Why you should hire a marketing agency for your business.
Getting new customers is one of the biggest challenges that businesses face on a daily basis.
Marketing plays a critical role in attracting new customers to your company, but many small business owners struggle with deciding whether they should do the marketing themselves or get outside help.
Business owners often ask themselves, “Should I hire a marketer or marketing agency for my business?”
Business owners should consider hiring a marketing agency because:
- A marketing agency will modernize your strategy
- A marketing agency will free up time to run your business
- A marketing agency will help you keep payroll costs down
- A marketing agency is a sound investment that produces long-term results
All companies need an effective, well thought out and executed marketing plan. While most companies understand the need for a strategic marketing plan, few understand what it is or how to implement one. A marketing agency will work with you to create and implement a successful marketing plan. This will result in lead generation for your business that can then be turned into sales, putting you on a path toward business growth.
A Marketing Agency Will Modernize Your Strategy
The rise of internet search and the explosion of social media networks have changed the way that companies must reach their target prospects and communicate how they can help them solve their problems.
Where once, outbound marketing methods (such as yellow page advertisements, commercials or print ads) drove customers to a business’s door, modern consumers are armed with computers and mobile devices and expect real-time access to information so they can make buying decisions in a matter of a few keystrokes.
This means that companies need to ensure that their messages are well executed and have websites that are easily found on the internet and will covert their visitors into leads. In other words, an inbound marketing process.
Below is a list of tasks that make up a “modern marketing strategy”:
- Website development & redesign
- Graphic design work
- SEO/keyword research
- Market research
- Mobile marketing integration
- Brochure development and production
- Content development
- Targeted email creation
- E-newsletters
- Social media marketing
- Paid advertising
- Metrics and data analysis
- Print marketing
- Public relations work
- Special events
- Sponsorship
While this may seem like a very thorough list, new technologies, apps and disciplines are always being created. This rapid change in new technology and techniques is what makes keeping up with marketing in the 21st century such a challenge for small businesses.
A Marketing Agency Will Free Up Time To Run Your Business
Many entrepreneurs have been ingrained with a “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) mentality, which means they try to complete these tasks without the aid of paid specialists. It is true that an individual can find and gain enough knowledge to complete the above tasks.
However, the time and effort it would take for the owner to successfully carry out a modern marketing strategy would certainly impact the business.
The learning curve for anyone with little experience in marketing is staggering and would challenge a busy entrepreneur to create a complete and effective marketing strategy. Even if the owner devoted the time necessary to learn all of these marketing elements, you would have a tapped out business owner with little time to run his or her business.
With marketing technology and techniques constantly changing, doing it yourself is an unfeasible strategy. Business owners don’t have the time to keep up.
Therefore, businesses that have neither the time nor inclination to DIY are left with a choice…either hire an employee or hire an outside agency.
A Marketing Agency Will Help Keep Payroll Costs Down
In many instances, business owners lean toward hiring an employee because that has been the “go to” process in the past to solve an immediate need.
Additionally, business owners may have the perception that an outside agency is far more expensive than hiring in-house staff. The problem with this rationale is that most of the time, owners don’t have a true basis for comparison.
That’s because…
In many cases, business owners typically use a base salary versus an hourly rate for a marketing agency and then conclude that since the hourly rate is higher, it must be the more expensive option. This is a big mistake.
Many owners fail to take into account the true costs associated with hiring and retaining an employee. As the chart below shows, not only do you have to account for base salary, but adding in expenses such as payroll taxes, health insurance contributions, retirement plan matches, vacation, and sick days drives this figure up. The true cost of hiring an employee can be as much as 1.25 to 1.4 times the base salary. Add in other expenses (such as the cost of recruiting and training) and the total really starts to escalate quickly.
Let’s take a closer look and see what really happens when you compare the two.
Disclosures:
- We used the job position of Marketing Manager for the comparison. Many marketing professionals specialize in one area of marketing like social media marketing and may not have the broad experience that a marketing manager could have.
- There are also many elements to marketing, so we chose the inbound marketing process which encompasses many of the items listed above.
- All the salary data is based on the National Average salary for a Marketing Manager in the USA, and was taken from Salary.com.
Hiring A Marketing Manager Salary + Benefits
Core Compensation 1 Year
Base Salary — National Average $109,331
Value Of Benefits Using A Marketing Agency
3techagency Marketing Monthly Average Cost
$700 Our Software Products Subscriptions
$600 SEO Marketing
$700 Paid Advertising On Google / Socials
$500 Website Development & Redesign
$1,500 Mobile App Development
$4,000 SaaS App Development
$800 Creative Designing
— Approximate based on needs
Average Expenditure $8,800
Annual Investment Hiring An Employee$144,023
Annual Average Investment Hiring A Marketing Agency $48,000
Annual Expenditure Difference $96,023
The numbers above are averages and should be adjusted based on your needs, location of business, etc. However, the table should give you a better understanding of the approximate costs of hiring each one.
Below is an infographic illustrating the comparison between the two options.
Hiring a Marketing Firm vs Hiring Internal Staff Infographic
Click on the infographic to see an enlarged version.
In addition to the costs of hiring the right employee, the effective execution of many marketing tasks today requires extensive software, which means investment…much of it in the form of upfront purchases and annual subscriptions of graphics programs, pay per click management apps, business metrics software and a whole host of other requirements.
There is also one additional factor that needs to be considered. It would be exceptionally difficult to find one person that possesses each of the skills required to execute your strategy. This would most likely require your new marketing hire to outsource at least some of these tasks to outside sources or hire additional staff, which really blows this comparison out of the water.
So, after taking these factors into consideration, hiring marketing staff is no bargain.
A Marketing Agency Is A Sound Investment
Although you may perceive that you are saving money on an hourly basis relative to hiring an employee or doing it yourself, hiring a marketing agency provides substantial value. This is particularly true if it is one that focuses on inbound marketing techniques. Long gone are the “Mad Men” days of nebulous budgets and hidden fees.
The pricing dynamic has shifted and many firms are now working on clearly spelled out pricing structures, and lower-fee marketing retainer agreements.
While there is no industry standard, the going rate in most markets for an experienced inbound agency starts in the $3,000 to $5,000 range in terms of monthly spend. While that may seem like a large number, in comparison to the opportunity cost of DIY, or the pure allocation of funds toward building internal staff, this is a relative bargain.
Among the many benefits of working with an experienced marketing firm are:
- Expertise with your market niche
- Experience in executing marketing plans
- Money savings by hiring to your specific needs
- No employee training required
- Your marketing plan is executed immediately, the employee may need time to ramp up while the marketing firm is ready from the get-go
- Avoid HR nightmares
- No additional overhead
- Tax deductions, not tax liability
- Efficiency for short term and urgent projects
This new paradigm allows business owners to focus on running operations and increasing the bottom line, not messing around with Facebook, Twitter or trying to build out a website.
The big question then isn’t can I afford an experienced marketing agency, but rather how much am I costing myself in time, money and lost opportunity by trying to do these marketing services in-house.
