Should you use an agency for digital marketing or do it yourself?
We all know that digital marketing is vital for business exposure and for optimising sales. But many businesses aren’t sure whether they should outsource their digital marketing to an agency or just do it themselves. Not sure how to decide which option is right for you? Read our list of pros and cons to working with an agency that will help you make the right decision for your business.
Pros Of Working With An Agency
Save Your Time to Dedicate to Other Things
Doing your own digital marketing can be more time consuming than you expect. There are many components to digital marketing that you may not realise until you actually start doing it yourself. Things like research, campaign strategy creation and evaluation can take up a lot of time. By working with an agency, you can free up your time by letting experts handle your digital marketing. Instead, you can use that time to work on the things that are important for the day to day operations of your business. You can use this time to have a hand in areas that you really excel at. Agencies are also efficient for short term projects, if you don’t want to hire additional staff like for periodic marketing campaigns.
Get Help from People with Specialised Skill Sets
By working with an agency, you can receive expert support from members who are experienced in specialised areas. Digital marketers are usually well experienced, and a diverse team of experts at an agency will ensure that every aspect of your digital marketing is handled properly with a range of skills. Agencies also often have marketers who are experienced in specific industries and niches. This will be beneficial for your business by allowing every aspect of your digital marketing to be optimised to achieve maximum ROI in your target market. Doing digital marketing yourself can lead to some areas of digital marketing that your staff are not experienced in being neglected. This will not happen with a well experienced digital marketing agency. With an agency, you get a lot more for the money you spend. By having access to SEO and SEM experts, social media strategists, graphic designers, PPC experts and branding strategists, hiring a marketing agency means you have a new team at your disposal to think of new innovative ideas and take on different jobs.
Faster Support for All Things Online, 24/7
When you partner with a digital agency, you can receive faster support to solve issues quicker. Similar to Planet Media, many digital agencies offer 24/7 support to their clients with systems to monitor your website and campaigns around the clock. Say if you were to hire someone yourself full time, they will usually only work 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday. This means that your worker has limited time available to monitor everything accurately, and their work likely will not cover out of hours and weekends. Due to having their time divided between the many different aspects of digital marketing, some areas may fall short as they get pushed by the wayside.
Higher Rates of Reliable Positive Outcomes
There is much high certainty of success when working with a specialised digital marketing agency due to a number of elements. At agencies, the majority of the time you can rely on a positive outcome from digital marketing efforts, no matter the circumstance. But doing digital marketing yourself, the outcome depends on a variety of different factors which you may not be able to account for. Many marketers are also likely to change jobs every 2-3 years, to stop things from getting too boring when working for one brand. With the high number of marketers leaving their jobs unpredictably, you have to be prepared to hire someone new and train them quickly at a moment’s notice. However, at agencies there are a team of people working on your projects so even if one person leaves, it will not have much of an impact on your business’ performance. An agency’s job is to deliver results.
Saving Your Business’ Resources
You can save many resources by teaming up with an agency, rather than hiring your own staff. Hiring full time staff to help with digital marketing can be expensive. When hiring your own staff, you have to dedicate resources to hire the right people with the right skill sets. Providing them with proper training takes time. You will also have to add expenses to HR and overhead charges rather than if you were to partner with an agency.
When To Take On Digital Marketing By Yourself?
You Have The Resources To Hire Your Own Team
If you have the resources and time to do so, you could hire and train your own team of digital marketers. But, keep in mind that there is a higher risk associated with hiring a digital marketer yourself. If you don’t like a digital marketing agency, you can change to another one. But if you hire someone who isn’t right for the job, it can be a more difficult situation to fix. Hiring someone yourself may also be the best option for you, however the same cost of their salary could be better implemented by experienced marketers.
If You Know Exactly What You Are Doing and Have the Time To Do It
Leading your own digital marketing team is a great option if you have experience in digital marketing yourself and know how to best lead others to execute your marketing. If you decide to lead your own marketing department, make sure that you have enough time to dedicate to overseeing your digital marketing and coaching your team. Know how to create attention grabbing campaigns that sell? You can use those skills. However, what about if you are less confident with retargeting and reporting? If you have the confidence in your skills and a solid strategic plan, then use it to create great digital marketing campaigns to get your business to the top. If you are not so sure, it might be a good idea to get some support.
You Are Already Happy with the Current Growth Rate Of Your Business
Partnership models work the best if you are working with an agency. If you are looking to achieve a significant growth in your business which you are not getting by yourself, then you may benefit from the help of a specialist third party company. The benefit of a digital marketing agency is that they can provide you with new ideas to grow your business further. But, if you are happy with the current growth rate of your business, you may not need an agency to boost your business growth and ROI.
You Like Learning New Skills (and Have the Time to Learn Them)
Some people are keen learners. Even if they do not necessarily have a background in digital marketing and business, some people like to take on the challenge and learn for themselves. There is so much dense information when it comes to marketing online, and this changes rapidly all the time. Facets of digital marketing ranges between content and social media strategies, content production and graphic design, through to digital marketing avenues like email, SEO, display ads, and more. On the other hand, it is the business of a digital marketing agency to stay up to date with what is happening in different industries and their markets, as well as continuous technological developments and latest updates. If you have the time and drive to keep up, digital marketing is an interesting area to take on by yourself to learn new skills.
What is best for my business?
Whether you do it yourself or hire an agency, it is important to decide on the right option for digital marketing for your business. If you do decide to go with an agency, it is important to pick the right one with experience and skill sets that suit your business problems. If you partner with an agency, you can expect your business to grow as it will be backed by a team of experts.
