With the average adult in the UK spending more than 25 hours a week online and the growing prevalence of smartphones, digital marketing has never had a better opportunity to reach an audience with the right content. But, to obtain the best results from your digital marketing, you need to be well versed in a variety of channels, strategies and techniques.
These skills can be difficult and time consuming for small to medium businesses to obtain in-house. Using a digital marketing agency can provide a number of advantages over doing it yourself.
The number one advantage of hiring an agency to run your marketing over going in-house is the amount of time you will gain to focus on other areas. As a business, if you were to use an in-house team, you’d need to hire specialists or train your employees in specific marketing channels, as well as requiring a marketing manager who can co-ordinate all the different teams to work together.
This can be a very time consuming and costly process. Hiring a digital marketing agency to do it for you could be a practical solution to lessen the burden on your team. With an agency at the helm of your digital marketing, there will be no need for the training or hiring of new employees as all elements of your digital marketing will be handled by a team of specialists.
A digital marketing campaign requires a stable team of staff to conceptualise, launch and run it successfully. Staff leaving and new staff joining part way through will require time for training and will lead to inconsistencies and confusion. This has the potential to end up being a very costly for a small company since any wasted time is time that they could have spent making revenue. If a key member of staff leaves, then any new staff coming in could end up dealing with a steep learning curve as they familiarise themselves with the tools needed to perform the new task they have been assigned. This is the risk when you hire or train new staff for the purpose of handling your digital marketing.
With a digital marketing agency, they will have a dedicated team of trained specialists who are ready to take on your marketing campaign. An agency offers better stability and will have protocols in place if any of their staff leave to ensure that the transition between staff members is smooth and does not affect your campaign.
Generally speaking, most digital marketing agencies will have a multitude of specialisations in a single team. For example, an agency team can consist of a digital marketing manager, an SEO specialist, PPC specialist, social media specialist and some copywriters, all of whom will all have plenty of experience in their specific fields.
If you decide to go in-house and hire in new staff or train existing staff, then this comprehensive variety of specialisations and experience is not guaranteed. You may have staff who can handle each of the areas, but you may not have a manager with the experience required to organise everything effectively. It will all rely on how you’re your recruitment process works. Additionally, you might have great staff, but you could lack the best tools to bring your ideas into fruition.
With a specialist digital marketing agency, you will get access to a group of qualified marketing experts and accredited specialists, with the right tools and experience to make the most of your campaign. An agency will also have access to a network of other companies, specialists and expertise that they could turn to if they need extra help with your campaign.
Internally managing your digital marketing channels and accounts day in, day out can end up feeling tedious. The in-house team may feel like they have tested and used all the available channels and this can lead to stagnation in both innovation and growth. Hiring an agency to manage your digital marketing can offer different and fresh viewpoints tailored to your business, since an agency will normally have a team dedicated to your account. These new ideas can offer opportunities to boost growth.
In conclusion, a digital marketing agency will save you time on recruitment, will have the right specialists and tools for the job and will let you concentrate on other aspects of your business. This doesn’t mean that you should just hire any old agency. Make sure you put some thought and research into it and hire the right agency to work with your business to help it reach its goals and objectives.
Fred has been working at Kumo since 2017, in paid marketing. As a PPC Marketer, he is responsible for implementing and overseeing PPC campaigns for Kumo's clients, on paid marketing platforms such as Google Ads and Bing Ads.