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Large organizations may have the resources to hire their own marketing team, but hiring an agency for projects or on retainer makes sense for SMBs. Outsourcing to a marketing team gives you the capacity to do more with less of an investment than recruiting internal efforts.
But what exactly do you get with an agency that you can’t get with an in-house marketing team?
Let’s take a look.
Having a point of contact or marketing manager for a business may be a great way to focus marketing needs for a company, but that may not be enough to execute everything it takes to achieve the results you want. Essentially, the choice is between hiring a few generalists versus getting an entire team of specialists with practiced, specific experiences and skills. You may need to look for extra vendors or freelancers to provide specialized services like effective content, PPC, design, web development, tech, SEO, etc.
With an agency, you don’t just get a Marketing Manager. You get:
The salaries alone for an entire team of specialists make any marketing project or retainer through an agency the obvious financial choice. Consider recruitment, on-boarding, benefits, and training expenses for hiring in-house, in addition to project costs for vendors or freelancers.
With an agency, everything you want is available to you from one place – for less money, time, and resources. Ongoing costs should also be factored in. Various types of marketing efforts require a number of tools and subscriptions. An agency will already have invested in tools they use to perform their services, while a company will potentially have to pay for all of their own platforms on a singular basis.
A business typically absorbs the cost of their website platform, domain names, and personal accounts on a marketing automation platform, but rates are usually better through an agency that can implement and strategize using various online platforms. An agency can deal with all of the platform maintenance by professionals that are already experts in them.
Agencies will typically absorb the cost of SEO and reporting tools, tech tools like backlink crawlers, professional design software, and educational opportunities to keep their employees up to date and ahead of the game.
When your business needs a boost, time is of the essence. Once you choose an agency, you get all of their benefits right away, within a known time frame. Instead of evaluating a batch of potential hires for a variety of skills, a good agency offers transparent client results and a proven reputation. They’ll have worked with other brands, companies, or industries that you recognize.
An agency has already evaluated each of their hires carefully. You’ll get results from an agency faster than from a new hire who needs time for on-boarding. Picking an agency can be easier than picking a new hire, because they have a roster of former and current clients to show what they’ve done. No need to undergo a training process as you might with an in-house hire, followed by the possible realization that they aren’t the right fit or actually don’t have the skills that you need to fulfill your marketing needs.
An in-house hire may strategize and then defer to vendors to complete disparate parts of your marketing efforts. An agency, on the other hand, can get started right away.
Agencies have the power of collective experience. Their employees have many years of experience between them, each bringing their own skills, insights, and experiences to their work. An agency has logged years of experiences with a variety of businesses and changing times. The benefit here is that they can address different scenarios that your company encounters, pulling from a rich history of evolution, knowing what works, and what doesn’t, to anticipate changes in the market, pulling in both safe strategies and innovative solutions where appropriate.
An agency will continually offer educational opportunities to its professionals to keep them on the cutting edge of their industry, because they aim to serve their clients with the latest and greatest strategies, evolving with the industry and trying innovative solutions. They’ll share knowledge with each other in a creative environment, while in-house hires, although immersed in the brand, may find themselves isolated from new techniques.
Marketing is important for every business, but varies based on business size and industry. Retainers with agencies offer continuous maintenance of your reputation and brand, a steady flow of leads, and collaborative efforts, while one-off projects can give much-needed boosts. With an agency, you have the freedom of choice.
With a hire, you are indefinitely invested in one person’s service that may not be needed in the same way in a few years. You’ll need to invest in their education, something that already is absorbed by an agency that cares to be on the cutting edge. Fast-paced agency culture keeps its professionals on their toes, while in-house marketers may not prioritize innovation.
Agencies are all different, so you should find the one that’s right for you. At Hudson Fusion, we know that businesses are all different, and have different needs, which is why our model allows our clients the freedom to choose the strategies that work for them – we don’t do pre-packaged deals. Everything is custom-fit to what you want and what will get you results. An agency that offers one-size-fits-all packages means they aren’t targeting your unique industry and audience in the best way possible.
For example, we know that SEO alone won’t get small businesses the results they want—it often needs to be complemented with direct response advertising. Marketing automation isn’t for everyone, like clients that don’t have large contact lists. For them, there are other steps that come first. We ask our clients lots of questions about their business to get to know them and their industry, and we do our due diligence research to set our efforts—our clients—up for success.
In fact, we wrote a whole lot more on the subject in our ebook, The Modern Marketer's Guide to Selecting the Right Agency. In it, we cover:
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Wondering if Hudson Fusion is a good fit for your business? Consider your interest in any of the following results we can achieve:
If you’re still curious, let’s set up some time to talk to learn a little bit more about each other.
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How can we help you? Feel free to get in touch, and a member of our team will be with you shortly.
“We have a trusting bond and partnership with Hudson Fusion and we could not have picked a better agency”
