There’s one mistake that we see being made on a daily basis by small and medium businesses, typically those that don’t work with an agency and have chosen to control all their digital marketing themselves.
This mistake is posting online with a lack of strategy – opting for quantity over quality and posting with little regard for goals or the delivery of a seamless, cohesive journey.
And that’s not all. The truth is that with the ever-changing digital landscape and the huge impact that trends now have across social media and other online touchpoints, small businesses need to invest huge amounts of time into their online platforms if they hope to stay relevant. The problem is that, with the demands of business stretching well beyond digital marketing, these platforms are rarely given the time and attention that they need to truly thrive.
The solution? Well, we believe that all of these challenges can be solved with an effective partnership – and here’s why.
What Happens When You Don’t Partner With an Agency?
The best way to identify and understand the benefits of working with a marketing agency, is to first highlight the issues that businesses make without an agency partner.
Taking on your own marketing can often feel like the best thing to do for your business. After all, you know your products best, and you understand your tone of voice and audience completely.
However, most business owners are time poor and lack the time to develop a marketing strategy and see it through. This means that marketing activity is often ad hoc and random, unconnected to a cohesive strategy and instead created and shared when you have time.
This can lead to a number of problems which include (but are not limited to):
- Posting on the wrong platforms
- Sharing the same content across different platforms, with no regard for different audiences
- Unclear goals
- Getting left behind with outdated trends
- Spending money with no clear strategy
- Missing out on opportunities to engage the audience
- Failing to track engagement and data
… and more besides!
In short, when you choose not to partner with an agency but instead undertake all your digital marketing by yourself, there is a higher risk of you wasting your budget, missing out on opportunities to engage, and losing sight of your strategy and goals.
The Role of a Marketing Agency Partner
With all this in mind, what does an agency partner do and how can they benefit you and your business?
For one thing, when you partner with a marketing agency, this one agreement exposes you to a whole team of experts, covering different areas of your marketing strategy. A high quality agency will create a package of support that combines the skills of different members of its team, with businesses able to scale and grow the partnership and their strategy with ease.
Perhaps the biggest role that a marketing agency partner plays is becoming an extension of your business. They get to know your business, your products or services, your audience, and your operational goals, and work with this information to create a cohesive and effective marketing strategy. They familiarise themselves with your tone of voice and strip back your marketing plan so that it is built on the foundations of a cohesive and well-structured strategy.
From there, they can develop a plan for digital marketing with you, taking your vision and combining it with their own skills and experience. They can also anticipate potential challenges, stay ahead of industry trends that could impact your marketing activity, and track data to maximise the effectiveness of each and every campaign.
Does Your Business Need an Agency Partner?
Not every business needs an agency partner. However, if you are lacking the time to really commit to staying on top of marketing trends and focussing on the creation of a full strategy, then working with an agency is the best way to optimise the impact of your digital content.
It is no longer enough to simply be active online. Everything you put out there needs to support the customer journey and offer value as both a standalone post and as part of a conversion strategy.
This starts with goal setting and follows through into content planning, creation, and continued engagement with your audience – all the while keeping an eye on the data and the trends that inform consumer engagement with your industry and brand.
An agency partner will take on the brunt of the market research, data collection, and strategy planning, so that you can focus on running the business. Under a team of specialists who cover everything from graphic design to copywriting, SEO, ads, and more, your business will thrive – and all the mistakes mentioned at the start of this article will be overpowered.
To find out more about partnering with Mitchell & Stones, and to discuss the packages that we offer to help businesses overcome their most common challenges, get in touch with us directly.
