1. Fresh Perspective
You’ve heard the phrase “internal exhaust,” which doesn’t sound good. On the opposite spectrum is the phrase “a breath of fresh air.” Now, that sounds great! Agencies work on a broad range of programs and projects every week. Their creative teams spend countless hours conceiving novel approaches to marketing problems of all types. Some have worked at more than one agency over their careers. We are constantly attending conferences, watching videos, and reading articles about new marketing and advertising ideas and concepts. We live and breathe it every day. To paraphrase Farmers Insurance, “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.”
I talked to our agency principal, Chris Eifert, about his experience running in-house marketing teams. He stated, “It’s just very hard to extract yourself from the day-in/day-out business requirements of working in-house. Finding time for outside air is nearly impossible once you get pulled into the meeting and administrative culture that can be prevalent in corporate environments. I always ended up going outside for ideas and expertise because we just couldn’t find the time. And it wasn’t just time; we simply didn’t have the diversity of perspectives needed to think outside of our normal bag of tricks.”
To quote Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that."
2. Exposure
Each agency’s clientele are responsible for multiple products. Each client’s marketing processes, procedures, goals and budgets differ. In some cases, it’s all thought leadership and content marketing. For others, it’s heavy-duty advertising for lead generation or defining an impactful brand strategy. Yet for others, it’s all about digital execution or sales channel support. Because of this, our agency sees and executes strategies for a lot of clients in a lot of different ways. We implement approaches and philosophies an internal team might never consider or have experience with. We’re in the business of ideas; our broad exposure to a variety of client types means we’ll have more than an internal team solely focused on one company.
Speaking of focus and experience, specialist agencies can take the experience benefit to the next level. Working with an agency that specializes in (let’s just say for argument’s sake) industrial and technical companies might lend itself to some nice synergies. Trying to figure out a good aftermarket marketing solution? Your specialized agency might have seen a thing (or three) about that. Marketing to OEMs? Ditto. If your agency has the right focus, they likely have some tried and true strategies they’ll be willing to explore with you. Take advantage of the agency’s other work and strategies.
3. Broad Skill Sets
Let’s consider agency composition. For TriComB2B, our team loosely fits into these competency areas:
- Marketing strategy
- Project management
- Content development
- Public relations
- Creative strategy
- Design
- Production layout
- Video
- Animation
- Interactive tools and apps
- Web development
- Search engine optimization
- Media research and buying
- Social media
- Proofreading
If you’re like many of our clients, you need most of these skill sets to implement your full marketing plan. Now, think about hiring for all these skill sets. How many people are you looking at? Not to mention, an agency will have more than one resource in most or all of these functions, so you’ll benefit from multiple perspectives within a single function.
4. Cost
Most of our clients’ agency spend is the equivalent to the cost of just a few permanent hires, depending on experience levels. So, while you might look at an agency’s hourly rate and think, “We don’t pay our internal people anything close to that!”, consider you’re only needing the agency some of the time and you have access to the above’s referenced skill sets whenever you need them.
- Public relations management software? Got it.
- Media research toolsets? Got it.
- Design software? Yep.
- Video editing suite? In place.
- Association memberships? Lots of them.
- Need a photo or video studio? No problem.
- SEO software and strategy? On it.
In short, we’ve made all the investments — so you don’t have to.
On the subject of cost, Forbes is right about one thing: the agency or record RETAINER is as dead as the dodo. Or at least it should be, in most cases. Yes, there may be a case or two where a function-specific retainer is necessary, but you won’t find many agencies — and certainly not ours — looking to lock you up in a large retainer for the pleasure of doing business with them. So, if the threat of an expensive, hard-to-justify retainer is holding you back, don’t sweat it. Today’s billing models are customer-friendly and transparent. If yours aren’t, call me and I’ll show you how we do it.
To summarize, you pay only when you need skill sets and avoid the overhead of building a big team when you use an agency.
5. Resources and Connections
And even with the above skill sets, that’s not everything an agency can offer. Agencies are asked to solve a lot of problems, so we’ve developed networks of skilled partners to help fill some holes. Haven’t worked with a language translation provider? We have several qualified options. Need some special assistance with a specific type of programming language? Lots of options at your disposal through your agency. Trying to get that massive 3-D, photo-realistic model developed and rendered? We’ve got a partner ready. Looking for an international partner? We’ve got a network. Specialty printer? We know dozens. We’re paid for our problem solving and resourcefulness — and they’re at your disposal every day of the week.