When to appoint an agency

Jan 26, 2014 by Mark Baines Category: Marketing

Time was, you needed an agency to provide those marketing skills which your company lacked.

Not so any more. Everyone’s a marketer now, partly because we’re all much more sophisticated in our understanding of brands and the drivers of marketing, and partly because many companies can survive and grow with just digital marketing – which is cheap and has become easy thanks to the multitude of tools that exist to help.

Most companies now depend on good marketing for their existence; and for many start-ups, it’s only the existence of the digital channels which make their business model possible in the first place.

These SMEs are often going to have an in-house team, because digital marketing requires proximity to the action: how can you tweet for someone else, or add to their facebook page? How can an agency update content continuously, in response to enquiries and market pressures? Marketers need to be able to respond in real time to events that occur in the digital space – as they happen.

Plus the tools google and others provide make digital marketing so cheap and easy. An SME start-up can quickly and easily engage with more potential customers than a better established brand – if they get it right. You can instantly see response rates, what works better, opportunities and issues, link to your CRM etc etc.

So when do you need us, the agency?

The answer is obvious but it sometimes gets overlooked: with an agency you get specialist, up-to-date technical skills, objectivity, creativity, experience, a breadth of skills and new ways of doing things. You get resources for the larger projects, such as designing and building a new website or app, literature and exhibitions. And you get a wider level of understanding and integration across all channels and platforms.

So appointing an agency – the right agency – is still a vital part of any serious marketing strategy. Get it right and you will see your marketing effectiveness multiply. Get it wrong, and you will wish you were doing even more of it in-house!