The Value of Partnering with a Digital Marketing Agency Getting your business noticed online is sort of like talking in a crowded room. No matter how important your message is, there’s a good chance that it gets lost in the noise. People standing directly next to you might hear what you have to say, but folks on the other side won’t know that you even exist. The ideal solution is to quiet everyone else down, but unfortunately, this isn’t realistic. The next best option? Make yourself stand out. Stand on a stage and grab a megaphone. Shine flashing lights and yell, “This is what I have to say, and here’s why you should listen.” But you’re alone in a crowded room, and all you have is a message. You don’t know where to get a megaphone, your knowledge of building a stage is clumsy at best, and coordinating a light show sounds impossible. How will you stand out? The answer is easier than you might think—Partner with a digital marketing agency. Why Digital Marketing is Important for Small Businesses Trends come and go, but it’s safe to say that the digital age is here to stay. Traditional marketing still exists, but its value to small businesses pales in comparison to digital marketing. The traditional channels—TV, Radio, Print—are expensive, cast a wide net, and fleeting. Your message is there, then gone. And if you didn’t earn any new business, so is your investment. With digital marketing, your footprint sticks around. Your website will only expire if you don’t renew the domain, and your Google ranking will stick around for long after those photocopied flyers get thrown away. Digital marketing is important, and the majority of small businesses think so. small businesses value digital marketing 49.8% of small business owners strongly agree that digital advertising is important to the success of their company A recent survey conducted by the Statista Research Department found that 49.8% of small business owners strongly agree and 32.1% somewhat agree that digital advertising is important to the success of their company. That’s 81.9% of respondents who believe that digital marketing is important for success. But small businesses often find themselves in a tough spot when trying to expand their reach with digital marketing. Hiring an in-house marketing team is way out of budget. Onboarding one person to handle the marketing creates gaps and inefficiencies while leading to inevitable burnout. With a digital marketing agency, you get a team of dedicated experts at a reasonable price. Save Time and Money We’ve all heard the old saying that time is money, so saving both is a win no matter how you look at it. When you work with a digital marketing agency, you skip the onboarding process, so the hours that would have been spent pouring through resumes and sitting through interviews can be recycled back into running your business. The cost to hire an entire marketing team in-house is out of reach for all but the most established businesses. Small business owners would need to shell out over half a million dollars in payroll to wield the same power as a digital marketing agency. Outsourcing the same hours to a digital marketing agency is significantly cheaper. According to Clutch.co, the average hourly rate for a Denver digital marketing agency is $150, which means that hiring an agency to perform 40 hours of work for 52 weeks would cost $312,000 however, most businesses don’t need nearly that much bandwidth. Digital marketing agencies offer the additional benefit of scalability, so you only pay for what you need, and you can increase or decrease the hours as your needs change. Access to Marketing Tools & Industry Knowledge We could have lumped this into the previous section, but it deserves special mention. When you partner with a digital marketing agency, your business benefits from access to expensive marketing tools. More importantly, you get access to professionals who know how to use them, which is a big deal. Consider the graphic above that outlines the staff necessary for a marketing department. Each area of expertise relies on a variety of tools. Learning them all is costly in terms of both time and money. Let’s take a look at a sample of tools that we use at Red Egg Marketing: Email Marketing (Mailchimp, Constant Contact) Graphic Design (Adobe Suite, Shutterstock) SEO (Semrush, Moz) Web Development (Flywheel, Browserstack, Gravity Forms, and lots of premium plugins and tools to speed sites up and stop malware attacks) Training , a leading professional development publication, found that, on average, organizations spend 16% of their budget on learning tools and technology. That’s a massive amount for companies of any size, but it becomes downright debilitating for small businesses. Working with a digital marketing agency solves this issue and ensures your business stays ahead of the curve in terms of industry knowledge and technology. Keep up with Trends The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing. Tools change and need to be re-learned. New channels emerge as valuable lead sources. Fads come and go, taking your customer’s attention with them. Keeping up with the changes can be exhausting if it is outside your everyday routine. Most small business owners already have a relationship with the marketing world and know enough to have a conversation. This is enough for surface-level interaction but won’t help you stand out in a crowded room. When it comes to understanding Google’s core algorithm updates, changing styles in graphic design, or the latest social media craze, you need to live and breathe digital marketing. Digital marketing is rapid by its nature. An ad campaign can go from idea to reality in a matter of minutes, and to keep up with the latest trends, total immersion is required. Reading blogs, attending events, taking courses, listening to podcasts, monitoring competitors, analyzing customer behavior, tracking social media trends. It can all become overwhelming without even considering everything that goes into running a business. Hiring an agency will take the task off of your plate. Your strategy will always be cutting-edge and designed to reach the ears that need to hear it most. Measurable Results Tracking success is more than monitoring dollars and cents. Sure, a year-over-year increase in sales is an admirable achievement, but it doesn’t mean as much if you can’t attribute the growth to a specific effort. Attribution is one of the great shortcomings of traditional marketing. Once you run the ad, it becomes impossible to tell how it affected your audience. Coupon codes and viewership numbers give you some idea, but the analytics for print, radio, and television ads are unsophisticated. Digital marketing is beautiful for many reasons, but measurability is one of its best qualities. Using attribution models and software such as CallRail, you can tell exactly how your customers found your company. Other metrics like clickthrough rate, engagement rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, and cost per lead show you how effective your marketing efforts are. There are dozens of other metrics, each providing valuable information about your target audience. Most marketing tools automatically calculate the metrics and present the data in easy-to-digest charts and graphs. A digital marketing agency can quickly pivot strategies to optimize effectiveness by monitoring trends. Importance of SEO in Digital Marketing Every facet of digital marketing is important, but one of the most crucial disciplines is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The bad news is that optimizing your website for search engines is a long and difficult process. The good news, however, is that the results are effective and long-lasting. A recent survey from Databox found that 70% of respondents consider SEO to be more effective than pay-per-click (PPC) at driving sales for their business. This isn’t to say that PPC advertising doesn’t work, it is just a different strategy used in a different way. For example, PPC drives traffic to your website immediately, and can bring in leads or sales that might have taken years of SEO work to have earned. The difference between the two lies in psychology. When people notice that a search result is “Sponsored,” they become less likely to convert. They want to base their decision off of organic insights rather than someone who paid for a top spot. Enter SEO. When Google returns top results, people have confidence that the information is helpful, well-researched, and trustworthy. Earning a place on Google’s first page shows that your business meets a certain standard. It increases brand recognition, raises your authority, and brings a steady flow of traffic to your website. And unlike PPC ads that go away when you stop paying, your position in search has the potential to last indefinitely. Small Businesses Flourish with Local SEO If you’ve ever used a search engine to find a restaurant, store, or any other service, you’ve seen local SEO at work. Google uses location to return the most relevant results, and consumers rely on search to guide their purchases. A recent study from Ipsos found that 60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly using the search results. With the majority of your potential customers using search results as a guiding factor in their journey, local visibility could mean the difference between success and failure. Standing out from the crowd is hard, but improving your digital visibility makes it easier. If you aren’t investing in local SEO, you could be falling behind the competition. Local SEO is a multi-pronged effort that involves creating quality content, optimizing directory listings, and generating positive reviews. Neglecting any of these aspects will reflect in a low search results position, and that doesn’t help your business get noticed. Can you even remember the last time that you went to the 5th page of Google? Improving online visibility means establishing a commanding presence that outshines your competition. With an SEO-focused digital marketing agency on your team, your business can move up in the rankings and reap the benefits of increased traffic. What Can a Digital Marketing Agency Do for Your Business? If you want to promote your business online, digital marketing is a necessity. It can do wonders for your business and help you achieve dream results. It’s not uncommon for a top digital marketing agency to provide more than a 300% return on investment. To put the potential in perspective, recall the salary chart from earlier. Hiring a digital marketing agency as a full-time partner at 40 hours a week is a $312,000 investment, but choosing the right agency means you could turn that into almost a million dollars. It’s unrealistic, and in most cases foolish, to commit too large a portion of your budget to advertising. But a good agency offers flexibility, allowing you to set a budget that suits your situation. When you partner with a digital marketing agency that understands your goals, you can grow together. rising popularity It is estimated that $616 billion was spent on digital advertising worldwide. A digital marketing agency is your platform in a crowded room. It’s an amplifier for your voice. A digital marketing agency will help you rise above the noise and offer a healthy return on investment, valuable brand recognition, measurable results, and a knowledgeable team that keeps up with the latest trends. Identifying When a Digital Marketing Agency is a Fit A fruitful partnership results from a like-minded collaboration. For your digital marketing investment to succeed, you must choose the agency carefully. Before committing, it’s crucial to take a step back and think about your goals. If the agency you plan to work with can’t meet those goals, it’s not a good fit. We suggest looking at the agency’s website and past work to see if their style meets your expectations. If your initial impression is positive, it’s time to reach out and schedule a marketing meeting. This is your chance to see what the agency is made of. Be sure to come prepared with questions that cut straight to the point. Again, think about your goals and how you operate your business. Some questions to consider asking during the initial meeting include: Will you outsource work to other companies? How often will you be in contact with me? What is the length of our contract? Have you ever worked with companies similar to mine? If so, was it a successful partnership? How will you get to know my business? What promises can you make me? When was the last time that you lost an account, and why? Can you provide current/previous clients as references? What does your billing structure look like? What are your core values? These are just a few sample questions you should ask your digital marketing agency. You will likely think of other topics to clarify during your consultation. The most important thing is to make sure that the agency understands your goals and limitations and matches your core values. Rise Above the Noise with a Denver Digital Marketing Agency Does it feel like your business is a needle in a haystack? Are you tired of shouting across a crowded room only to have your voice drowned out by all of the noise? We understand, and we’re here to help. Red Egg Marketing is a digital marketing agency with deep roots in Denver’s Sunnyside neighborhood. Our connection to the community is only surpassed by our passion for helping businesses grow. We work tirelessly to develop custom strategies based on our clients’ goals and budget. With an average client partnership of seven years and several partnerships exceeding ten years, we have the experience to help you stand out. It’s time for more needles and less haystack.
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