Marketing is a necessity for the modern B2B businesses, and it’s not an easy prospect. It’s an ever-changing, overwhelming discipline. But it’s an essential capability for you to grow your customer base and normalize revenue. You can either build an internal marketing team in-house or work with an outsourced contractor or agency. Both have their benefits and drawbacks, and a lot of companies have a combination of both. We’ll work through when it’s appropriate to contract an agency and the best time to hire an agency.
Have all the expertise you could ever need
You’ve established your sales targets and now need help developing content and reaching your market. Marketing, much like many other disciplines has many sub-categories. An internal marketing manager or small team of people can accomplish a lot, but they may lack the expertise to execute a full-scale marketing strategy. Think about this: you may need a fully stacked marketing department that includes strategy, copywriting, inbound, outbound, paid advertising, social media and SEO, email nurture campaigns, graphic design, and videography. How likely is it you’ll find all those skills to hire internally? And as your customers shift their attention from platform-to-platform, it helps to have one team with expertise that compliments your capabilities.
Using sub-contractors can be a quick-fix, but they often come and go as careers change. Access to creative or technical expertise should be a consistent experience throughout the course of your entire business lifecycle, and you’re more likely to experience this with an agency that manages their staff and builds processes to ensure no interruption on your end.
Advanced training with modern marketing skills
Chances are that marketing is not the core capability of your business. If you need to invest in training resources to ensure your team adapts to a changing landscape, it makes sense to invest in your core business capabilities. Marketing is the same: A good agency invests in their people and requires them to stay current with modern marketing tools and technologies. The agency invests these costs at no expense to you, while you reap the benefits of a team that can quickly capitalize on new channels and market segments.
Better Time to Value
Also, a marketing agency excels at getting to know your business quickly and have very low time to value. Most have clear processes and workflows designed to leverage the latest tools and technologies fast so you can track ROI and see results within the first couple of months. Onboarding an employee can be expensive and it may time a significant amount of time before they are capable in their role. An agency’s business model is to hit the ground running. With clear expectations and an effective brief, you can begin scale your marketing quickly and effectively from day one.
And finally, working with an established agency will help you to scale your marketing as your business needs grow or shrink. A well-equipped agency has the tools and workflows in place to effectively execute most marketing project or campaigns.
An effective marketing plan is complex with lots of moving parts. Save money, get your time back, and access a full team of marketing experts by working with an agency. For more information about your marketing, no matter the size of your business, contact Paper Sword today.
