Why Hire a Marketing Agency Over In-House Teams

Uncertainty has been the watchword since 2019 when we faced the time of challenges and opportunities. The great question raised during this time is how to deal with unpredictability and react efficiently. In this article, we will look at partnering with a marketing agency as an effective strategy to strengthen digital presence during the pandemic and boost ROI with increased sales.

When An Agency Won’t Work For You

While working with an agency comes with many benefits, it’s not always the best option to rush things up with a partnership. The decision of outsourcing largely depends on the size of the company, marketing strategy, and budget. If you fall into one of the below three categories, the time might not yet be right for you to shift to an external service.

Limited Advertising Budget

If you don’t have a significant ad budget, it’s not a smart idea to hire a marketing agency. You’ll spend most of your budget on fees, and far less on actual revenue-generating ads. Let’s do math. For example, if you hire an agency at $1,000 per month, with an ad spend of $3,000, you’ll need to hit a 33% return on ad spend (ROAS) just to break even. Also, if your ads are already performing well, you may not need to hire an external agency, particularly if you’re not ready to pay high fees. To improve your current metrics, you’ll likely spend at least $2,000 to hire an agency capable of making significant improvements.

Impaired Revenue Generation

It’s an obvious thing: the agency should always make more than they cost. The math must make sense. Either the increased profits should cover the agency’s costs, or the cost of internal resources should outweigh the expense of hiring a digital marketing agency.

In-House Talent

If you already have a top-notch in-house marketing team, it doesn’t make sense to hire an agency. Instead, it’s smart to consider using an agency as an advisor when planning the campaigns.

When An Agency Work For You

However, there are many reasons why you might want to consider bringing an agency on board. Traditionally, you should hire a professional marketing team if:

• You don’t have the in-house skills or resources to manage the account.
• Your campaigns aren’t running successfully.
• You don’t have enough time to handle the account in-house.

Even if your accounts are performing well, an agency can give you a significant boost by identifying potential traffic sources that aren’t being utilized, and optimize branded and non-branded keyword campaigns to get the best results. Below we’ve listed the three strategic directions an experienced agency can lift your business with.

#1 Rethinking Measurement With Real-Time Actionable Insights

Online consumer behavior is almost impossible to predict. There’s no way to know how a particular event or unforeseen development can alter behavior patterns. At least, not in time for brands to take advantage of or prepare for the changes.
The COVID-19 pandemic drastically changed how people acted in the digital world. For months, consumers have been dependent on the web and mobile for the news, their entertainment, and shopping. When some companies had access to the required real-time insights and worked with agencies to adapt and adopt new practices, most of the brands didn’t. According to the research conducted by Forrester Consulting, almost half of the surveyed decision makers expressed that they don’t have any insights regarding current changes in consumer behaviour and struggle to identify which marketing activities deliver the best results:

• Approximately 46% of brands cite their inability to measure return on investment (ROI) as a top challenge.
• The same percentage of brands struggle to derive insights from their data.

Read Now: Learn with Google: 5-Step Guide to Make Better Marketing Measurements

An experienced marketing team can help to utilize your real-time analytics and insights by using outcome-based measurement models. We use Google Insights’ robust AI to identify and provide brands with tailored insights into emerging opportunities, trends, and consumer behavior. One of the most notable advantages of this solution is first-party data utilization, and as third-party cookies prepare to fall away, partnering with an expert agency helps to get ready for fallout and build reliable data collection methods.

#2 Aiming for Automation

No matter how challenging or exciting the pandemic was for you and has treated your business, one of the best performing strategies to invest in is automation. According to the same study conducted by Forrester Consulting, 46% of marketing agencies in the United States claimed that automation is a crucial element of revenue growth in 2020, and 86% of brands said that they still have to make effective progress with automation. It is a great strategy to scale the business and partnering with the agency can help to speed things up.
Also, the survey revealed that right now businesses are aiming to build high-value strategic partnerships with agencies in order to drive better performance. 55% of brands, which have established collaborations with marketing agencies, claimed that they are satisfied with the value they receive from the partnership.

#3 Assuring Data Privacy and First-Party Data Collection

The advertising industry often uses third-party tracking to evaluate consumer behavior in order to develop targeted marketing campaigns. However, as the industry evolved, ads became more intrusive, and user privacy became a big concern. While many privacy laws have been passed globally, it was Google’s announcement regarding third-party cookies that highlighted the need for the industry to change. In 2020 a significant percentage of brands (48%) cited an effective use of consumer data as their top problem. On the other hand, it triggered marketing agencies to adopt newer technologies to overcome this challenge.
Forrester reports that 51% of the surveyed marketing agencies claimed that they are already investing in new technologies that’ll utilize first-party data, and 46% are concentrating on creating custom solutions. Also, 85% said that they have already developed strategies to deliver personalized marketing despite third-party cookie depreciation.
It’s important to find a balance between the new data privacy requirements and targeted personalized advertising. Agencies might be a great help in improving first-party data collection and interpret it for a competitive advantage by providing expert tech stack assessments:

• assisting through guidance on how to collect, access, and activate data.
• helping to find a balance between personalization, privacy, transparency, and effective targeting.
• minimizing the risks and costs associated with first-party data.

As the laws regarding user data privacy become more stringent, the advertising community is finding alternative ways to collect and use first-party data. Using Google Marketing Platform helps to unlock advanced data about your audience, develop predictive models and gain data-based insights.

Read Now: How To Choose an Advertising Agency

Conclusion

Partnering with the marketing agency is a serious step that should be taken after a deep analysis of your internal data. You can take advantage of the experts who are eager to adapt and prone to adopting new technologies faster, helping bring brands to the top during an unstable period of time, when the rest might be drawing. There are a number of benefits of having a marketing agency on board and if you decide to take this road, feel free to book a complimentary call with us to discuss how this strategy applies to your current needs.