and your audience. And that leads us to…
The third option
Since every entrepreneur, company, industry and audience are a little different, don’t feel like in-house or outsourcing is a zero-sum game. Should budget allow, it might be better to combine both strategies – hiring someone in-house to support the strategy side and get to know your business and a marketing agency to execute content and give your in-house marketer a team to collaborate with.
It may end up costing more, but if you hire the right (experienced) person and work with them to select a marketing agency they can collaborate with effectively, you’ll get the best of both worlds. Marketing is about getting a return on investment, and often the more you put in, the more you’re going to get out.
What's right for you?
If you have minimal experience in marketing and haven’t done much in the way of marketing your business:
- It will be much more beneficial to work with a full-service marketing agency with experience in a wide range of topics (we know one if you’re interested). This way, you can create a strong baseline for your marketing, building your brand’s presence and the core aspects of your marketing, like your website, your CRM and your social media.
If you (or a trusted member of your team) is experienced in marketing:
- You might have an idea of what you want to focus on. If you have someone in your business with experience in that area, it might be best to dedicate budget to best support your in-house marketer.
- If you don’t have that in-house expertise, you’ll be better suited finding an agency that can manage both the strategy and execution.
If you’re already far along on your marketing journey or have a marketing team (however small):
- It’s worth talking to your marketing team to see what they might need. If their current work is consistently generating leads and they are looking for new growth channels, it might be worth working with a full-service marketing agency with broad experience to help find new working channels.
- However, they may also be in need of more hands with what they’re currently focused on, in which case hiring in-house might be your best bet.
Marketing agencies are there to give you both the manpower and the expertise, but without the cost and time commitments associated with hiring in-house.
It’s important to keep in mind, that many marketing agencies work differently, have different expertise, and have a different culture. So don’t take this article as gospel – many of our clients who started their journey in marketing with us have happily continued using us as their outsourced marketing department and that has worked well for them.
We know that the world of marketing can be intimidating, especially for business owners who don’t have time to keep up with all that digital marketing has to offer. If you can’t quite make up your mind which is the best route to go for, we can help.
We offer a 60-minute marketing strategy call with our Managing Director, Emma.
We’ll work out what you're doing well and areas for improvement, which will give us a better idea of how we can make you stand out from the crowd. Our approach is entirely personalised, focusing on the best strategies to help you reach your goals.
Request a brochure
Considering working with a marketing agency? You can request a copy of our brochure here.
Just fill in your details, and we’ll pop one in the post!
We’re here to help!
We’d love to offer you 60 minutes of our time to find out more about what you do for your customers and show you how we would tackle your marketing (and messaging) to drive the best results. We’ll spend up to 60 minutes on Teams where you can share what you’re doing marketing-wise and we can give you some ideas, feedback and suggestions of additional things to throw into the mix.
You can watch the video below to find out more.