So, you’re thinking about hiring a digital marketing agency? You probably wouldn’t be on our site reading this if you weren’t. Through your research, you’ve certainly read a lot about what a marketing company can do for you – but have you heard anything about what it’s actually like to work with one?
The thing is, when you hire a digital marketing agency (or an inbound agency, or a sales enablement partner, or anything like that) it’s important to understand not only what services you’ll be receiving but also what you can expect from your working relationship with the company.
In our experience working with clients in all types of industries, it’s always better for both parties when the client goes into a relationship with an agency fully informed. And who better to learn about what working with an inbound marketing agency is really like than from one of those agencies?
Mostly, truths about working with a marketing partner are learned as a response to common statements or comments from clients. So keep reading to see some common questions or comments we get from clients and the truth that follows.
Top 5 truths about hiring a marketing agency:
1. You’ll Have to Put in Work
What You Say: But I hired you to do my marketing! Why do I have to do any work?
The Truth: When you hire a digital marketing agency, you’re not hiring someone to do all your marketing so you can forget about it. What you’re really doing is joining forces with a partner that will help you to optimize and improve your sales and marketing so you can put most of your focus on the business aspects of, well, running your business.
When you start working with a marketing partner, and throughout your relationship, you can expect to not only provide info for and approval of collateral, but also to contribute to discussions about marketing strategy and future plans.
This isn’t because your new partner doesn’t know what their doing, it’s because you know your market, clients, and business best. You’re the one who’s “in the trenches” every day inside your business so you’re the one with the valuable insights your marketing agency needs to personalize and optimize their strategy and plan to get better results than they could all on their own.
2. You’ll Get Some Unexpected Bonuses
What You Say: Hiring an agency really isn’t any different than hiring someone internally.
The Truth: When you work with an agency, you’re not only working with a diverse team of skilled marketing professionals, you’re also, in a roundabout way, working with everyone else they work with.
Digital marketing agencies are pretty well connected. First, they have a variety of different clients often in many different industries. You never know when they might spot a business opportunity for you.
Secondly, they have more significance with marketing “big guns” than any of their clients separately. For example, if you are spending $15,000 a year on Google ads, it might be a lot of money for you, but it means pretty much nothing to Google in the grand scheme of things. But your inbound agency partner is running ads for all of their clients and, therefore, contributing a lot more revenue to Google. That means Google cares, and will often reach out to your agency to provide insights, tips, and benefits that will help to improve your paid search ads.
Related: 7 Tips for Improving Google Ads Performance
When you choose to work with an agency as opposed to hiring someone internally, you’re able to take advantage of a lot of connections that a single marketing professional just isn’t going to have.
3. Your In-House Team Might be Wary
What You Say: Someone to reduce their workload? My team is going to love this!
The Truth: Whether or not anyone on your team is working in a direct marketing position, those team members who work alongside your new digital marketing agency are going to be a little wary about the “new people.”
It’s totally understandable. Before you hire a marketing partner, someone on your team will have been working on your website, or posting to your social media, or creating your paid advertising, or writing blogs. Even if that person claims to want to be rid of the aforementioned task, when an agency starts to change things, it can feel like an attack.
When you start to work with an outside marketing company, you should expect that members of your current team might feel a little put-out by the new people. No credible agency will discount the thoughts and contributions of your team though, so make sure you re-assure them that your new partner is here to help them, not to discredit them.
4. You’ll Improve Your Own Knowledge and Skill
What You Say: I know business – not marketing. That’s why I hired an agency.
The Truth: When you have a partner in digital marketing, you get to experience a lot when it comes to marketing, automation, even sales that you may not have had anything to do with before.
Whether you’re planning on it or not, when you start working with an agency, your own knowledge and skill in digital marketing will be expanded. Since you’ll be taking part in plenty of discussions about marketing strategy, and probably receiving training on using automation software, you’re bound to learn something about how the whole thing works.
You probably won’t suddenly become an expert in all things marketing, but you might find yourself beginning to understand just how SEO works and how you can improve your SEO strategy. Or maybe you'll start to take an interest in the design of your website. Maybe you'll become a LinkedIn posting master. Whatever the case, when working with an agency, there's only knowledge to be gained.
5. Your Business Might Change
What You Say: Marketing is about marketing. It doesn’t have anything to do with my sales team or how I run my business.
The Truth: A digital marketing agency does more than just market. When you start working with a partner, you’ll find that their efforts, results, and reporting can offer some valuable insights into your client base and your business as a whole.
It’s not uncommon for clients to start seeing data that points to the need for changes on the sales of business side of things. But, it’s easy to assume that, since this data came from a marketing team, it isn’t actually relevant on the business side of things. But, because of the connected nature of modern day marketing, sales, and services, it’s important that insights from data be applied across all disciplines, not just reserved for one.
When you start to see reports from your inbound marketing partner that seem to be reflective on your sales or customer service, don’t discount them based on the fact that they came from a marketing perspective. You never know when you can make a change that will scale up your business and start growing your revenue.
Thinking About Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency?
Think you can handle the truth about hiring an agency? Ready to get started reaping the benefits of having a dedicated marketing and sales partner? Perfect! There are a lot of different marketing companies (and resources on choosing a company) out there, so it’s important that you do your research into which one is the right one for you. If you’re interested in finding out if Flawless might be the right fit (and we really hope you are) you can contact us at any time (or have a chat with InBot in the bottom right hand corner of the site).
Want to know more about what we've done for more than 80 B2B companies across Canada and the US? Well, then you should check out this timely free webinar!
