There are a number of signs you need a digital marketing agency. Let’s cut to the chase: the most obvious sign is that you’re looking for signs in the first place. Many businesses spend too long figuring out when to hire a marketing agency, when many of the questions they’re asking are best answered by the agencies themselves. Whether hiring or not, start looking at the possibility and talking to agencies the minute you begin to wonder. It’s better to hire a marketing agency too soon than too late.
when to hire a Marketing Agency: 7 Signs
There are hard and fast signs that you absolutely need an agency as soon as possible:
1. You Lack Long-Term Goals
Many organizations imagine a marketing agency is there to handle immediate marketing campaigns. They bring a digital marketing agency in mid-stream on plans they already have. They can be useful this way, but it starts thinking about marketing from the wrong place.
A digital marketing agency focuses on building long-term growth. This way, your business isn’t dependent on how a single campaign goes. Building the foundation for long-term growth means that you’re bringing in inbound marketing steadily outside of major marketing buys. When you do mount a campaign, the infrastructure already exists not just to draw in visitors, but to convert them to customers, repeat customers, and even brand advocates online.
2. It’s Been 2+ Years Since a Site Update
Google ranks websites that are fast and work on all devices more highly than websites that are less responsive or can’t cover all platforms. Your website has to load quickly and its navigation should be streamlined. Its presentation should scale in a usable way on everything from big desktop screens to the smallest of smartphones.
Google isn’t the only one that prioritizes this. Customers do, too. A site that takes more than a few seconds to load will send visitors back to a results page to click on a competitor’s search result. The same thing happens with a website that doesn’t scale properly to their device, or that’s a pain to navigate. These aren’t big asks by Google or customers, but they do demand regular updates of your website.
Watch this video for tips on optimizing website speed for SEO.
3. You’re Growing Very Fast
A digital marketing agency focuses on reputation. When you grow quickly, you earn new competitors. Those competitors will seek to define your business while you’re still trying to hire new staff to keep up with growth. You need to establish your brand’s voice and presence to its larger market before someone else does. That means ramping up your voice and presence. You can’t ramp up either without skilled people on board who know how to realize these goals.
Another advantage of this is that it’s difficult to hire enough skilled, capable people to handle quick growth. Reach too far to fill a position, and you lower the qualifications that need to be met. A digital marketing agency provides services that you can scale. Grow very quickly, and you want to capitalize on that so you can keep growing. You don’t know if another such moment will come, so you need to get everything out of this moment that you can. Hire a digital marketing agency to bridge the gap. If you like their services and performance, keep them on. If you prefer filling in more of your own staff over time, you can scale their services down as you do.
4. You’re Subsisting, Not Excelling
On the other end of the scale, one of the biggest signs you need a digital marketing agency is that you’re bringing in just enough customers to keep on surviving. You can make it another month or two. You can keep on writing paychecks that are good. You can pay the rent. You can keep up your website and do the bare minimum when it comes to advertising. Many businesses lurk on the edge of a downward spiral for months, staving off the worst enough to keep the doors open. You can only hold off the inevitable for so long.
In cases like this, a decision has to be made sooner rather than later. This is when to hire a marketing agency. It’s not because they can provide a miracle that gets your business back on your feet tomorrow. It’s because they can assess your situation, give you realistic options, and help you build your business back up step by step.
This goes back to that long-term foundation. You don’t escape tough times and downturns by magic. You escape them by making good, healthy decisions for your business that improve its situation day by day. Over the long term, that’s what adds up and keeps the doors open for a long time to come.
5. Your Content is Inconsistent
Google rewards steady content creation. Social media platforms reward steady posting. If you’re inconsistent on either, Google will downrank your site, and social media platforms will prioritize sharing your posts with fewer people.
Steady content creation is a must. Most businesses with a successful inbound marketing strategy are putting out new content at least every few days. Content builds on itself, meaning that driving engagement with fresh content also convinces search engines to continue ranking your older content more highly. Steady content doesn’t just bring in new visitors to read that new post, it also brings in new visitors to read all your previous content. It’s constantly capitalizing on the full investment you’ve made in content.
This is what is meant when content is described as evergreen. Don’t go two or more weeks without posting content. Ideally, get something new out there at least every week. Not everyone is great at creating content. It’s a skill – so hire an agency that can provide you people with that skill. Content creation is a low investment strategy with a very high long-term reward.
6. You Don’t Know What Works
SEO results and content creation can be confusing and time-demanding. Do you have the analytics tools to know what really works and what doesn’t? Marketing isn’t about having some sixth sense that tells you a specific piece of content will connect with people. Creativity comes into it, but that creativity has to be measured in terms of how it’s best used, implemented, and presented.
The content you expect to do well might fall flat. The content you thought only had niche interest might have stellar response. Do you know why? Do you know how to capitalize on it? Do you know what social media platforms contributed to its success, or which ones remarketing will be most successful on? Do you know how to push it out toward the customers on your email lists who are most likely to engage with it? This is just the surface of digital marketing analytics, and already it requires tracking metrics and using analytics tools if you want to expand on or repeat that success.
7. Your In-House Marketing Staff Lack Skills or Resources
Maybe your in-house staff is great. You like them, you get along with them, and they do good work. Yet they may have limits in terms of their knowledge and skill sets. Your business may have limitations in the resources and tools you can provide them. It’s OK if you acknowledge this. In fact, it’s necessary. When the job is too much or moves beyond your in-house marketing staff, it’s OK to get extra help.
Hiring a digital marketing agency doesn’t mean you kick your own marketing staff out. The two can work hand in hand. An outside digital marketing agency can share access to tools and information, and in working with in-house marketing staff, your own employees can even gain knowledge and become more capable.
If your in-house staff does a certain job well, it might be best to enable them to focus on that job more fully, while handing off other elements to a marketing agency. Alternately, if your in-house staff simply can’t manage the entire job, an outside marketing team can help them expand on their work and make them more experienced and capable. In this way, a digital marketing agency isn’t just an investment in outside expertise, it can also be a way of investing in the capabilities of your own employees.
When to Hire a new Marketing Agency: 4 Signs
What if you’ve already formed a partnership with an agency? When was the last time you sat down to evaluate them? Maybe not since the moment you hired them. The chances are good that digital marketing takes up a sizable part of your marketing budget as a whole, but it’s tough to keep an eye on the ins and outs when you’re busy running your company.
As long as you have a web presence and customers, your agency must be doing something right, right? Not quite. Marketing is so much more than just promoting your brand on every possible channel. Instead, you want real value for those dollars that are walking out the door each month. Wondering whether you’re getting that? Here are a few signs that it might be time to rethink the agency marketing services you’re currently receiving and find an agency better suited to your needs.
1. Deliverables Calendar Doesn’t Exist
This could also be phrased as your deliverables aren’t being met on time. Sure, there’s a growth phase where your brand and the agency learn to work together; but once you’re up and running, there should still be due dates, and those dates should be clearly articulated and consistently met.
2. Missing Industry Experience
How many other companies in your industry has your partner worked with? Did you have an opportunity to read case studies? Did you contact references within your industry? The simple truth is that while any digital marketing agency can market you, only one who truly understands you can market you well.
If you sell widgets, that agency needs to understand the ins and outs of the widget industry. If it’s a yoga studio, they need to at least know that Hatha isn’t the only style out there. The point here is not just knowledge. It’s valuable, informed feedback within your specific industry that is carried through the agency marketing services.
3. Lacking Communication
Who is your primary point of contact with your agency? Was he or she present at those initial meetings or during those first few calls? Who do you contact if you need additional services?
Knowing who to talk to when you need to check in and how often you can expect to hear from the organization is important. If your point person is not communicating within your expected time frames, it may be time to that can and will. This should be a partnership, and partnerships don’t exist without communication.
4. Poor Results
What goals did you set? Are you meeting them? If you’ve yet to see a comprehensive report, it’s time to make some changes. You want to ensure the company is meeting your expectations, and a big part of that is the reporting process. Your marketing agency may not understand what success looks like to you, and that could create real problems for your relationship. A solid ROI has to be realized; if it’s not, you need a new digital marketing agency that can deliver.
If your current relationship isn’t yielding fruit, that understands your needs and will work with you to achieve them. Contact us to learn more about THAT . We will help you build your brand.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.