How to Know When Your Business Needs a Marketing Agency

An estimated 45% of an average firm’s marketing budget is expected to be allocated to online marketing in 2020, up 3% from 2019, according to Forrester and eMarketer reports. If your company is among the millions planning to expand their digital marketing budget in the next year, it may be time to consider utilizing a marketing agency.

An agency focused on considered purchase marketing can help you evaluate your current marketing plan and offer insights as to how you can increase your ROI on that increased spend. Not sure if it’s the right play to work with an agency? Here are some signs that it’s time to reach out.

1. You don't have the resources you need.

Even the most experienced, well-rounded marketers may lack the deep knowledge or resources on their team to execute a comprehensive marketing strategy for 2020. The marketing landscape is constantly changing and growing.

Consider these statistics that weren’t true even just two years ago:

• Omnicore reports that video content is 50 times more likely to drive organic search results than plain text.
• According to PWC, 65% of 25- to 49-year-old’s speak to their voice-enabled devices at least once a day.
• A delay of one second in mobile page response can reduce conversions by 7%.

Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics

You may not have a videographer or motion graphics artist available to create video content. Do you know how fast your site loads on mobile? Do you know who to turn to to keep it optimized and lightning fast? Additionally, finding time to continually expand and hone your skills is likely a commitment you and your team just don’t have time for.

A marketing agency alleviates the pressure of IDing resources to execute an omnichannel marketing strategy, and invests their own talent into staying on the cutting edge of marketing in today’s landscape.

2. Your marketing endeavors have become routine, and your results stagnant.

When you have a limited scope or few resources, your marketing efforts can naturally begin to look and feel homogenous. This may lead to you and your team feeling bogged down with the same old same old. You might begin to feel like you're struggling to think creatively or in new ways.

When you don't have different points of view, you may find that it's difficult to generate different results. This can lead to a greater chance that a competitor may pass you by. Forbes notes that when companies become stale, they start to miss out on new opportunities for growth.

Look to a marketing agency to provide perspective on how your creative and your performance stack up in the market and what you can do to stand out. You may be doing some things right, but an agency can be that new set of eyes that confirms exactly which strategies are working for your company and which techniques may need to be modified or replaced altogether with something fresh.

3. You can't measure your current marketing effort's success.

According to Content Marketing Institute, more than 70% of business-to-business marketers track their ROI. Struggling to measure your current marketing's ROI can be a sign that it's time to consult with a marketing agency for additional assistance with tracking and analysis.

If you’ve been executing short-term campaigns and seeing a pop and drop of results, you may find that creating a long-term marketing plan is both difficult and confusing. You need a partner to help you strategically assess your current marketing efforts and unify your campaigns.

A considered purchase marketing agency will look across your entire customer journey to identify the places at the bottom of the funnel where you can get the quickest wins, while capturing data that will inform and optimize the tactics used in the higher stages of the sales funnel. This kind of momentum will build on itself to create a sustainable model that allows you to accurately evaluate your ROI and compare it to your marketing spend.