This week on the podcast, we wanted to dive into a question we’ve all been presented with throughout our careers: “Should I hire a marketing agency?”
Like most topics that we’ll discuss on this podcast, there is unfortunately not one right answer, since every business and organization is different and unique. That being said, we do have some recommendations for you based on our experiences in different roles and in working with 120+ clients in various industries at Shout It Out Design.
Choose A Direction
For the majority of this episode, we discussed four different directions you can take with who is in charge of your marketing:
- Do It Yourself
- Hire someone in-house
- Hire a marketing agency
- A combination
We discussed the pros and cons of all the options:
Do It Yourself (DIY)
Pros:
- Probably the most affordable up-front option
- Complete control over everything shared
Cons
- Extremely limited time
- You may start off strong but then other things will, unfortunately, take precedence
- Limited understanding or training of the options and tools available to you
- Could end up being more expensive in the long-run
In-House Team Member
Pros:
- Potentially 40 hours a week of marketing efforts for your organization times as many team members as you have.
- Full availability and focused on one client (you)
Cons:
- Expensive
- Limited viewpoint
- Can become siloed in their thought processes or creativity only working in your company/industry day in and day out
- In small businesses, this person is normally a one-person show and also wears additional hats, so you may end up getting limited dedication to your marekting with someone that has a long list of higher priority tasks.
- One or two people most likely won’t have the expertise/bandwidth to do everything you need to do for marketing, so you end up having to outsource some services anyway
Agency
Pros:
- Flexibility
- Wide range of experience
- Cost-effective
- If one of the agencies you are working with doesn’t have everything you are looking for, they most likely have someone they recommend
- For example, the SIOD team has a list of photographers, videographers, graphic designers, and printers that we recommend to our clients
- If you have a lower budget, you can usually pick and choose the services that are most important to you for a lower cost – you don’t have to have everything the company offers
Cons:
- Each time you have a new partnership, it may take a little bit for them to really get to know you and you to get to know them since they’re not working under the same “company roof” as you.
- Not necessarily always available 40 hours a week to you.
If you decide to turn all your marketing over to an agency and you choose to not have any input/skin in the game, your marketing can feel distant from the brand.
What Direction Should You Choose?
After sharing the pros and cons listed above, along with more, Elli, Ellen and John discussed the practical options available to small businesses. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution for this problem, our number one recommendation was to make sure whatever you choose is thoroughly planned out, you can be consistent with your plan, and your plan is sustainable.
To hear all of this week’s recommendations and stories about this topic, be sure to listen to this episode wherever you listen to your podcasts!
