Why Hire a Digital Marketing Agency?
As a small business owner, you have a lot of things on your plate to worry about. Sales, hiring, firing, taxes, customer issues, scaling issues… the list goes on. The last thing you want to worry about is if you should hire a marketing agency for your small business.
Most small business owners understand the importance of marketing and the sales that come from it, but they also don’t have the proper experience and guidance on how to do it properly. If you’re reading this, then you’re likely a small business owner yourself or plan to be one someday. Small business owners are approached daily by marketing companies, selling everything from newspaper placements to Little League team sponsorships and more.
Note: if you want our advice, give us a call. It’s free to speak with a marketing expert, and there is no obligation to work with us. We’re really in the business of giving small business owners the advice they need regarding marketing.
So, which method of marketing is right for you and your small business? Well, it depends. Some small business owners are okay with where their business sits financially, as well as the trajectory that their business is on. Others want growth. Whether they want massive growth now or slow growth over time doesn’t matter. What does matter is how they proceed with that growth.
A Digital Marketing Strategy Will Bring Your Business Back To Life
Over the last two decades, small businesses’ advertising has been revolutionized with the rise of the Internet. Small business owners have been forced to adapt their marketing strategy to integrate things like Facebook, websites, online purchasing, and digital reviews.
At one time, small business owners could use marketing methods like phone book advertising, television commercials, and mail flyers, and this often was more than enough marketing to grow a small business. However, attention has shifted.
Just to preface: some older, traditional forms of marketing are still very much viable, and depending on your niche, market, and other factors, these can still be beneficial when paired with digital marketing.
Today’s consumers carry around a computer and can find the products or services they need at the speed of light. All they have to do is Google it. This means small business owners should ensure that when these consumers are making these Google searches, their business is the one being found, not the competition.
So, what exactly does a marketing strategy look like in this new advertising revolution?
- Mobile-Friendly Website
- Google My Business Listing
- Active SEO and Keyword Research
- Active Social Media Engagement
- Email and SMS Marketing
- PPC Advertising
While this may seem like a small list, at the time of writing this, new ways to digitally advertise your small business are being developed, so this list barely scratches the surface. How is a small business owner supposed to keep up?
A Digital Marketing Agency Will Give You More Time To Run Your Small Business
So many small business owners and entrepreneurs have this “I’ll do it myself” mentality. While this isn’t a bad trait to have as a small business owner, to what extent does this apply to marketing? Hiring a digital marketing agency not only alleviates all of this stress and allows you to bypass a massive learning curve, but it also saves you money.
Wait. How?
Here at The Social Media Pros, what we have found, through all the marketing consultations we’ve done for thousands of business owners, is that when left to their own vices, they will do things like boost posts on Facebook, pay companies like Yelp or Thumbtack to advertise their business, or even take a shot at running Google Ads themselves.
We are here to tell you: save your money.
Oftentimes these methods will cost you thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars in ad spend. Sure, you might get some results. But this would be like paying eight dollars for a gallon of gas when it’s three dollars down the road for the same gas.
There is a huge learning curve that comes with trying to tackle digital marketing yourself, and that learning curve eats capital fast. Most agencies are way past this state. Even for us, at one point early in the life of our business, we burned a lot of capital learning how to do digital marketing the right way. Since then, we have developed bulletproof digital marketing strategies that work, delivering consistent results.
It Doesn’t Cost As Much As You Think
Of course, the cost varies because not every business is created equally. While we will try to give you some insight as to what you can expect to spend working with a digital marketing agency, we always say, “Take your most valuable employee. Now, double that person, and add three times your revenue.”
You see, hiring a good marketing agency is like hiring the best employee in the world, and you don’t have to manage them or pay workers’ compensation. (Small business owners get the joke).
We see it all the time: most small business owners let their office manager, their husband, or their wife take care of the marketing. While we’re sure they’re amazing people, they more often than not lack the marketing skills required to elevate your business to the next level.
Back to the costs, though. The average amount you can expect to spend with a reputable digital marketing agency like ours is about $2,000 a month across various services including SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Facebook Ads, and PPC. On the low end, we have clients that only spend $500 a month, and on the high end, we have clients paying upwards of $10,000 a month. It really just boils down to how much, and how fast, you want growth. And, of course, how much are you willing to spend to get it.
You Get Professional Digital Marketing Consulting
When you work with a digital marketing agency like The Social Media Pros, not only do you get all of the various services we offer like Web Design, SEO, PPC, and Social Media Management, but you also get to spend time consulting with world-class marketing experts.
We can’t speak for every agency, but here at The Social Media Pros, when we start working with a client, even if we’re just providing one small service, we create what we call a Digital Marketing Roadmap. (Real original, right?). We do this for several reasons, but the most important part for you, as the small business owner, is what you learn about your business and its marketing and advertising in the process. This digital marketing roadmap outlines in detail, our future digital marketing recommendations, for your business as it currently sits. We lay it all out because not only does this help you figure out the best plan of attack for your business’s marketing, but it also serves us to see where you are, where you’re going, and where you need to get to in all aspects of marketing.
Our digital marketing consulting isn’t just limited to our Digital Marketing Roadmap. In most cases, we may spend two to four hours a month on the phone in meetings with our clients, allowing them to ask various questions and seek advice on potential outside marketing and advertising efforts we may not provide. We will give you our best advice on how to proceed with those.
Building A Marketing Foundation For The Future
The biggest mistake we see with small businesses is their lack of direction and consistency with all marketing efforts. What this leads to is improper communication with their audience and customers, as well as misleading branding.
It may not seem like a big deal that the flier you sent out to five thousand customers is not the same shade of red that your branding is, or that the font on your website and trucks is inconsistent with your Facebook ads and billboards, but it matters. Imagine seeing a billboard for McDonald’s only to realize they were using Burger King’s fonts. Or what if you saw a Coca-Cola can—but it had Pepsi’s colors?
People notice these types of things and will begin to make subconscious decisions about your brand without even knowing. These aren’t the decisions that help your brand, either. So how does working with a digital marketing agency alleviate these types of things and help build a better foundation for your small business?
Once we start working with a client, we create something called a brand profile. This brand profile is used for everything when it comes to branding, advertising, and marketing for your small business. Once we create this for our clients, our agency gets to use it moving into the future, but the benefits don’t stop there. We also give the brand profile to our clients for future needs, such as working with other companies that provide services that we don’t. This ensures that your branding stays consistent and builds a brand foundation for the future!
