Are You Ready To Hire a Marketing Agency?
Have you sat down one day and thought, maybe this would be easier if I hired a marketing agency? Well, You’d definitely have less on your busy plate! Are you ready to hire a marketing agency though?
Maybe, but also maybe not.
Crazy to hear a marketing agency tell you that right?
You should know that the time isn’t always right to hire a marketing agency to deliver amazing results. If the timing isn’t right, you’ll have a terrible experience that leaves a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
For example, John is a Chiropractor in Lake Mary, FL. He’s looking to drive more leads but he’s just opened his practice and only has one staff member to assist with scheduling calls. Her son was sick so she had to leave to pick him up.
That day, they generated 12 walk-in leads from to their Facebook ads campaign.
Unfortunately, 10 of those walked back out because they couldn’t speak to someone at the front.
It’s no one’s fault. Life happens. Unfortunately, it means John just lost 10 leads and they will likely go to one of his competitors now.
In this instance, John would probably benefit more by hiring a marketing consultant that can come in and point him in the right direction on what needs to be done to be successful.
If your business is established and you’ve got your processes and systems in place, you’ll see a higher return when you do hire a marketing agency.
Now that we’ve got that out the way you’re probably ready to jump right in!
Signs That You’re Ready to Hire a Marketing Agency
There are certain signs that it’s right for you to hire a marketing agency. We’ve put together a brief list that we look for when deciding to work with a client:
Established Revenue
This is crucial to the success of the relationship. Working with someone who just has an idea of what they want to do is never a good idea from an agency perspective. There’s no guarantee this client is going to be around in 6 months. Agencies value client retention (if they don’t then you should steer clear!) and having established revenue before hiring an agency will provide that security for them.
Staff / Employees
If your business doesn’t have any employees, it’s probably not a good idea to bring on an agency. Let’s say you did get those awesome results and get hundreds of leads per month. What then? You haven’t got an infrastructure to handle it. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a fantastic problem to have. But that rarely happens. Usually, you end up losing dozens of great prospects and also the chance to ever win them back.
Email List
This isn’t a must-have, but it’s definitely going to help our your marketing agency if you have some sort of established marketing list. They’ll be able to immediately start segmenting that list and build out campaigns to send these leads on a journey that ends in buying your products/services!
Advertising Budget
This is the second most important of all the points. If you don’t have a marketing budget, what are you hiring a marketing agency for? Without this, your only option is hiring an SEO agency. Keep in mind that you can’t expect results for at least 6-9 months if you’re only doing SEO though.
A Niche target audience
Everyone knows targeting a niche is the key to a successful campaign. You can even target multiple niches but you’ve got to have an idea of who or what they are. We’ve turned away clients who wanted us to “market to everyone” because it’s just too general and the results don’t come in when there’s no focus for the campaign.
Once you know you’re ready to hire one, you then need to be selective and know how to choose a marketing agency. Even if you contact a reputable agency you should make sure they are a good fit for you and your business.
How To Choose a Marketing Agency
Selecting an agency to work with is an important task and yet it can also take a while to find the right one. We’ve worked with clients who were ready to sign a contract on day one. On the other hand, others took months of nurturing before they were ready to move ahead. We found that when dealing with small businesses, it can take much longer to close a lead than a larger organization.
Not surprising when you consider an entrepreneur built the business with his or her own hands. They aren’t going to just choose any marketing agency that pitches their amazing services.
Look for these characteristics when you’re hiring a marketing agency:
Updated Blogs
If the agency you are hiring doesn’t update their own blog, chances are they’re not as up to date with marketing strategies as they may lead you to believe.
Clear definition of services
If you’re going to hire a digital marketing agency, you should know what you get. Reputable agencies are open about what their services are comprised of. Keep an eye on these and ask for as much clarification as possible
Case Studies
Any established agency will have case studies they can share with you. Don’t make this a 100% requirement though. We’ve seen some fantastic rising stars in the community who don’t have case studies yet. While you may be taking a chance on them, it’s worth signing up on a trial basis to see how they work for you. Smaller agencies are more likely to try harder for you as their client.
Reviews
Online reviews can tell a lot about an organization. Not just customer reviews but employee reviews as well. Beware when using sites like Glassdoor. It’s been known for some practices such as false positive reviews. You can easily spot these as they’ll typically all follow the same structure and almost sound like the same person wrote them.
Social Media Presence
If you’re going to hire a digital marketing agency, you want one that’s active on social media. They should be updating their social profiles with posts at least semi-regularly. This isn’t a must though, it could also mean that the agency prefers to focus on their own clients, particularly if social media hasn’t provided them with a benefit in the past. In our case, we like to use social media to maintain relationships
Why Should You Hire a Marketing Agency?
When you are ready to hire a marketing agency though, the results can be phenomenal. Take one of our popular clients for example. They were looking at improving their organic search traffic in a more deliberate method. After signing on with us, they’ve had a 70% increase in Y-O-Y traffic.
The results speak for themselves. Hiring a marketing agency can yield fantastic results when the relationship between the client and the agency is healthy.
With the support of their internal team, we revamped website content, link outreach, and created a viable internal link structure that’s helped index more pages in a shorter timeframe.
We thought we’d share this awesome Infographic courtesy of Intouch-marketing. This infographic clearly depicts why you benefit more from hiring a marketing agency vs building an in-house team.
Keep in mind, this cost escalates as you add to your own team or need other software subscriptions. In our case, we don’t charge our clients for the cost of our software. You save that extra $12,000 per year when signing a contract with SimplySearch.
