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What to look out for when hiring a Marketing Agency?

By October 29, 2021No Comments

Today, I am going to share the pros and cons of choosing an in-house team, a freelance marketer or a marketing agency. In addition to pros and cons; we have also included tips on what to look out for when hiring a marketing agency for your business. So, you can be completely confident when it’s time to choose your options and grow your business.

Making the right decision with your marketing campaigns is crucial for the growth of your business.

You can either

1. Create an in-house team

2. Choose a freelance marketer

3. Find a marketing agency.

1. Create An In-House Team

Pros:

In-house hires are usually loyal. You can hire a specialist who wants to make a long-term commitment to your business. This will reduce your recruitment and training costs in the long run.

You will have total control over your marketing team, participating actively in marketing plans and strategies for your business.

Having an in-house marketing team gives you a shorter response time to your team’s queries watching your team working on your office space.

Cons:

An in-house team will require investing time and resources training them and keeping them up to date while keeping your eye on your business.

The cost of an in-house employee is expensive; there are a variety of expenses involved in hiring in-house, including insurance and benefits.

There is a lot of paperwork and legal work to hire an employee.

Taxes for new employees increase your business expenses.

When you hire employees, you need to cover legally required non-productive time such as breaks. There will also be a time when employees are on the clock but chatting with co-workers or otherwise not contributing to the company.

There may not be someone with the needed skill set local to your area.

If an employee isn’t bringing you the best results, it may take you months to fire, then re-hire.

2. Choose a Freelance Marketer

Pros:

A freelance marketer is cheaper to hire; you only pay for actual time worked. The financial savings can be invested elsewhere within your company.

You can find an experienced freelancer who has worked with different individuals and companies of all sizes to harness his skills to market your business.

Because freelancers are generally more independent in nature, they require less oversight than an in-house employee.

Freelancers set their own schedules, so it may be easier to find someone who is compatible with the hours you want to work.

Cons:

A freelancer is usually a specialist. You may need to hire more than one to get your specific marketing needs met.

When you hire a freelancer, that person may not be a marketing strategist. A marketing strategist would oversee how your campaigns are being run with a trained eye. This “second set of eyes” can give valuable insight that the freelancer may have missed.

When a freelancer gets ill and is unable to work, you’re left waiting for him to get better and catch up on the work; this can be detrimental to creating time-sensitive marketing campaigns.

A freelancer can decide at any point that he wants to move on to another project. He’s not loyal to you, so he may choose not to extend a contract.

3. Find a Marketing Agency

Pros:

A marketing agency can provide a wide range of services; they can create campaigns, write the necessary copy, design creative pieces, and handle the grunt work.

A marketing agency can become a trusted partner in your business, freeing you to focus on other aspects.

Hiring a marketing agency gives you the freedom of managing the burden of multiple employees or freelancers.

You know that a marketing agency will be up-to-date on the latest technologies, news, and necessary tools, enabling you to use their knowledge to help your business adapt to market changes.

You get the benefit of having an entire marketing department without having to absorb the asset costs and employee salaries of hiring an entire department in-house. You can save money on asset costs and employee salaries not hiring a whole marketing department.

You need a team with a specialist in every marketing skill with processes to manage complex projects.

A remote agency can give you the best talent as they focus on searching for and screening the top performers on the market.

Cons:

A marketing agency could be expensive.

Agencies may take on too many clients, causing them to lose focus on your business. This could negatively impact your ROI.

If you think hiring an agency is an ideal option for your business, here are some tips to keep in mind as you go through the hiring process.

Long-Term, No Exit Clause Contracts

You need to keep lean in business and tying yourself into a long-term contract can be detrimental to your business. Long contracts disincentive an agency from doing good work because they know they’ll keep you as a client anyway.

You Should Own Your Ad Account

Occasionally, scenarios happen where a company does not actually own their ad account. Situations can arise where a client moves from one agency to another and tries to pull data from their ad accounts, only to find that the old agency owns the account. This is troubling for several reasons:

1. The old agency can refuse to turn over your data because they own the data.

2. Any agency can have its Facebook ad accounts suspended at any time. This means that you lose all access to the ads you have placed. It’s better than the ad account is tied to an account that your company controls.

3. When an agency houses multiple company’s ads through its ad account, a company may face punitive actions because of a different company that the agency represents.

Owning your own ad account allows you to keep control over your data, and makes your ads more profitable in the long run.

Ad Spend Should Not Be Included in the Fees

Some Ad agencies include Ad spent in their fees. This practice allows them to keep any money not spent on the ads. This practice exploits hard-earned profits from clients. Make sure that your contract is clear on how the ad spend is handled.

Pay a Fixed Rate

A fixed rate incentivises the agency to provide better results. You will be able to know up front what to expect from the money you’re spending. You’ll also have the luxury of knowing that you will never pay more than the agreed upon rate.

Good Communication

You need to know that things are handled in your business and be able to contact your marketing partner when needed. Best practices for agencies include good communication. This can be done by creating Slack rooms for the account managers to converse with company stakeholders, by providing weekly reports, and scheduling weekly update calls with clients.

Account Managers Don’t Handle Too Many Accounts

Your business is important and campaigns demand attention to deliver results. Often agencies try to keep profits in their hands by overloading their account managers with multiple clients. When working with an agency, always ask how many accounts your account manager will handle.

Strategic Support

One of the reasons you partner with an Agency is to pick their brains and guide your business strategy to the next level. A good long-term marketing partner demands updates on other areas of your business and proposes strategic steps to take to grow your business even when things fall outside of their core service offerings.

Pre-Screened Contacts in the Industry

A good marketing agency is well-versed in many areas of digital technologies and marketing. They also constantly think of what other services may benefit their clients and nourish relationships with pre-screened strategic partners that can provide these services.

When needed, your agency should be able to put you in touch with a trusted provider of a service that can help you.

Avoid Jacks-of-all-Trades

It’s unlikely that a single agency will be the best in all aspects of digital marketing.

The best agencies focus on a few key areas that leverage similar skill sets and create an optimal hands-off experience for the businesses they work with. For example, Facebook Ads Service goes well with other PPC, Social Media Management, Sales Funnels, Email Marketing and Conversion Rate Optimisation.

However, you may find that adding SEO, web development, customer support and content marketing is unlikely to work. You may need to develop relationships with more than one agency to meet all of your marketing needs.

Are You Ready to Take Your Business to the Next Level with a Trusted Marketing Partner?

If you are you ready to take your business to the next level with a trusted marketing partner, let’s talk!

Our Marketing Experts at LeadGenomics have over 20 years of combined experience helping eCommerce and technology founders market their web or mobile applications using ROI-focused, data-driven market research, digital advertising, and conversion rate optimisation.

Whether you need to grow your user base, increase your Customer Lifetime Value or lower your Cost of Acquiring a Customer, our proven strategies, risk-reducing market research and systematic testing process give your application an unfair advantage in the ride to market domination!

Book a Free Strategy Session