A Biased Look at Why You Need a Marketing Agency

We understand there are a lot of facets to an effective marketing strategy. How many times have you felt like your marketing team just can’t keep up or there’s too much on your plate?

Or maybe you are struggling to stay afloat in the ever-deepening pool of marketing trends and tools?

Have your company’s marketing efforts become stagnate or singularly focused?

Do acronyms like PPC, ROAS, CPL, CRO, MQL, CPM and CPC leave you scratching at your head or feeling a deep sense of panic and anguish?

We get it.

If you can identify with any of these problems or you just aren’t satisfied with your organization’s marketing results, you aren’t alone. Only 35% of marketers said that understanding the ROI of their campaigns is “very important” or “extremely important," 52% of marketers are currently implementing attribution reporting, AND 68% of marketers stated that paid advertising is "very important" or "extremely important" to their overall marketing strategy (HubSpot, 2020) – but we wonder how many are actually putting in the investment to run optimized ads.

It’s a lot to handle. But do you know what could help? A marketing agency.

You shouldn’t look at a marketing agency as just a consultant, ad/media buyer, or public relations manager. Instead, a good integrated marketing agency should be seen as an entity that envelops all parts of marketing strategy and technology. Marketing agencies take all of the hassle out of promoting your business—whether big or small—by helping to manage your marketing efforts, leaving you to focus on what you do best: running your business.

You may be thinking right now: “But you’re an agency!” Yeah, we’re going to have a pretty biased opinion about this. But we’ve seen it time and time again that hiring outside marketing support can really make a difference for your business.

So… what will you get out of partnering with an agency?

You Pay for the Expertise

When you hire a marketing agency, you aren’t just getting access to a few “marketing do-ers.” Instead, you’ll hold the key to a well-oiled team of experts who are passionate about their various disciplines within the marketing field and eager to help you achieve your goals.

Here are just a few experts that an agency allows you access to:

• • • Account managers who immerse themselves in your industry and ensure your campaigns are effective, measurable and launch on time
    • Graphic designers that make captivating assets (not just PowerPoints from pre-made graphics)
    • Content writers with the ability to tell your story and invite prospects and customers to become part of it
    • Web development maestros who understand the back and front end of your intricate tech tools
    • Paid digital specialists that monitor and adjust your paid campaigns daily, from social campaigns to ABM
    • Creative videographers with fascinating visuals (and sophisticated equipment)
    • And any other discipline the agency skills up in

Sure, you might have a one or two person internal team that possess all of these skills, but will they be able to accomplish the same quality and amount of work as a comprehensive team quickly?

Agencies are also chock full of marketing-specific knowledge. Have you lost hours researching the latest account-based marketing trends? Or do you just need help tackling a specialized marketing strategy for that new product introduction, but you don’t know how to get in front of your personas? By supplementing your in-house marketing team with an agency, you can take advantage of their diverse marketing expertise to execute a single campaign or even just a portion of your overall strategy to get it over the finish line.

Most agencies will have expertise in a few specific industries. Taking the time to find a marketing agency that knows your industry top to bottom and understands your company’s unique needs will arm you with all of the talent and experience needed to successfully implement a strategy that is tailored to your company’s voice in a way that is effective, measurable and fun.

We know what’s on your mind: “But agencies are SO EXPENSIVE!!” Sure, they can be depending on your scope. But will the time savings and leads generated cover that expense?

Scalability + Savings

Increasing production within an internal marketing team often means you have to spend the time hiring and training new employees, not to mention the time it may take to teach them your specific tech stack. By offering full-scale and à la carte services, a digital marketing agency eliminates the hassle and gives you the flexibility to scale your company’s marketing efforts up, or down, as your business demands.

Teaming up with an agency is also more cost effective than assembling your own in-house marketing group. Employers often don’t recognize the real cost of hiring and retaining employees. In fact, when you account for things like state and local taxes, employee benefits, training, and equipment, the true cost of a new employee can be as much as 1.4 times their base salary. So, if you want to build out a multi-person marketing team to ensure that all of your bases are covered, it can get expensive very quickly.

However, by choosing to partner with a marketing agency, not only will you avoid extraneous overhead expenses, but for the same price as one or two salaried marketing positions, you’ll secure access to a preassembled, full-bodied team of experts (see our list a couple paragraphs up).

Sometimes You Just Need Objectivity

Have you ever taken a lot of time to get ready in the morning, gotten your hair (or beard) just right and then gone into the office only to have your co-worker tell you your shirt was inside out?

Let’s be honest, sometimes we don’t see the most obvious things right in front of us and it takes someone else to point it out.

Two heads are always better than one—especially in the sales and marketing world. Sometimes internal marketing teams can lead to tunnel vision, adverse groupthink, or worse: getting settled in the way things have always been done. An outside marketing agency offers a grounded perspective that isn’t clouded by assumed knowledge and internal bias.

Agencies are also trained to look at your business from the persona’s point of view, making it easier to sift through unnecessary information, identify what isn’t working, target the appropriate audience and refine your core message.

Learning Curves? Who Needs Them?

This is the reality. The day-to-day tasks take priority. That means keeping up to date with the latest marketing strategies and technology can be daunting (and expensive) for in-house marketing teams. Some teams do great work keeping up with the latest tools and trends, and we love that! However, partnering with a marketing agency is a sure-fire way to keep your marketing tactics able to keep up with the ever-changing demands of the industry.

Marketing agencies not only take it upon themselves to stay abreast of new trends and tools best suited for your specific industry, but they are also experts at navigating online platforms and technology that can add value to your marketing output.

(Not to mention, when you partner with an agency, you often get access to some of their tech stack for a reduced cost.)

No More Inefficiency

Sometimes you just need something done quickly and correctly. You may have too many meetings, presentations, or higher priority campaigns to launch. Utilizing a marketing agency is a great way to speed up the execution and delivery of your campaigns and be able to rest in the fact that it will be done right. Real talk, we have already learned from our mistakes. So when it comes to getting something done, you can be rest assured that the processes are well-informed, calculated and effective.

Agencies can also boost the efficiency of your in-house marketing team by stepping in at a moment’s notice to foster large-scale projects and campaigns or provide additional support during periods of peak demand.

To Summarize Our Biased Point of View: When you take everything into consideration, it is easy to see there is a lot to gain from hiring a marketing agency.

A strong integrated marketing agency will provide:

• • • Access to a well-oiled and diverse team of marketing experts
    • Insight on, and support with, specialized marketing strategies
    • Services that are easily scalable to best meet your needs and budget
    • Long-term return on your marketing investments
    • Insider knowledge on all of the latest marketing tools and trends
    • Streamlined marketing results that you can see on regularly updated dashboards

What’s more important to you? Spending time learning about things that aren’t in your wheelhouse or spending time running your business?

Leave marketing to experts like us—we love what we do, and we’re really good at helping others achieve results. Don’t believe us? Just take a look at what our partners have to say.

At Stratagon, we believe that marketing should be effective, measurable and fun, and we’re ready to show you what we can do. Let’s start with a conversation! What do you have to lose?