Hiring a marketing agency or in-house marketing?

Overview

• Why should you choose for a marketing agency?
• When is it time to call for help?
• Limitations of marketing in your company
• Dream team

Why should you choose for a marketing agency?

First a disclaimer, we are a marketing agency ourselves….

The ‘owner’ cannot do everything

In startup companies, the founders are not always people with a background in marketing. It’s a full day anyway to get their business off the ground, besides that they don’t have time to really delve into marketing.

In existing companies, it is often the younger generation that is more focused on digital growth in the company. These people have some knowledge but as soon as the marketing becomes more advanced than a Facebook campaign of 5 euros per day, they often lose the overview and it becomes difficult to really grow in a sustainable way.

These people are the pioneers of their business and they feel that they can do anything for their business if they are committed to it. Business leaders are often very successful at all these things too. They also feel that they should do the marketing themselves because they have the best intentions for their own business.

In the short term and when testing the first marketing campaigns this effort can be sufficient but when your company grows then the marketing should grow as well. It can become something very stressful for the founder.

Hiring a specialist

One person cannot possibly know everything about marketing. If you are going to rely on agencies you can use a specialization. Maybe you’ve seen in the past that your Google Ads campaigns are working very well but suddenly you get stuck. Then you can start hiring the agency to take your account to the next level.

The cost

Can you hire someone to do your marketing within the company itself though? When you are a starting company it is often an extra cost that weighs very heavily. It’s sometimes better to let an agency loose on your campaigns for a few hours a month than to start paying someone 40 hours a week.

An agency is also ready for you with 100% knowledge. Someone who is recruited often needs a running-in period, during which time and resources need to be used again.

When is it time to call for help?

Working with a good agency can quickly pay off. But when is the right moment to start working with an agency?

No progress in your marketing

Standing still is going backwards, especially in marketing. If you don’t spend time on your campaigns then the ad money will start rolling in without proper control. When marketing tasks are piling up because of busy-ness you should think about outsourcing some hours to an agency.

Your leads are not processed

Sometimes your campaign can work fairly well but your leads don’t always convert into real customers. A good agency knows how to make the two sides work together and can smoothen your processes, freeing up more time to turn those leads into clients.

Goals are not achieved

When you are in a competitive sector where your clicks are very expensive, it is already difficult to achieve a good result on your own.

Often there is no clear plan of action and a general strategy is used (which is also used by the competition). There is no competitive advantage and therefore you keep paying a lot for your conversions and you can’t get that cost down.

Limitations of marketing in your company

The man/woman of 100 stiles

In a start-up or even in long running (non-digitalized) business, marketing usually involves someone who is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades.
This could be someone from IT who ‘knows his way around computers’ or even a sales person who has to take care of his own leads. Usually marketing is also something that is taken in addition so it is not their main occupation. That’s why it’s often pushed back when it gets busy.

The lonely marketeer

Often the marketer remains the only one of his kind in the company for a while. This ensures that this person gets a lot of responsibility on him/her and that it is not possible to consult with a colleague.

Marketers are also sometimes misunderstood precisely because they are the only ones. There is no one else in the meeting to assist them in an argument.

Good start but no follow-up

Marketers do know what it takes to put a company on the map in the digital landscape. Examples are: a blog, CRM system, conversion tracking,…

But these are often installed at the beginning and are rarely followed up. How many times have you been to a website where there are then only 3 blog posts and the last one dates back to 2016?

Dream team

But what we also hear very often is that people are not satisfied with the agency they are dealing with. This can indeed sometimes be due to the agency itself underperforming or with which the cooperation is not going well.

But this is also sometimes down to the communication between the agency and the manager. The owner sometimes feels that not enough is being done (he doesn’t see change). But that doesn’t mean the agency is doing nothing.

Installing good metrics and conversions across all channels for example is a job that is very intensive and does take some time. However, we are not seeing a sudden increase in conversions because of this.

So what is a dream team for your marketing? The perfect combination is having someone in-house who knows your business very well and understands your vision for the company. This marketing person can start writing out strategies that are customized to the company. For the practical implementation and for a second opinion, you can rather call on agencies.

Why this middleman? This way the expertise of the agency is used to the fullest and the growth of your company is monitored according to your own plans made in-house.