Digital marketing is a significant tool in the growth of your business. Nowadays, you need to be creative in setting your brand apart from your competitors. A third-party agency can help you if you don’t want to hire a dedicated in-house team to focus on your advertising and promotional efforts.
As with every major decision, you need to weigh the pros and cons before making your verdict. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of hiring a digital agency for your company:
Pros
1. Fresh Perspective
Working with people outside of your company can provide you with a fresh perspective on your brand. As mentioned above, you need creativity from these teams like the one from digital agency Melbourne to overtake competitors in today’s saturated market. An outsider’s point of view will shed new light on your business’ strengths, and they may even discover the other strong aspects of your brand.
2. Instant Expertise
Digital marketing has a lot of facets; each takes years to develop. An agency specializes in this particular field, so you know that they know what they’re looking for when they search for employees. They hire people who are proficient with the different parts of online advertising, which means that they can implement effective strategies for your company.
These are the different types of digital marketing:
- Search Engine Optimization – More commonly known as SEO, this type focuses on attracting potential customers to your website by ensuring that your site’s content is optimized for relevant keywords.
- Search Engine Marketing – SEM is when you pay Google or Bing to display your website for keywords that you want to be associated with your brand.
- Social Media Marketing – Social media is a powerful tool for advertising. A digital marketing agency can manage your company’s profiles on different platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, to promote your content and engage with consumers.
- Content Marketing – Publishing high-quality articles that provide value to the visitors of your web pages can establish your authority in your industry. This can boost customer trust and, in turn, increase sales for your brand.
- Email Marketing – While it may seem dated, email is still a valuable tool for marketing as it has been proven to raise brand loyalty and allows you to upsell to your current customers.
3. Specialized Tools
Aside from a digital agency’s expertise, you can also take advantage of their team’s proficiency and familiarity with marketing software. Moreover, they are most likely paying for the premium service of these tools, so they have insider access to the current trends. They can assist you in making sense of all the data and rates involved in your online promotional campaigns.
The tools are mostly used for the following key metrics:
- Visitor Count – You should be able to count how many people arrive at your home page or landing pages to assess what elements you can improve. This can help you measure the effectiveness of your outreach efforts.
- New Sessions – With Google Analytics, you can identify which visitors are new and which ones have previously visited your site. This way, you can gauge how far your campaign have reached and whether your content is compelling enough to get repeat customers.
- Bounce Rate – This term pertains to the percentage of site visitors who left your website before clicking on your other links and exploring your domain further. Ideally, this rate should be low, which means mean that potential customers are spending more time reading your content and, hopefully, responding to your call to action (CTA).
- Conversion Rate – Your conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who perform desired actions. This number shows you how much return you’re getting on your digital marketing investment but does not necessarily mean that you got a sale, though. Conversions occur every time a potential customer signs up for a newsletter or fill out a lead form.
4. Lesser Workload
If you feel that you’re neglecting this part of your business because your hands are full with operations, production, and logistics, it’s a sign to outsource it to a team of experts who can provide you with high-quality services. Your time is valuable. Why waste hours studying and analyzing the various aspects of digital marketing from scratch when you can hire competent and reliable people to do it?
5. Budget Tracking
Not only will a digital agency monitor the analytics for your website and social media profiles such as conversion and bounce rates, but they can also track how much you’re spending for each campaign and calculate the return on investment after a few weeks or months. It can be time consuming taking note of these minute details for each platform, so it’s best to leave it to the experts.
Cons
1. Familiarity Takes Time
A potential agency will ensure that they identify your target market and determine your strengths. However, it may take a while before they can truly understand what your customers’ preferences are. They will also need to adjust and mimic your brand voice to strengthen how consumers see your company. You may need to wait for months or even years to achieve the results you expect from the digital marketing firm.
2. Lack of Industry-Specific Knowledge
Agencies do not come in a one-size-fits-all basis. You need to shop around first and look for a company that has worked with a business that’s similar to yours. Just because they have a lot of clients or their work has become popular doesn’t mean that they have the solution to your marketing needs, especially if none of their customers come from the same niche as yours.
3. Low Priority
Your concentration is focused solely on your business, but you can’t expect the same for your digital marketing firm. They have other clients, too. The danger in a specialist juggling multiple accounts is that your company may not be prioritized as much mainly if there are others who pay for more services. Of course, this primarily applies to big agencies that have established themselves as leaders in this industry.
Conclusion
It’s prudent to assess the pros and cons before you decide on whether or not to hire a digital agency for your marketing needs. It depends on the goals you have for your company and the resources available to you. In any case, you will need to invest time, money, and energy in boosting your online advertising efforts.