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Finding the right people to help you grow your business might be a challenge. That is why I recommend looking outside of your company for talent. Outsourcing important tasks to experts might be the push your business needs to grow quickly. One of the key tasks you can outsource to experts is marketing.
You might feel hiring a marketing agency is a risk. It’s understandable to feel hesitant at first when first engaging with a team outside your organization. But certain risks are worth it when the benefits outweigh them.
1. Not hiring a digital marketing agency could be costing you more
The number one reason companies shy away from hiring a marketing agency is they think it’s expensive. Often a marketing agency can be a cost-effective strategy when you take into consideration a full-time employee’s salary, benefits, taxes and PTO time.
Hesitating in hiring experts might delay your company’s growth unnecessarily. A marketing agency can help your business grow quicker and start generating revenue faster. It will free you up to focus on working with your clients and running your business effectively.
Related: Why Doing Your Own Digital Marketing is Actually Costing You Money, Not Saving It
2. You get to decide what marketing efforts you’d like to outsource to a marketing agency
A digital marketing agency would typically have a menu of services. The advantage of contracting a marketing agency is it would have resources you would need that would take much time and effort to build up in-house.
Instead of wasting your time gaining expertise in digital marketing, you can access an agency’s experience and resources. Since marketing is its bread and butter, the agency will have people and tools in place to start executing your vision as soon as possible.
Talk to the agency representatives so you can agree on what services and resources would be best for you to leverage, given the stage of your business development. For example, you might want to outsource specialized aspects of digital marketing such as SEO, media buying or email marketing campaigns.
Shop around for a digital marketing agency to see what each can do for you and negotiate the budget.
3. Help them help you reach your marketing goals
For a digital marketing agency team to be most helpful to you, they need to understand your vision. If they don’t get what you are about, your values, your brand image and your goals for marketing, their efforts won’t produce the results you are looking for.
Ensure the hired team has enough material to learn about your brand so they can design campaigns in your voice. Develop branding guidelines for them to follow, reflecting the look and feel of your brand. This way, no matter who joins their team, they all have the same understanding of your brand.
The agency will also need to understand your tech stack and the tools you use to collect and analyze your company’s performance. They will need access to your ways of reporting and your data. Establishing clear channels of access, sharing and communication will decrease friction, increasing efficiency and speed of execution of your vision on their end.
4. Collaborate and connect via project management tools
The project management tools, such as Trello, Slack, Asana, Monday or Clickup, don’t just serve as tools of efficiency. They also provide your team and your marketing agency with a unified place to work in, creating a sense of a teamwork environment.
Trello, for example, serves my team as a central hub for communication and collaboration. My team can communicate and work together efficiently through comments and tags on specific tasks, and everyone can track progress.
A sense of cohesion among the team, aided by the digital tools, will help create a sense of common purpose. This way, each member of your team and the team you are outsourcing to will be invested in helping you achieve your goals and committed to the bigger picture, not just their assigned tasks.
It’s rewarding and gratifying to have your whole team working in unison and collaborating with an outside agency smoothly.
Level up your brand power
Growth requires more people power. Sometimes, that power can be found in outside agencies. Hiring a digital marketing agency might feel uneasy at first. Once you make the first step, however, you will find that outsourcing allows you to free up your time to work on scaling your business.
