Alright so we’ll admit to having a bit of a bias here. In all honesty though, a digital marketing agency offers so many benefits over a full-time employee that we just had to share them. Even if you already have a marketing manager and just want an outside company to write blog posts or manage social media, you can save plenty of time, money and effort.
1. Cost Effective
According to Glassdoor, the national average salary for a marketing manager is $80,895/yr. A marketing manager in Kansas City makes $70,601/yr. If your company wants to focus solely on digital marketing, it makes more economical sense to funnel your budget into an agency. If you’re allocating the same amount of money as a salary into your digital marketing budget, that’s $6,741/month. You also save on expenses like payroll taxes (we’re independent contractors) and benefits/healthcare costs. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself whether a marketing manager is really utilizing all 40 hours of the work week, or whether more focused, specialized tactics might be your better option.
2. Flexibility
On a related note, you have the freedom to focus your marketing efforts at different times throughout the year. If you know that Christmas-time generates a large portion of your company’s profit influx, you might decide to allocate a chunk of your summertime budget to November and December’s paid internet advertising budget. If your company is going through a rough patch, you can easily opt-out or put a temporary hold on your digital advertising spending during this period. This isn’t something that would be possible with a full-time employee. You would either have to give them a pay cut (which they wouldn’t be too happy about) or fire them outright. This isn’t a situation that anyone wants to deal with.
It’s easier to scale with an agency, because you can change how much you’re spending per month (Tweet this). With a person, you’re stuck with that fixed cost. You can also pick and choose what services you want to outsource. If your marketing manager has zero knowledge of SEO, for example, you can hire on an agency to just work with SEO for your company.
3. Combined Experience
With an agency, you have an entire team versus one person. Different people from different backgrounds can give their input on different projects, and you have a wide range of specialized skill sets to work with. Whether you’re looking for content marketing, SEO, or social media, an agency can give you exactly what you want, when you want it. Our experience with similar clients can give us insight into how to tackle your marketing campaign. In addition, you get an outside perspective. Where an in-house marketer might get lost in the day-to-day activities, an agency can look at the big picture to clearly map out a marketing strategy. We can give you the customer’s perspective separate from the company’s perspective.
4. Access to Tools
Because we’re an agency with multiple clients, we have the budget to purchase online tools that enhance our precision and make reporting more concise. An agency is able to stay up-to-date with the latest tools and trends in a way that a marketing manager just can’t. For example, we utilize SEMRush for our competitor analysis and keyword research. With their pricing options, you could be paying anywhere from $100-$400/month to use this same tool yourself. In addition, many of these programs require a year-long commitment. If you only want to utilize keyword research in the first three months of the year, it makes more economical sense to go with an agency rather than purchasing the year-long subscription yourself. Our tools cover everything from graphic programs to PPC management apps to business metric software.
5. Advancements in Communication
With new technology, it’s easier than ever to stay in touch with a remote digital marketing agency. Tools like email, basecamp, and video chat make it easy to convey your goals and discuss strategy. With so many people on your team, you don’t have to worry about the whole system going down just because your marketing manager took a holiday. Plus, our Report Garden tool ensures you’re always up-to-date with your metrics.
6. No On-Boarding/Training/Managing
Good news: we manage ourselves! This means that you don’t have to worry about the whole process of hiring someone on (and dealing with recruiters), acclimating them to your office environment, training them, and managing them. Even better, we won’t take up your office space!
7. Certifications
Another great thing about an agency is that they may have several certifications in different topics. For example, where the social media gurus in our office have Hootsuite certifications, developers might have certifications in different types of code. Google AdWords certifications allow you to feel comfortable with our internet advertising spending. As a whole, our agency has a Google Partners certification. This means that Google has verified our proficiency in Search Advertising and Google Analytics. Though a single marketing manager might have some certifications, they can’t match the combined expertise of a digital marketing agency.
Contact Us
If you’re still on the fence about hiring a digital marketing agency, contact us. We’d love to give you some more information on what distinguishes an agency and whether it’s the right fit for your needs.