3 Reasons Why Marketing Agencies Can Help Small Businesses
/Hiring a marketing agency can appear to be a really daunting and expensive endeavor for small businesses.
The bottom line is so crucial to the success of an organization, and anything for which the return on investment (ROI) appears difficult to measure is often put on the back burner.
At the end of the day, small businesses want to grow their business and bring in as many customers as possible (and at an appropriate pace) to sustain long-term growth and profitability.
But at what expense? And, what does success look like for you in five years? 10 years?
Here at Guardian Designs, an inbound marketing agency, we work with many small businesses that often have challenges balancing priorities and initiatives – including understanding what their goal is and how they plan to get there.
Small businesses are running so fast that it can be hard to stick to a true growth strategy with set milestones and goals to reach toward; this is especially true when dealing with the limited resources and shifting priorities.
You may be wondering how exactly marketing agencies can help small businesses and move the needle and achieve ROI.
Below, we’ve outlined three reasons why a marketing agency may be the next best thing to happen to a small business:
1. Limited Resources/Skill Sets
Do you currently have an in-house marketing person? Are they skilled in every aspect of marketing (content creation, copywriting, design/development, and SEO to name a few)?
Small businesses usually have limited marketing resources on staff – maybe one person (if they have someone at all). It is rare to find a marketing resource that is truly skilled in all aspects of marketing.
Beyond skill set, does the marketing resource have the capacity to become the jack-of-all-trades and stay current on the ever-changing digital marketing landscape?
You may be surprised to learn how cost-effective hiring a marketing agency can be. You can partner with a marketing agency for often less than the cost an annual salary of an in-house marketing employee.
Within that partnership, you gain access to a dedicated account manager and strategist working on your account day in and day out to help accomplish your goals. Additionally, you get access to professionals with a broad range of knowledge and content creation skill sets, such as a copywriter, and more specialized skill sets and knowledge, such as a web designer/developer.
Be sure to do your diligence on finding the right marketing agency that can truly help you accom
plish your goals and provide you with the resources you need.
2. Give Your Business’ Marketing the Attention It Deserves
Are you optimizing every aspect of digital marketing to a satisfactory level that makes sense for your business?
Brand awareness – Do you have an established brand? Do your prospects know
who you are? Do they recognize your logo? And, do you have a value proposition that can be easily identified by your prospects?
Website/SEO – Do you have a good standing website presence? Can prospects find your business online?
Content marketing – Are you providing your prospects/customers with content that is useful? Is this content helping to influence buying behavior and awareness?
It’s important to note that prospects need to consume different types of content/messaging in each stage of the buyer’s journey.
3. Have Full Transparency Concerning the ROI of Your Efforts
Here at Guardian Designs, the most important thing to us is helping our clients accomplish their goals and prove ROI.
We accomplish this by following quarterly strategies that we create and work to achieve with our clients. We complete initiatives on a weekly basis and are constantly in communication with our clients about the status of those initiatives.
Setting SMART goals is crucial. These are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
We work with our clients to understand what success looks like at the end of
each quarter and set goals that we stick to. Most importantly, we help to provide our clients with full transparency into where exactly their leads and customers are coming from.
While understanding where your clients are coming from is important, it’s just as vital to understand their behaviors. How are they engaging with your business before a sale is made? What does the buying process look like? And, what do you need to do in each stage of the buying process to make sure you are fully communicating the value of your product or service?
If you truly understand how to engage with your prospects from the beginning, it will be extremely beneficial to the health and long- term growth of your business.
A Final Note
Hiring a marketing agency is not a decision that should be made lightly. There are numerous factors that must be considered when evaluating priorities and understanding what makes the most sense for your business.
However, a marketing agency can be an invaluable extension of your team. We can also take on tasks and initiatives that you have always thought about doing but never had the time to accomplish.
I’ll end you with some recent ROI results from our clients:
372% increase in visitors: We helped a consulting company increase organic search traffic between Q1 2015 and Q1 2018.
308% increase in visitors: We helped a professional services company boost organic traffic via a viral campaign.
250% increase in leads: We helped a global IT services provider increased new leads year over year.
This article and cited credit goes to:
https://guardian-designs.com/2019/07/21/3-reasons-why-marketing-agencies-can-help-small-businesses/