A digital marketing agency is a specialised, external company whose goal is to carry out digital marketing activities on your behalf.
And if you've been under a rock for a while, digital marketing is any marketing activity carried out on an electronic device (usually) connected to the internet. It's a broad umbrella, encompassing activities like search engine optimisation (SEO), which gets you ranking higher in Google; social media marketing, which attracts traffic from social channels; email marketing, which allows you to communicate with prospects directly via their inbox; and many more.
Let's start by exploring the benefits a digital marketing agency can deliver to your business:
- More traffic: people visiting your site
- More conversions: visitors becoming customers
- More revenue: the money your new customers spend
Sounds good, hey?
With those in mind, here are some signs that you need to hire a digital marketing agency:
You want more sales.
Sales mean money, and money means the continued existence of your business. It also opens up opportunities: a bigger team, better training, fancier premises, a larger offering, and maybe even a team holiday to the Bahamas.
You can't find leads.
A lead is where the sales journey begins. It's someone who encounters your brand as the result of inbound or outbound marketing, and who may one day become a customer. There are tons of ways a digital marketing agency can help you find leads, which we've peppered through the following paragraphs.
You can't attract traffic.
This is the stream of people visiting your site, your social media channels, and your other digital presence. The theory is that the percentage of people who convert will be fairly low (anywhere between 2-10%), so the more traffic you have, the more customers you will convert.
A digital marketing agency can make you stand out online, and be a more prominent presence in the digital places your prospective customers spend time.
You can't convert the traffic you attract.
Converting people is hard. You have to gain and keep their interest, and convince them that your product or service is worth their time, money, and attention.
A digital marketing agency can maximise the conversion rate of your website by refining the navigation, establishing clearer calls to action, and creating landing pages targeted to specific conversions.
You don't have the skills to make those things happen.
This isn't a slight on you or your staff: real marketing knowledge takes years to build, and if you've been focussing on other things - product development, funding meetings, attending trade shows - you'll be working with a different skill set. If your efforts are met with a lot of low percentages and uninspiring results rather than the upward graphs you dream of, the expertise of a digital marketing agency can help.
You don't have the time to make them happen either.
Digital marketing takes time, and it takes more time than you expect. You have to learn the ropes, learn the specifics, figure out a strategy, implement it, monitor results, correct course, and repeat. Each step requires a real investment of time and energy: it's not something that can be an afterthought.
A digital marketing agency will live and breathe this stuff and have all the systems in place to make the process smooth.
Marketing is an afterthought.
It's safe to say that most businesses and brands benefit from some active, strategic marketing efforts. If yours doesn't have the capacity or desire to incorporate marketing into your business strategy, bringing in external help can fill the gap.
A digital marketing agency will cease to exist if marketing is an afterthought for them, so you can borrow their enthusiasm.
You're drowning in jargon.
ROI, channels, A/B testing, persona, the fold. Marketing has a lot of jargon. If you'd rather not learn what it all means, a digital marketing agency allows you to tap directly into the results gained from knowing.
You keep coming across paywalls.
Popular digital marketing tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, and so on have pretty high subscription costs. These can be limiting for in-house teams, where the subscription is only used for one business.
A digital marketing agency worth its salt will have subscriptions to the tools they need to deliver success and, while it will look to recoup the subscription fees in its retainers, you will save a bunch of cash.
You don't know how to hire the right people for an internal marketing team (or you can't afford to).
Buying a slice of an agency team's time gives you access to the expertise, as well as the insights and results it brings, without the cost of their entire salaries.
A digital marketing agency takes care of the hiring, the firing, the training, the monitoring, the provision of desks and screens and pens, and everything else.
You just don't like marketing.
This is fine, some people don't. Maybe you don't like the idea of learning a bunch of new techniques; maybe you don't want to get your hands dirty with something you see as disingenuous or unnecessary. Whatever the reasons, a personal aversion to marketing doesn't remove the fact that it can deliver huge gains to your business. Outsourcing brings the best of both worlds, and a digital marketing agency can bring you success.
We think that covers pretty much everything. If you think you need the help of a digital marketing agency, get in touch. We'd love to talk you through what we do.
