It’s that time of the year again when Q4 is upon us. The conclusion at your next strategy meeting will be that you need to ramp up your digital marketing activities and online presence because…well…2019.
Life can come at you fast.
Your office will be filled with angst from trying to figure out how to get you 100k fans on Facebook, move your website up to the #1 position in search engine results, drive traffic to the website and possibly do some direct marketing online as well.
Chaos and mayhem may ensue.
Until that very practical person in the corner of the conference room suggests, “why don’t we just let Adwoa, the new national service girl, do it? She is always on Twitter.”
After all, hiring an agency is expensive (or is it?), plus how hard can it really be to do the Instagram and the Google? Adwoa can read a few articles online and take on this task, no?
No.
What you should do is hire a team of qualified digital marketing professionals in-house or outsource to a digital marketing agency.
Here’s why you should not let Adwoa, the new national service girl, handle your entire digital marketing campaign just because she is always on Facebook.
1) You get what you pay for
It certainly is easy to find a lot of young millennials who are active on social media and be tempted to hand your digital marketing to them to spearhead. Digital marketing faux pas #1. But let’s face it, your national service personnel who is active on Twitter is not a digital marketing guru. You cannot expect them to deliver thoroughly creative and analytical work unsupervised. You wouldn’t put an inexperienced or unqualified person in charge of your accounting or operations so why take that chance with your marketing, which should be the wheel of your business? You can only wing it for so long.
2) Digital marketing is not a 1-man job
Digital marketing is a multi-faceted discipline which covers search engine marketing and optimization, social media and content marketing, display advertising, email marketing, affiliate marketing, web analytics, online PR etc. Delegating this myriad to someone, who is under or unqualified and unsupported, is sure to cost you as they navigate the learning curve, working by trial and error on your dime and time. Trying to save money by saving money can sometimes cost you more money in the long run. Now that’s a catch 22.
3) You can expect a broader skill set with an agency
On the other hand, if you outsource to a digital marketing agency you will be dealing with a group of professionals who are each skilled in respective aspects of digital marketing and can execute a cross-platform campaign efficiently. Similarly, building a proper in-house digital marketing team will allow you to hire employees with complementary skills instead of expecting one person to be a jack of all trades and ultimately a master of none. Giving an inexperienced employee carte blanche to manage all your digital assets with no troubleshooting system in place is shooting yourself in the foot.
4) Agencies pull on multi-case/industry knowledge
Besides a digital marketing agency having professionals who are appropriately trained, it is also expected that while managing other clients in either a similar or different industry, the agency would have accrued some applicable learnings for your campaign. The digital marketing landscape can be capricious at times. It is not strategic to have an in-house employee who isn’t well-versed beyond your business and industry and, who may not be able to adapt quickly by leveraging alternative experiences. It is then plausible that working with an agency checks out as being more cost-effective than replicating that level of experience with an in-house team. Once you consider all the overheads involved in pooling a fully-equipped and experienced team that parallels an agency, the lines of affordability begin to blur.
5) Your marketing should be always-on
Cases in which businesses don’t have a designated digital marketing employee or team and, instead, approach it as an add-on to existing employees’ tasks, are even more detrimental. Said employees have a litany of primary tasks so your digital marketing will inevitably become an after-thought. This is not ideal because most digital marketing channels are always-on. You should be prepared to react and engage in real time since you don’t have autonomy over conversations like with traditional media.
6) Outsourcing will increase productivity
Attempting to juggle both your core business and its digital marketing will result in deficiencies. By pursuing your comparative advantage and specializing in operating your core business, you can truly attain economies of scale and reach optimum efficiency levels, while increasing productivity. Simply put, focus on what you do best and let the other experts do what they do best for you. Mind your business, literally.
This is not to say that working with a digital marketing agency is the panacea for all your marketing woes. In most cases, a hybrid structure, where you employ a digital marketing expert to liaise with your digital marketing agency, works best to achieve cross-team results more effectively, affordably and seamlessly.
Not just any digital marketing agency but one with a track record of delivering engaging, result-driven campaigns that meet client objectives. At the end of the day, you want your digital marketing agency to be a partner with a seat at your table, working hand-in-hand to build and sustain all your digital assets cohesively.
Elizabeth is a marketing and business strategist with specific interest and expertise in the digital and media technology space. She has previously worked for award-winning agencies in Nigeria, New York, Atlanta and St. Louis.