Insights:Seven reasons hiring an ad agency might be right for you.

In today’s marketplace companies go in a lot of different directions to fulfill their marketing needs. Some use freelancers, some have in-house marketing departments, some have media companies create their advertisements. Some don’t do anything and just hope customers will find them. Others choose to work with professional advertising firms.

Success stories can be found for all these different approaches, but you’ll certainly find a plethora of more success stories about businesses that hire ad agencies.  

Here are seven reasons that hiring an ad agency makes good business sense for most companies.

1.     Focus – Advertising agencies personnel spend their days (and often nights) focused on creating impactful marketing messages and getting those messages in front of the right people. They study the craft and are tuned into marketing trends and shifts. They also study your business and the qualities that will make it appeal to customers.

2.     Objectiveness – Nobody outside of your company cares about your business or your product. Harsh words, but true until you give them compelling reasons to care. Using an agency gives your company an unbiased view of your business and what customers want from a business like yours. If your marketing doesn’t show how your product or service fills a need in the consumer’s life, then you’re just marketing to yourself.

3.     Expertise – Agencies are staffed with individuals who have trained and spent years practicing a set of skills that make marketing effective. They have deep experience in their specialties, such as digital strategies, creative execution, social media management, media planning and public relations. Hiring people of the same skill level for an in-house job would be expensive and attracting top talent to leave the creative environment of an agency is extremely difficult.

4.     Strategy – Ad agencies focus on how all your marketing works together to deliver a cumulative benefit. Traditional, digital and non-traditional efforts are strategically coordinated to grow your brand and drive traffic to your business. Freelancers and media companies can’t do this because they focus on their little piece of your marketing efforts. Disjointed marketing strategies and messages can actual hurt a business because your brand becomes fractured and unrelatable in the marketplace.

5.     Connected – Media planners have long-term working relationships with media companies which they leverage to attain more attractive package deals, better pricing and added value than companies without agencies would ever know existed. Public relations professionals utilize their media contacts to get more story placements. Creative pros know who the best photographers, artists, directors are, and how to work with them in the most cost-effective ways possible. Digital experts also have extensive contacts and availability to more cutting edge technology and approaches than most. These resources allow agencies to affordably deliver top-quality results.

6.     Staffing that adjusts to fit your needs – With an agency, you only pay for the staff time when your company needs them. If you have an in-house operation, you pay for their skills year-round (as well as employment benefits) whether you’re utilizing them at the time or not. If you’re using a freelancer, you need to wait until their schedule is open to start your job; agencies typically have a depth of personnel that allows work to be done in a more timely basis.

7.     Because advertising is an investment – Smart business people invest in advertising because they know that is one of the best ways to grow a business. Great marketing campaigns have turned small companies into industry leaders. Lack of engaging, impactful advertising has turned industry leaders into small companies. Like all investments, you want to do it wisely and in a way that offers the best opportunity for a healthy return.

If you’d like to talk more about advertising with folks who think about it every day, give us at Insight Marketing Design a call at 605-275-0011 or send us an email.