Doing it yourself will take you so far.
Whether you’re renovating your house or repairing your car, the do-it-yourself approach isn’t always the best policy. Your company’s digital marketing is no exception: You may run an adequate in-house operation for a while, but it can take you only so far.
The future and success of your business depends on being able to reach potential customers, attract and engage them, and convert them into paying customers. Nowadays, doing that is extremely difficult—often impossible—without digital marketing.
When do you know it’s time to hire a digital marketing agency?
One definite clue that you need an agency is that you’re not getting the results you need or want from your digital marketing efforts. Here are other signs that you should hire a digital marketing agency:
1. It Doesn’t Work Anymore
When you started your business, you had to do everything yourself or with a very limited staff. It worked for a while: you had great ideas, you generated leads, improved your sales. Then something happened: website traffic slowed down, leads stopped coming in … whatever took you this far stopped working.
At this point you need fresh ideas and a new set of hands to create and execute a strategy that will produce the results you need. Consider hiring an agency to jump start your digital marketing.
2. You’re Too Busy
With everything you have on your plate, chances are you don’t have enough time to create and execute a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. SEO, content marketing, website updates, social media management, email marketing, analytics—digital marketing is a time-consuming endeavor. A smarter use of your time is to hire an agency while you focus on your core business.
3. You’re in Over Your Head
You know your product or service inside and out, but you’re no digital marketing guru. You lack the knowledge, skills and experience to develop a winning digital marketing strategy and implement it. Digital marketing requires expertise in website development, graphic design, writing and content creation, SEO, analytics, social media, technology and many other tools and channels—all of which are the bread and butter of an agency.
4. You Can’t Be Bothered
You understand the importance of digital marketing for your business, but you don’t know much about how it works or how it’s done, or you simply don’t care. Sure, you want results, but you can’t or don’t want to be involved in the process of achieving those results. If there’s something else you’d rather be doing than digital marketing, it may be time to pass on the responsibility to an agency that is passionate about digital marketing.
5. You’re Seeing Lackluster ROI
One of the benefits of digital marketing is its return on investment. Digital marketing campaigns that are losing money or producing lackluster ROI suggest you need to hire an agency. A good digital marketing agency knows how to track your ROI so that you can reduce wasteful spending and optimize your campaigns.
6. You Have a Small Budget
A small budget can indicate a lack of understanding about the importance of digital marketing or a lack of profit to invest on digital marketing. It’s a sign that it might be time to hire an agency.
Working with an agency doesn’t have to be costly. As a matter of fact, it can be cheaper than running an in-house digital marketing department. An in-house operation requires a dedicated space, skilled staff, ongoing training, salaries and benefits, specialized technology, and other expensive components.
7. You Need More Leads
A sluggish flow of new leads and customers reveals an underperforming digital marketing strategy. Maybe you’re using the wrong channels or combination of channels. Perhaps your website is outdated, your content is failing to engage visitors or your social media activity is inadequate. You may be targeting the wrong audience.
A digital marketing agency tackles these and numerous other issues to help you reach the right audience and generate new leads and sales.
8. You’re Having Brand Issues
Look around you, and you will see brands that you rely on daily: your laptop computer, the coffee you’re drinking, the shoes you’re wearing. You have a relationship with these brands.
Every one of your digital marketing efforts must convey a message that is aligned with your brand. When your target audience has trouble identifying your brand or knowing what it stands for, you have brand issues. Digital marketing agencies know how to address these problems and strengthen your brand online.
9. Competitors Are Winning
You know your competitors are beating you when their websites and blog posts rank higher than yours on Google search results and when you can’t avoid their social media activity. Clearly, they’re investing heavily on digital marketing to grow their business and grab customers and sales that could be yours.
Take it as a wake-up call. If they can do it, so can you. But chances are you can’t do it alone. You need the right technical, content creation, SEO, social media and analytics support to get there. An agency can help.
10. Your Website Needs a Makeover
Your website is the face of your brand. It’s where customers go to obtain information about your products and services and make purchasing decisions. A well-designed, user friendly website enhances their interaction with your brand and facilitates a conversion path. An outdated, malfunctioning or confusing website turns them off and damages your brand’s credibility.
An outmoded look, low Google rankings, dwindling traffic, incorrect information, infrequent content publication and technical difficulties are serious issues an agency could address immediately.
11. You Can’t Produce Enough Content
If you go two to three weeks without producing and publishing new content, you need help. Lack of fresh content hurts your website’s rank on Google and causes user engagement to drop dramatically. Followers don’t stick around when there’s nothing much to follow.
You should be generating new content on your website weekly and daily for social media. This content should be engaging, relevant and valuable to your target audience. If you can’t keep up, it’s time to hire a digital marketing agency.
12. You’re Not Measuring Results
Is your digital marketing strategy working? Are your efforts producing results? If you don’t know, you’re wasting time and money, and you need an agency.
Analytics is one of the great advantages digital marketing has over traditional marketing. With digital marketing you can track, measure and analyze the performance of your marketing campaigns to find out what works and what doesn’t work. This knowledge allows you to adjust your efforts to optimize your results and budget.
Bottom Line
In today’s online marketplace, having a sound digital marketing strategy and knowing exactly how to execute it is critical for success. You may be a strong-willed do-it-yourselfer, but unless you’re a digital marketing expert you will need help from an agency sooner or later. Sooner will save you more time and money in the long run.
