When you start a business or run a small business you usually end up managing everything yourself. Juggling everything from managing sales, accounting, payroll, deliveries and then actually doing the work takes a lot of time and you have to wear a lot of different hats.
When running your business you’ve probably thought about marketing at some point along the way. You may have started to put some basics together yourself such as a website for your business, a Facebook page or even tried running a few ads. However, after trying this you didn’t see many website visitors, get much engagement on your posts or get a useful lead from your ads.
If this sounds like you, it might be time to consider a digital marketing agency to help support your digital marketing efforts.
What are digital marketing agencies?
First of all, what is a digital marketing agency? A digital marketing agency is a marketing agency that focuses on all things digital. These include things such as:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
- Analytics and reporting
- Digital strategies and audits
- Email marketing
- Social media ads
- Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
Some of these you might recognise as digital marketing activities having tried them yourself.
What can digital marketing agencies do?
Digital marketing agencies, such as ourselves, will get to know you and your business and then create a specific digital marketing plan to fit your goals and budgets. Using this digital marketing plan, agencies can provide you with a steady stream of leads through PPC ads, increase your website traffic, enhance your website so that more of your visitors turn into customers and much more.
5 Signs you need a digital marketing agency and the benefits they bring
Now we’ve covered what digital marketing agencies can support you with, here are our top signs that you need a digital marketing agency and the benefits that they can bring your business.
You spend a lot of time learning about digital marketing
If you spend a lot of your time learning about digital marketing, how to do it and trying the different things you’ve learnt, it might be time to get in touch with a digital agency.
When you work with a digital marketing agency you instantly get access to expert knowledge. Everyone at the agency will have specialist knowledge in their area of digital marketing, for example, there will be an SEO specialist, a PPC specialist and a social media specialist. By having specialists in each area they’re able to keep up with the latest changes, tactics and strategies, so they’re always up to date. More importantly, they’re also aware of what doesn’t work anymore so there isn’t any wasted time or money.
When trying to do your own digital marketing while running your business at the same time you’re either going to be spending a lot of what little free time you have learning about and keeping up to date with the industry. Or you can spend too little time as you’re busy with the rest of the business and not see any benefits, only wasted time and money.
Your idea of digital marketing is having a website and posting updates on social media
When the typical small business owner thinks about digital marketing they might think about social media, their website and trying some Google Ads. However, there’s so much more to digital marketing than posting updates on social media and having a website.
With so many areas of digital marketing available to businesses these days, including search engine optimisation (SEO), pay per click ads (PPC), email marketing and more mean working with experts is essential. Working with an agency that understands these digital tactics and your business means they can help you plan and decide which direction to go in. With so many options these days, this is almost as valuable as the results they can provide.
You don’t have time to spend on marketing
If you’re already busy with the day to day running of your business, you don’t then have the time to check how your ads are performing, write new blog posts that will attract clients and create in-depth digital strategies.
As a business owner, you’re an expert in your business and the reason you started your business is that you enjoy the work you get to do, not because you enjoy the extra work such as marketing, payroll and sales. When you partner with a digital marketing agency they will get to know you and your business inside out, create a plan of action and follow-through. This leaves you to focus on the bits you enjoy doing.
By employing an agency to support your digital marketing you free up your own time, resources and even budgets to focus on what you excel at. Agencies are able to invest in the best tools out there and view time for learning and professional development as essential to the growth of their business. This alone can end up saving you a lot of time and frustration.
Spending money on a range of marketing tools
When it comes to digital marketing there are lots of tools out there to make it easier to manage your digital marketing activities. As a small business, these costs can quickly add up. For example, an SEO tool such as SEMrush starts at $119 per month, a social media scheduling tool like Hootsuite starts at £39 per month and a design tool like Canva starts at £8.33 per month.
These are just an example of a few tools that are out there however there are many more niche tools that can further eat up your budget.
When you work with a digital marketing agency they will have access to all of these tools and more. This ensures that your digital marketing efforts are running at peak performance and that everything is tracked and reported on. By removing the cost of these tools each month, a monthly digital marketing retainer isn’t as expensive as you thought it might be.
You’ve made a start but it’s not working
Picture this, Google Ads is offering you a free £100 to spend on ads and you think, why not? So you create an account and it guides you on how to create your first ad, so far so good.
After a few days, you come back to see how things are going, expecting to see people clicking your ad and buying something from your website or getting in touch with you. Only you come to take a look and see that only 10 people have clicked your ad and no one bought anything or got in touch with you.
You quickly decide that digital marketing doesn’t work for your business and you carry on with life. If this sounds like you, a digital agency could be the answer.
Different types of digital marketing agency
Now we’ve gone through some of the signs that your business could benefit from support with digital marketing we thought we’d cover some of the types of digital agencies that are out there.
Full-Service digital marketing agency
A full-service digital marketing agency can support you with all kinds of digital marketing services such as PPC, SEO and digital strategies. A full-service agency tends to be slightly larger than an agency that only focuses on one aspect of digital marketing as they will have experts in all areas of digital services.
They might also have other experts such as designers and web developers to help support your digital activities. These types of agencies are ideal for businesses that are looking for a range of digital marketing services. Capsule is an example of a full-service digital marketing agency as we offer a range of digital services.
Specialist Digital Marketing Agency
A specialist digital marketing agency will focus and specialise in one digital marketing channel such as social media, paid per click advertising, SEO or email marketing. These agencies tend to be slightly smaller as they only require staff with certain skill sets in the areas they provide. However, as these agencies take on more clients their team will grow.
These agencies tend to be better suited to businesses that want to focus on one area or where a business has an in-house marketing team that’s lacking skills in a particular area.
Digital Marketing Consultant
While not a type of agency, hiring a digital marketing consultant can help to bring some overall strategy and expertise to your current marketing. Typically a marketing consultant will come in to help create a digital marketing strategy and a plan and they can then support you with parts of it and work with freelancers to help with more specialist areas.
This can work well for businesses who just need a steer or small bits of work; however, as your goals and budgets grow, you might quickly outgrow what they’re able to offer.
Time to ask for help?
If you’re relating to several of these signs then it’s time to start talking to some digital marketing agencies to see how they can support your business. You don’t need to know exactly what services you need, but by having a chat they can help you decide if investing in digital marketing is the right thing for your business.
We’re always happy to chat with businesses big and small looking to improve their digital marketing to see how we can help support your growth. Get in touch with our digital experts today or take a look at the digital marketing services we offer.
