We’ve seen it dozens of times. The owner of a company explains to us that they have an employee whose primary role isn’t marketing attempting to do marketing in their “spare” time. Maybe it’s a sales person* and marketing got lumped in to their responsibilities over time or maybe it’s someone whose job isn’t even remotely related but they are willing to help out. Worst case scenario? It’s the actual owner who is attempting to do it. This is the worst case not because the person isn’t capable — likely, they are! — but is it the best use of his or her time? The answer is almost always no.
Does that situation sound familiar? Oftentimes, smaller organizations with limited budgets feel like this is the only solution. But, it’s simply not sustainable for a couple reasons.
In our hypothetical (but very real!) scenario, the people involved may understand marketing, and they know what they want to accomplish, but they often don’t know how to get there. Furthermore, on top of their day-to-day responsibilities, they simply don’t have the time or depth of knowledge to execute specific marketing and advertising tactics the right way.
Through no fault of their own, this person is probably doing the bare minimum when it comes to marketing. Marketing has the power to drastically increase your profits if you give it the time and energy it deserves but it’s very unlikely that you’ll see that success if a person is attempting to execute these tasks independently for a few hours a week. You need to make the proper investment (time and money!) in order to reap the benefits.
With that being said, what if we told you that there’s a way to eliminate 90% of the work for your employee (or you!) and ensure you’re putting the right time and energy towards your marketing efforts?
The first step is to think about your marketing budget. This should include spend (for tactics such as paid search, billboards, etc.) as well as labor (remember, if you’re hiring in house, you’ll need to factor in benefits, PTO, etc.).
You could attempt to hire a single, dedicated person to do this job for you in-house. However, it’s impossible to find a person with the expertise needed to execute on all aspects and tactics related to marketing. Marketing unicorns simply don’t exist (believe us, we’ve looked for them). Even if you did happen to come across that magical person, their salary demands would be astronomical and likely, unattainable.
Instead, what if you hired a marketing agency to act as an extension of your team? Take the cost of a single marketing employee, and rather than add that single person, add an entire marketing team with multiple people, each possessing the skillsets required to execute marketing the right way.
We know that the cost of a person, depending on skillset and experience, can vary greatly. So too can the cost of an agency, depending on the scope and the breadth of the work being performed. The great thing is you can start with what you can afford and scale up as your business grows.
The employee who was attempting to do marketing off the side of their desk? They simply become the marketing liaison, or contact person. 90% of their marketing responsibilities? GONE!
An agency essentially acts as your quarterback. We listen to your goals and then set the strategy, determine the right budget, manage that budget, prioritize tactics, execute the work, and then funnel information back to your in-house liaison. That employee then takes that information and is simply responsible for making decisions based off of it on behalf of the company.
Maybe your situation is a little different than our example. You’ve got a marketing coordinator, and a few in-house people that fill specific marketing roles. But you don’t have anyone who can quarterback your email marketing strategy, make code changes to your website, run PPC campaigns, or create content for your social media platforms. You don’t necessarily need a full-time person for each of those tasks, but no one person could do them all.
Enter a marketing agency partner. We can build a team to work hand-in-hand with yours and fill the gaps your current resources have.
Bottom line: if you’re evaluating your marketing and think you need 10 people but have the budget to support one, call us. You really can have it all!
Want to hear more? Learn about what it’s like to work with an ad agency and discover how to choose the right marketing partner (or just hit Contact above 😉)!
*The difference between sales and marketing: Marketing builds awareness of your company to potential customers and delivers them to you as leads. Sales involves turning that lead into profit by converting the potential customer to an actual customer. Typically, one person would not execute both of these!
