When you ask any company why they choose to carry out certain tasks internally rather than employing the services of professionals, the same answers appear to come up again and again. It does not matter what services we are talking about although there seems to be a preference to bring marketing in-house but employ commercial cleaning companies! Perhaps nobody in the office wants to clean the office kitchen but they all fancy visiting a marketing conference in Geneva on full expenses. Most companies questioned about why they chose to bring marketing in house say it is to keep costs down, to keep control or to provide work for existing staff members. Professionalism or quality does not seem to be high on the list of reasons.
There is no getting away from the fact that it’s nice to have an unlimited in-house resource for things like SEO, creative design and website development, but the reality Is that this is not an option for many companies who need to focus on their core business and don’t have the funds to splash out on this luxury.
Here are 10 reasons you should employ a digital marketing agency (or indeed any specialist business provider)rather than attempting to deliver It in-house .
1) Let the digital agency worry about staff recruitment. Employing, training, and retaining high calibre marketing staff is an expensive and time-consuming operation. Recruitment agency fees alone can run into £1,000’s Using a digital agency means it becomes their responsibility and hence problem to hire and fire staff and worry about recruitment costs.
2) Economies of scale means it can be more cost effective to employ a digital agency than sharing round a small number of digital tasks amongst the in-house team. A digital agency could be completing link building projects for 100’s of clients at once, meaning they are focus on one specific task at a time.
3) Feast or famine. Most businesses have seasonal ups and downs, either because of customer demand or the need to get work completed for media deadlines. Employing an agency enables them to increase and decrease the number of staff members working on your account to accommodate this.
4) Digital marketing is a digital agencies primary focus, whilst to a client company, it might be far down the list of priorities and not receiving the sustained attention it needs
5) Digital Agencies are continuously learning and will ensure that you follow best practices whenever possible. They attend regular events and conferences and the large agency set up means that internal sharing of knowledge benefits all clients.
6) Digital Agencies will provide a level of consistency of output that you cannot achieve internally. When your last blog article was 10 months ago, or your social posts are running out of ideas you need someone who has the tools, time, and expertise to consistently produce and share information of value to your customer groups.
7) Agencies will be “social” for you when you do not have the time or feel like it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and so on. Each social network has its own rules and data-backed proof that different forms of messaging is required. This is not easy to maintain. If your company and brand need to be social, then you need our assistance.
8) Agencies are under the spotlight to provide a positive ROI on your marketing activities. Proving ROI on marketing activity is a big challenge and one of the areas that agencies endeavour to provide. If specific measurement of your ROI is what you require, engage with a digital agency and the results will speak for themselves, and if not, it will be as clear as day withing the reports.
9) Agencies will let you focus on your day job like dealing with your clients, dealing with internal staff issues, or fixing machinery. With the influx of apps, social media and do-it-yourself websites, everyone thinks they are a marketeer now! While many of us have become more adept at marketing in some way, unless it is how you make your living, concentrate on your day job, and leave the agency to focus on non-core activities such as your marketing strategy.
10) Extra Parties! If you employ a digital marketing agency to support your marketing needs, that is at least one additional Christmas party you will be able to attend. And let us face it, an agency party is always a good party.