Determining how to market your business online is a difficult decision — and one that can have big (not to mention, expensive) consequences affecting your bottom line. Whether to hire in-house marketers or a marketing agency does not just come down to price, but maximum efficiency, too, as you will see this week. Here’s our rundown of the top 8 reasons to outsource some of your marketing work to a firm like Mod Girl Marketing .
8 Benefits of Hiring A Marketing Agency Over In-House Marketers
1. You don’t have to pay a marketer’s full-time salary.
Salaries for mid-career marketing professionals can be quite expensive:
Digital Marketing Manager: $73K
Web Designer: $47K
Social Media Manager: $49K
SEO Marketer: $60K
Content Writer: $55K
Graphic Designer: $53K
So the total cost of hiring all these staff members in-house would come to $337,000 a year... but don’t forget to tack on the cost of employee health care benefits, paid vacation days, lost productivity in sick days, and training costs!
Hiring a team of in-house marketers could cost you $337k per year! #infographic
2. You get a lot more than just marketing expertise for one fee.
Like we just mentioned, an outside firm offers more than just marketing. You get access to expert content writers, search engine optimization professionals, social media professionals, graphic designers, and web design professionals as well. It can be risky to take a gamble on a new hire. Good help is extremely hard to find, and it can take a long time to find truly passionate, dependable, skilled people to work for your business. We’ve already taken care of that. Most of our workers have been with Mod Girl Marketing for more than five years.
3. You gain access to the latest technology and tools.
Marketing tools increase efficiency, productivity, and performance. Sure, there are tools you can dig up for free if you know where to look. But we give our clients access to premium-level services, software, and analytical data reports without charge. Consider the cost of some of the top marketing tools we use:
Bright Local (local SEO) – $64.99/month
Raven Tools (social media, SEO, PPC) – $249/month
Hootsuite (social media) – $99/month
AWeber (email marketing)- $50/month
Sprout Social (social media, SEO) – $500/month
Manage Flitter (Twitter management and marketing) – $49/month PER account
ReleaseWire (press release distribution, not including writing) – $70 PER release
As you can see, we provide premium-level service and eliminate the tough decisions like “what to eliminate” over budgeting concerns. All told, we save our clients over $40,000 a year on marketing tools alone!
4. You maintain efficiency among your existing staff.
Some companies try to get around hiring in-house marketers, social media personnel, content writers, and SEO people by just having existing employees pick up the slack. Dumping the marketing burden onto existing employees increases the likelihood of burnout and reduces productivity in the long run. In addition, your marketing efforts will lack consistency with so many heads to the monster.
5. You don’t need to train agencies.
You won’t need to send our professionals through an extensive training program, pay for us to attend a seminar, or pay a senior marketer to groom us in the art of digital marketing. Like most reputable marketing agencies, we arrive qualified, experienced, knowledgeable, and ready to work for you.
6. You can easily scale up your marketing efforts.
Under a traditional in-house operation, the only way you can increase the output of your marketing team is to hire more employees. Agencies like Mod Girl® already have an arsenal of workers on hand that can be called upon at a moment’s notice if you want to employ a bigger, bolder strategy.
7. You keep up with the latest marketing trends, without a learning curve.
What in-house marketer has time to read up on all the latest social media, SEO, content marketing, and branding news? Usually they are so buried in day-to-day tasks, there is no room to grow, change, and evolve. The majority of reputable digital marketing agencies take education very seriously. We invest time into keeping abreast of the latest trends, tools, technologies, and strategies to serve you better. We spend our own time learning how to use new resources, without charging you for the time.
8. You benefit from an outside perspective.
It’s easy to get tunnel-vision working from the inside. Employees may find it hard to express new ideas or bring up concerns, for fear of losing their jobs. The saying “two heads are better than one” is definitely true when it comes to marketing. We’ve seen amazing results from collaborative marketing efforts. We approach your business from the consumer or client’s point of view, and bring a decade of knowing “what works” to the proverbial table.
The Bottom Line:
There is one huge reason why companies go through the expense and trouble of hiring an in-house marketing staff. Keeping employees close to you means they know your brand inside-and-out, as no one from the outside can. They eat, sleep, breathe, and promote your corporate culture and work tirelessly for your company full-time. That level of knowledge and devotion is hard to match, no matter how good an outside firm may be.
For this reason, we feel the ideal set up is to have at least one point person working internally who can collaborate with our marketing agency to help us get to know your brand voice, key messages, best topics for content, and demographics. We will have many ideas to contribute based on trends, statistical data, and competitive analysis, of course, but we find the best results come from working with a dedicated staffer within our client’s company. We provide the added manpower, without the added cost!
Interested in seeing how our boutique marketing agency can help your marketing team increase leads and revenue? Get in touch with me here for a free, no-pressure email consultation. If we are not a fit, I’ll let you know and point you in the right direction. If we are a fit, I’ll explain exactly how we can help you achieve your goals this year!