Do It Right vs DIY marketing
If your business wants to improve its digital marketing strategy, you will need marketing enthusiasts, well trained to effectively execute your strategy, of course. But the question is; do you hire in-house marketers or a digital agency, like us?
Digital marketing, if done correctly can bring you even closer to your target audience, by;
Frequently improving & optimising the content on your website.
Establishing a consistent social media presence with engaging content
These are just a few of the ways in which digita marketing can attract & drive more customers to your platforms, presenting a great opportunity to generate sales and attract new customers.
Since 83.72% of the population have access to a smartphone, (at most times of the day) we are constantly exposed to digital marketing without even knowing it. It is diverse in nature, it comes in many forms like; social media posts, paid advertising/search ads and content marketing. As you can see, you are likely to encounter these forms of digital marketing while merely scrolling through your favourite app.
So, we know that digital marketing is vital to your business’ success, but where does one start?
Is time on your side?
Just like anything good, implementing an effective marketing strategy takes time. When hiring an in-house marketer, there are things you need to take into account. The first is; time. Do you have time to train them and teach them the ins and outs of marketing? If time is on your side, then this is an ideal option as it gives you control over what you are teaching this new employee. Though, you might find that you are better off spending your time doing something else. To add to these time constraints, hiring a marketer means an additional employee in your team, does your company have the resources to pay an additional person in your team? Can you afford to pay another salary? We all know that time is money, and there are other ways you can use your time instead of babysitting, unlike with the agency route. When hiring an agency, you delegate tasks to experts in this field who are constantly on top of the latest trends/news; allowing your business to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to digital marketing.
“Market like the year you are in.”
Wise words from marketing guru, emphasizing the importance of staying ahead in the game. You won’t need to train an agency and better yet, you don’t have to pay them holiday pay, you simply pay for the work done & results achieved.
Do you have access to marketing resources?
After hearing “Content is King” consistently you bring on board a marketer to create consistent & engaging content! Unless they are a freelancer or contractor, you can’t expect them to have their own equipment…however in the off chance that they did, you can’t be sure that the quality of their equipment or skill-level will be produce show-stopping content. What do you do now? Well, you could purchase the necessary equipment (let’s not even talk about these costs for now.) then comes the training… Do you have the time to train and teach them how to produce the level of content you are after? You might be willing to train them yes, & you may even have the required level yourself to create professional content, however when can we expect them to start to deliver the quality of content that will help catch your viewers attention?! Just be mindful that these things come at a time cost, whereas when you delegate to an agency, they have a guy for everything….. So this isn’t even a concern as based on the scope of work agreed, one price covers all & sometimes more!
What drives results?
Collecting data allows you to make informed decisions. Keboola writes that 62% of retailers report that the use of data is creating a competitive advantage for their organization. Again, hiring an in-house marketer may mean you have to train the new employee in data analytics & reporting. Unless you are ready to risk losing out on the competitive advantage, we feel this is something that shouldn’t be compromised.
How do you ensure that the company‘s marketing strategy is completely data-driven?
To ensure that your business will steal the show, your marketer or the agency should; drive strategies through KPI (key performance indicator) to measure how effectively a business is achieving its goals and closely analyse ROI, to assess how much loss or profit is made from our digital marketing campaigns. These two can occur with the help of an agency or an in-house marketer, although, the agency may be a better bet as they may have an experienced data analyst in their team, whereas taking the in-house option would result in you having to either hire a marketer with data analytics skills, which might mean their content creation skills may not be as good, meaning you may have to hire someone else to do the content creation (another salary expense here) OR once again have to take the time to train them (another cost & time wasted here)… The beauty of this debate is that the choice is completely yours. it just comes down to how serious you are ready to take your digital marketing efforts
We’ve found that this decision tends to come down to either time or money, we aren’t here to tell you how to go about your business; but we’d like for you to see that although you may see it as saving money going for a DIY approach, if you aren’t careful - you can end up spending a lot of money & not getting the results you’d have expected….. so save yourself the trouble and let the experts deal with it.
