When outsourcing and changing marketing agencies, it essentially allows businesses to do what they do best (the product or service of the business), whilst having the marketing cogs in the background, generating brand awareness and leads to their business.
As you can expect marketing agencies all offer slightly different services and have different ways of doing things. Some suit some businesses better than others, depending on your objectives, working style and internal resource capabilities.
Sifting through and choosing the right small business marketing agency for your business is key.
If you are unsure how to choose the right marketing agency for your business, we have created 5 steps we recommend our clients follow and why they’re important when working with a marketing agency.
1. Changing Marketing Agencies – Understand your business
When changing marketing agencies and investigating marketing agencies to work with, if they do not ask about your business and your product or service offering, your target audience, unique selling point, your highest revenue earner, your competitors, the industry you are in etc. – run!
These are all important areas that need to be documented so they can understand your business. By doing this they will be able to become an extension of your existing business. They will then be able to make better marketing decisions and recommendations for you.
It does not matter if you are currently unsure of some of these areas yourself, the good thing about working with an effective marketing agency like ourselves is that we can brainstorm this all with you. You will then have the foundations in place to move forward.
2. Changing Marketing Agencies – Your business goals
Another area that should be covered is your business goals. This will include your short-term and long-term business goals and how you plan to reach them, as well as what your overall product or service focus will be.
By understanding these incremental areas, the marketing agency can ensure that the marketing activities are aligned with these goals and objectives.
3. Changing Marketing Agencies – Build a plan of action
Once all findings have been collated from steps 1 and 2, a marketing plan and strategy can then be created. This should comprise the business objectives your marketing needs to fulfill, the measures of success and the selection of the most appropriate marketing tactics.
It’s likely there will need to be decisions made and prioritisation of tactics as it’s unlikely you’ll be able to do everything at once! Give each tactic the resource and time it needs to be successful, rather than spreading your investment too thinly.
The marketing tactics could include, social media management, content creation, email marketing initiatives, how to optimise your website (SEO), paid advertising, design ideas and printed collateral to name a few.
4. Changing Marketing Agencies – Tailored to you
When changing marketing agencies, some marketing agencies will, unfortunately, have a one size fits all approach and will offer precisely the same activities to all of their clients.
For example, you may already have a website set up that is ranking high on search engines, and is generating a reasonable amount of traffic and engagement. In this case, the website should not be the priority. Other areas such as creating a social media strategy, and selecting appropriate social networks for your business and target audience could be worthwhile choices and receive greater attention.
Equally, do you really need 15 social posts? Would 5 generate the same return and allow resources to be allocated to fulfilling another objective?
At Growth by Design, we tailor our activities to our client’s needs. We have a unique strategic model which allows different marketing activities to be switched on and off every month, as part of a longer-term strategy.
As an example, you could be focusing on increasing online reviews for one month and video production, paid advertising etc the next.
Up until now, you may have considered investing in someone to perform freelance social media marketing, but unless they understand and have worked with you on all the steps above, it would not be recommended, as it won’t deliver in the same way for you if it’s not part of the wider strategic marketing effort.
The same goes for pretty much all freelance activity. Freelancers definitely have their place for short-term needs. But what do you do if you wanted to switch from the 15 social posts, down to 5 for the month? Your social media expert freelancer isn’t going to be able to just change their skillset overnight to complete another marketing tactic.
An agency gives you the flexibility and expertise of a wide range of marketing tactics at your fingertips, should that be necessary.
5. Changing Marketing Agencies – Communication is key
This may be an obvious step but communication really is key when looking at changing marketing agencies. They need to be easy to get hold of and in regular contact with you. This includes producing jargon-free reports to keep track of past activities, discuss their findings and share plans and the focus for the coming months.
From our years of experience in marketing, different agencies and individuals communicate in vastly different ways. Find the right approach for you, but regular and jargon-free should always be a must when it comes to communication.
Changing marketing agencies – Digital marketing agency near me
Whether you are currently investigating working with a marketing agency or are considering changing marketing agencies to support your small to medium size business, we have you covered. Click here to find out why our unique approach works in transforming SMEs’ marketing efforts to drive engagement and leads to our client’s businesses.
To discuss your business needs today, please call us on 01444 810530, or email us at connect@growth-by-design.co.uk.
