What Does a Digital Marketing Agency Do for Small Businesses?
Most days as a small business owner, you wear many hats. Even if you have an incredible team, you might still find yourself having to be the face of the business, the manager, the CFO, the quality control, the problem-solver, and the list goes on... We get it, we’re a small business ourselves. But the truth is that sometimes you can’t do it all, and that’s okay! And actually, when it comes to specific tasks or types of expertise there are hats we can let others wear, because - metaphorically speaking - they look much better on them.
Especially if we’re talking about marketing (with all its infinite layers), it can be a great idea to outsource it to professionals - and hey, we know for a fact that marketing and small businesses are a match made in heaven 💞
But if you’re reading this and thinking, “yes, sure - but what does a marketing agency actually do?”, let’s waste no time and answer that question!
Here’s some of the key things a marketing agency can do for you:
Creating a Solid Marketing Strategy
With the rise of social media, it seems most businesses think that marketing equals just posting online - and they couldn’t be more wrong! That’s not a strategy and it’s definitely not the definition of marketing. Marketing has been around since long before the internet and it comes with a lot of theory and intricacies, and a specific need for marketing. If you’ve never worked on your marketing strategy or you’ve tried and you just need some help, an agency can help with that! In fact, the first step any serious marketing agency will take when working with a client is to define a strategy (overarching or specific to an aspect of marketing) and combine it with a plan, before moving on to the implementation.
Not every strategy will work for everyone, which is why here at Saia Creative we’re very much against a cookie-cutter strategic approach. We firmly believe that a skilled marketing consultant or strategist will do some research, look at your industry, your business goals, your audience, size, resources, etc before creating the best, most effective strategy for a business like yours.
Helping Your Customers Find You
Marketing is a great way to expand your reach and put you in front of new audiences and valuable prospects. By using different strategies - from SEO to paid ads, email and everything in between - a marketing agency can do just for your business! Of course, once they’ve made sure potential customers have found you, your trusted agency or consultant will work hard to turn them into fervid advocates and buyers of your products and services. It’s such a core task that digital agencies can handle for you and the results can be pretty amazing when you let an expert help you with this!
Building a Brand that Stands Out and Represents You
We live in a world where first impressions are everything and according to Harvard, a customer will take about 7 seconds to decide whether they want to engage with a brand or retail establishment or just walk away from it. So a good visual impression matters more than you think, especially in the online space, where we’re often confronted with images, logos and photos, before actually speaking to a human being. So how do you ensure to stand out from competitors and have a brand identity that represents your business? That’s where a marketing agency comes in! Depending on their level of expertise, most agencies will offer branding services including branding strategy, brand identity and brand design such as logos, colour palettes, imagery, as well as website design.
Levelling the playing field
Having an expert consultant or team looking after your marketing means you can level the field when it comes to competitors (even larger ones!) within your industry. In fact, a good marketing agency will be able to tweak your positioning and advise you in order to spot new growth opportunities, while presenting you with a strategy that can elevate your game.
Tracking Results
A lot of businesses think that marketing is just a lot of “doing”, so they focus on running campaign after campaign, without ever actually analysing what’s going on. A marketing agency will often make it a priority to not only take action, but to stop and actually track results of everything they’re doing; they will help you to understand what’s working, what’s not and what can be improved for the next campaign or strategy phase. As the business owner, this will also give you some insights in terms of audience, best buyers, as well as product performance and return on investment.
To sum it all up…
A digital marketing agency helps you create strategies and implements them to make your marketing effective, grow your customers base, and - as a result - put more money into your business. And the best part is — they can often do all of this in a very cost-effective way! In fact, hiring a marketing manager at a senior level plus a few marketers (who you’ll have to onboard, train, etc) to create your own marketing department can be less cost-effective than hiring an agency.
An agency already has all the knowledge, assets, experience and price flexibility to meet your needs, minus all payroll or employee-employer dynamics you’d have with your own team.
Are you looking for more information about how digital marketing can support your business or are you thinking about hiring a marketing agency? Reach out to book a discovery call or email us at hello@saiacreative.com to learn more about us and our marketing services.