Should you hire a digital marketing agency or DIY for your business

Digital marketing is critical for the success of any company, irrespective of its size. In today’s world, reaching out to billions of people is a mouse click away. With the majority of the people spending time at home and being online most of the time, digital marketing has become the most important aspect for the promotion of the business as well as reaching out to a new set of customers.

Also, owing to current social distancing norms, digital marketing is doing better than ever before. Not only search engines but social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are doing great jobs as a mode of marketing. Even local businesses are investing in digital marketing platforms that help them to engage with their potential customers and convert them into their fixed clients.

As a business owner, one question may come to your mind. Whether to handle your digital marketing on your own or engage some agency? 

If you are a local business owner the current market situation may motivate you to do digital marketing on your own. The thought of outsourcing your digital marketing to some external agency might make you uncomfortable in case you are a self-starter. But managing digital marketing initiatives requires a lot of time and energy, so you need to consider it seriously in case you’re the owner of a growing business.

 Sometimes under the impression that hiring an agency will cost you more, you might try out doing digital marketing on your own. However, this concept is not true as you might lose a huge time learning the art of digital marketing. As a business owner, you might have got limited time as you need to be involved in every aspect of the business. While it may seem easy to handle, the fact is that digital marketing is an ever-evolving field that requires active participation from several subject matter experts.  

Appointing a Digital Marketing Agency vs DIY

Read on to find out what should be your key considerations while choosing between DIY and external digital marketing agencies for your business. 

1. Subject Matter Expertise

Digital marketing is a vast subject covering multiple platforms like website, SEO, social media, content marketing, online PR, email marketing, and search engine marketing. You require in-depth knowledge and subject matter expertise to excel in any of these fields.

Irrespective of whichever channel you use, you need to know the best way to use the channel and ways to avoid any mistakes. Not only that, but you should also require knowledge about how to measure the results. So as a business owner, you can either learn the craft or you can hire an agency that is pro at it. An external agency will help you with their subject-specific knowledge and experience. 

2. Importance of Time

The next factor which you should consider is time. What is the time you have on your hand to focus on digital marketing? Since digital marketing is a vast subject planning and implementation of any campaign takes time. So in case you are thinking of doing everything by yourself, you should check out how much time you have in your hand to devote to marketing.

You also need to consider that devoting time to digital marketing should not hamper your other business operations. Reducing business hours to focus on digital marketing is not a good idea. In case you do not plan it properly, focusing on digital marketing may lead to the loss of your existing customers. For example, in case you are a local store owner, instead of cutting down business hours to focus on digital marketing you should outsource the job to some trusted marketing agency like SMON. An agency can take the workload from you by handling the digital marketing part whereas you can focus on your core business activity. 

3. Cost Efficiency

For a business owner, the most important aspect is the cost involved in the whole process. In case you are a startup with a limited budget, you can start it by doing it yourself, and down the line can outsource it. However, it may affect the result of digital marketing efforts. Ideally, you should go for a digital marketing agency for the best results for your newly opened business. An experienced agency may also turn out to be more cost-effective by bringing in better leads and more sales.

If you go for the DIY path, you might save some money on account of agency charges. But, you might lose money on other aspects like less productive time, less number of leads, and fewer conversions. It makes DIY less cost-efficient in comparison with an external agency.

An external agency is far more cost-effective as there is no indirect cost associated with it. At the first look, it may seem that external agencies are more costly but if you judge the pros and cons you will find them more cost-efficient than DIY. 

4. Quality Assurance

If you want to handle digital marketing on your own, you have full control over the quality of the digital marketing elements and the tools which you use to build them. You can source the material based on your requirement when you are managing your digital marketing process. Since you are the one who is handling this, you will be having complete ownership over the quality. However, even though you know what you want, you may not know the best tool to make it or how to use the tool properly. Also, since you are having complete control, you may become complacent and leave everything to the last minute which may hamper the delivery schedule.

In the case of digital marketing agencies, they already have the desired knowledge about different tools. They not only know about the best digital marketing tool, but they also know where to find the most effective tools for your business. Regardless of your company size, a digital marketing agency will offer you better quality material using their experience and organized and professional setup

Along with that, when you appoint an external agency, you need to provide your internal information to them. Also, in the case of the external agency, they have got their own quality system which ensures proper information from your end as well as representation of your business in the most effective way. 

5. Understanding of The Business Structure

In case you decided to do the marketing on your own you already know the structure of the business. But that also means you will be too close to the whole process. Because of this, you might miss the larger perspective behind the digital marketing initiatives and areas for which you need improvement.

However, with an external agency, they will work on your digital marketing initiatives from the long term perspective of your business. They do a detailed study of your target market and devise the strategy keeping in mind your business structure. Also, since the agency is not part of your daily operation, they take an objective view of your business.

6. Result Orientation

When you are handling digital marketing on your own, you know that you are doing it for your business. With digital marketing, you can see your results on a real-time basis which can work as an incentive for productivity.

However, in case you don’t have experience or formal training, you might face difficulties to understand how to maximize your efforts or how to use the results to further optimize your campaign. You might be giving your best efforts but not in the right direction. Most importantly, in the absence of experience or formal training, you might not be able to judge the success of your digital marketing initiatives.

In the case of a digital marketing firm, results will always guide them. An external agency will always focus on customer satisfaction and bring out the best possible result for your business. They do conduct a detailed analysis of your digital marketing reports and adapt the marketing strategy based on the same. They will also guide you and give recommendations for the improvement of your business. 

7. Keeping Your Important Resources Free

When you engage your valuable resources for digital marketing campaign planning and execution, it takes up their costly time which you might have used for other important purposes. There is every possibility that an external marketing agency will work faster whether with the creation of social media posts, writing content, or devising a search engine marketing policy. 

8. Engaging Team of Experts

You might be familiar with search engine optimization or social media marketing, but you might not be the ideal one to handle it. Also, digital marketing is always evolving and comes up with newer tools and technologies now and then. In the current setup adapting to the latest trends and keeping oneself up to date is a full-time responsibility. A full-fledged digital marketing agency will have an expert team who helps you to get the full benefit out of the latest technologies for each platform and implement the best digital marketing plan for your business. 

9. New Perspective

Sometimes the best way to start a marketing campaign is with a new perspective. In case you are struggling to find out a new idea for your digital campaign, it is better to appoint an experienced digital marketing agency. A professional agency will help you to tune your digital marketing plan according to the market demand and make it more practical.

10. A Broader Range of Skill Sets

One of the best advantages of working with an external agency is they give you access to a broader skillset. A digital marketing agency is comprised of diverse portfolios like social media marketers, SEO experts, website developers, graphic designers, content marketers, etc. You can appoint them for any customized solution you need for your business. 

Final Thoughts

By now you might have understood that appointing a digital marketing agency like SMON will provide you with maximum benefits associated with the DIY route while eliminating all disadvantages associated with it.

There are diverse considerations for different types of businesses when they hire an agency or do it using their team. Both can be an efficient way to grow your digital presence. However, external agencies offer a lot in terms of subject matter expertise, core knowledge, and effective outputs. Because of this, a lot of business owners prefer outside agencies to grow their business. Even though there are certain disadvantages associated with hiring an external agency, they are heavily outweighed by the advantages associated with it.

In case you want to go with a digital marketing agency, you need to do proper research before appointing anyone. You need to make sure that the agency you are appointing should have in-depth knowledge about your industry and your business. Any digital marketing agency can handle the technical part of it, but it is always better to be associated with an agency that is having in-depth knowledge about your industry.

The next step is to check the charges of the agency against your budget. Some of the agencies will charge you on a project basis whereas some others will charge you monthly. Lastly, you should engage an agency with a great reputation in the market. You can check their past works as well as client testimonials to get a better idea about their efficiency.