It is a common misconception that small businesses can’t afford to hire a marketing agency, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Actually, small businesses are often the ones that need an agency most to help them get visibility in the marketplace, attract customers and fill in the gaps that save them money on labour and marketing costs.
Hiring an agency can help your business grow by saving you valuable time that you can work on your business instead of trying to keep up with the latest techniques. It can also save wasted costs on hiring for marketing on your team, costly errors marketing improperly and on purchasing marketing tools that your business doesn’t need to their full capacity. Let’s take a closer look at the ways your business can save money and time by hiring a marketing agency.
1. If you become more visible, you will get more sales. While it may seem that investing in working with an agency will cut into your bottomline, this is usually untrue. The agency should improve your exposure (and your sales) enough to pay for the services within a relatively short time frame. Once you pass this initial hurdle, your investment will be rewarded as you are able to attract more traffic and increase sales.
2. Good marketing converts faster. If a potential customer’s every touchpoint with your business has been well managed, their expectations and “pre-qualification” will be met and much stronger, which should improve your conversion rates. A marketing agency is also there to optimize each step in the buyer journey so you are less likely to lose people along the way. They can help with SEO, your Google profile, your website, calls to action and so much more.
3. Good marketing also brings repeat business. Retargeting, remarketing, customer success programs, newsletters, content, social media, promos and events can all be optimized and managed by your marketing agency to ensure that existing customers are delighted and happy to not only buy from you again, but to also refer their friends. When you have consistent, recurring business from your core customers, plus an ongoing referral engine coming in, your business growth can hit exponential levels. Good marketing makes this happen!
4. Invest your own time in the business. When you (or members of your team) are not worrying about staying on top of the latest in marketing techniques, posting on social media or managing website updates, you’ll have a lot more time to focus on other areas of the business. Hiring a marketing agency leverages their expertise so you can focus on yours!
5. Saves hiring the staff yourself. Hiring someone full time to manage your marketing gets costly fast and you are also required to manage them. When you hire a marketing agency, you get access to several subject matter experts so you get the best work possible, rather than hiring a marketing generalist who you are responsible for.
6. Save on expensive errors and tools. While you learn how to properly optimize your marketing, you are highly likely to make mistakes that will cost you a lot of money or result in lost opportunities. The cost to acquire new customers increases and you may be less likely to retain them. A marketing agency can ensure your strategy is air tight and has much less room for error. You’ll also find that marketing requires software and tools that can be quite costly. Hiring a agency means they will usually provide access to these tools so you save on costs.
When you are ready to grow your small business, you need to ramp up your marketing efforts. This takes time, expertise and tools that you likely do not have at your disposal and it is quite costly to invest in them during a growth stage. Hiring a marketing agency can help to bridge the gap for you until you’ve grown to the point where you can hire marketers on your team and it makes sense to invest in the necessary tools to market well.
On that note though, we have found that as our clients have grown with us, it made sense to hire an onsite marketing team and to invest in better tools, but it still made financial and physical sense to have the agency manage these pieces for you and continue to develop an overall strategy that can be executed.
Regardless of the stage your business is in, a marketing agency can be a huge benefit to helping you grow and achieve your goals. Call us today to see how we can support your unique needs!