How to find the right agency for you

The thought of selecting a marketing agency that best fits with your organization may feel overwhelming at first. There are many agencies to choose from – all with different approaches, experiences, and price tags. 

Ultimately, you want to find a team that understands what you need, and is easy to work with. Here are a few tips to help make the process a bit easier and hopefully enjoyable.

Start with a conversation

When beginning any relationship, it’s important to make sure you are a good fit for each other before going all in. You will be able to determine how invested an agency is in your success based on the types of questions they ask you. In turn, you can gain insights into their approach to your specific challenge and the experience they will bring to the table. 

Be prepared to share

Be ready to provide specific goals and targets, challenges, timelines and budgets. Without this information, it will be difficult for any agency to come back with a viable approach and recommendations. (We equate it to asking an architect to design you a house without sharing elements of what you have in mind. You might be thinking of a classic Georgian and the architect is thinking contemporary; 2 storey vs. bungalow…. You get the picture.) If you don’t have those details yet figured out, be honest about that too. Many agencies can help define and set goals as part of the strategic planning process.

Collaboration is key

You feel a good connection with an agency but aren’t sure their recommended approach is the right one. Don’t hesitate to suggest working together to find an alternate plan. There are multiple paths you can take to get you to where you want to go. A good agency will know that and be open to finding the best course of action that works for your organization.

If you feel your organization is at the stage of needing an outside agency, shoot us a note. We’d be more than happy to sit down and have that initial conversation. Shoot us a note and we’ll get started!

Leads or sales down? How digital marketing can help

Looking for ways to boost sales leads? Digital marketing may be able to help. There are a number of different tactics that you can use to present digital ads and communications to potential customers – both before they need your services, or right at the moment when they are looking for help. 

Digital marketing will:

Present your brand at the moment where your prospective customer is looking for a solution

Present your brand as a solution for a specific problem you can help solve

Present your brand before your services are needed to build brand awareness

The most common digital marketing tools include:

Google Ads

Usually the first obvious tactic that companies will identify is Google Ads. Creating a Google Ads campaign that targets customers looking specifically for your services. It presents your solution at the moment they need it. They have already identified a problem, know that they need outside help to solve it, and are ready to invest. Creating and then managing your Google Ads campaign can help feed your sales funnel and build overall brand awareness. Not sure where to start? You can learn more on how to improve your Google Ads campaign from our team here.

Digital Banner Ads

Digital banner ads are an excellent tool for building brand recognition. You can control the sites ads are shown on, when they appear, and how frequently they are presented. Selecting the right approach that matches your target audience will build brand awareness over time. Banner ads can also be presented to match when your potential customers are looking for your products or services. Similar to Google Ads, you can also control the geographic area for where the ads are shown, so you are presenting ads only to customers you can actually support. 

Social Media Ads

Depending on your product or service, social media ads can be an effective way to connect with prospective customers. Understanding your target audience and which social channels they are actively using, you can determine if it’s worth your marketing budget to run ads on social channels. (Some social media platforms are also struggling to be seen as trustworthy, so something else to consider before adding social to your media mix.)

Email marketing

When done well, email marketing can be an effective way to keep in touch with your customers, encourage engagement, and keep brand awareness top of mind. There are a few different strategies you can use to approach your email content. Whether you use it for updates on products or services, insights on industry trends or challenges, or loyalty offers, it’s a good way to connect with your audience. And with brand-owned platforms seen as more trustworthy compared to other social media channels, email can be a strong element in your media mix. (Not to mention cost effective!)

With the right mix of digital marketing and advertising, you can build a healthy sales funnel for your sales team. If you are curious what that might look like for your organization, we’d be happy to help you develop a media mix plan and calendar to get you started!

Should I build a marketing team or hire a marketing agency?

This is a question many business owners or marketing directors may struggle with. As their business grows and they need to build out a more comprehensive marketing strategy, which approach is the most cost effective, building a marketing team or hiring an outside marketing agency? 

There are two cost considerations that can be looked at when deciding what makes sense for your organization – hard costs and time costs. Looking at both of these before making a decision should prevent any surprises down the road.

Hard cost comparison

These costs are the most obvious to compare when looking at building a team or hiring an agency. On the internal marketing team side, hard costs include things like salaries, benefits, equipment and software licensing. We’ve used the average salaries from RGD’s 2021 salary review for the key team members you’d need on your team.

When hiring a marketing agency, there is typically a defined scope of work for a specific time period for an agreed to cost. For our comparison, we’ve used the example of a multi-channel marketing campaign, typically executed over 12 months.

Of course the internal team could work on other projects over the course of the year, but would likely still come in higher than if you hired an outside agency for the same work. Internal marketing teams are most effective when there are multiple, continuous marketing initiatives each year.

Time cost comparison

Time costs are a little bit harder to quantify than hard costs. These are costs associated with the hiring process, training, and ongoing management of an internal team vs the initial engagement of an agency plus any regular touch points.

Looking at the internal team side first, here are few things to consider.

Hiring a team takes time

These are the typical to-do’s when adding a new hire to your team:

• Create the job description(s) and posting
• Post / share / pay for the position to attract applicants
• Sort through all the CVs sent your way
• Interview the top candidates (assuming you can qualify all of their skills)
• Onboard them into your organization

Also keep in mind, during this time you are less focused on any actual marketing initiatives on the go and may lose some of the momentum you’ve worked hard to gain.

Maybe freelancers would work?

There are a high number of qualified freelancers out there that you could contract to deliver a specific component of your marketing executables. Keep in mind that means additional coordination on your end to make sure everything aligns and works with the other freelancers for a cohesive campaign. Rather than focusing on your marketing initiatives, your time may be spent organizing review meetings with different individuals, all with varying schedules, to keep everyone on the same page and on track.

Be wary of unicorns

Wouldn’t it be simpler if you just hire one marketing manager or specialist that can do everything you need? They can write snappy copy, design eye-catching materials, create informative infographics, develop new pages for your website, integrate a media campaign and track the results of everything. The reality is that finding all of that in one person is highly unlikely. Each of those require unique skill sets. And if someone says they can do all that, we’d recommend doing some serious reference checks.

On the agency side, there is still time required to kick things off. This is needed to make sure your chosen agency understands your goals, challenges and the competitive landscape. A good agency will see themselves as an extension of your team and will want to learn as much as they can before building out their approach. (Unsure where to start in selecting an agency? These are our three tips when it comes to picking a marketing partner.)

From there, depending on the project, there may be regular touch points to go over progress, as well as monthly reports or reviews to look at results. The agency should be taking the lead on these updates and making necessary adjustments as you go. 

We know how hard it is to come up with meaningful and engaging marketing communications. Whether it’s email campaigns, newsletters, social media posts, digital ads or video commercials, you really only have a couple of chances at most to grab a potential client’s attention. After that, our short attention span brains move on to the next shiney item in our feeds or screens and we forget all about what we saw a minute ago.

So how do you make the most of each opportunity that you get in front of your target audience? How do you stand out from all of the other visual chatter and spectacle to make someone stop and take notice?

To help you assess how effective your marketing communications are, we’ve listed our favourite questions that we ask at the start of each marketing engagement. All of these will help you look at your different marketing channels to see if there are other opportunities to help you get you to the next level in your marketing.

Our top marketing channel starter questions

1. What are your marketing priorities and goals?

This is always our first question and can be harder to answer than you might think. Have you clearly defined what you are looking to achieve with your marketing? Are you using SMART goals? (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound)

Clearly stating your marketing objectives helps keep all of your activities focused on these goals and hopefully prevents you from getting sidetracked.

2. What marketing channels are you using and who are your audiences on each?

Sometimes the biggest opportunity can be identified as you better understand who is engaging with your communications and where.

• Website – What information are you sharing on your website and who is interested in that info? Are you getting the desired sales leads, employment applications, or partnership offers?
• Social media channels – What is your follower profile(s)? Are they customers, employees, potential talent, prospects, partners? How do you customize the messaging for different audiences?
• Newsletters – Similar to social, what is your subscriber profile(s)? Who is engaging the most? Where are new subscribers coming from?
• Digital ads – Where are you placing your ads? Which ones are driving the most traffic to your website or leading to conversions?

3. Do you have a key message?

For each of the target audiences, what is the core message that you want to reiterate? How is it relevant to them? Remember that people can only handle a maximum of two ideas in any one communication. Ideally, there is just one – again, our brains are tapped out and for many, if one thought goes in, another goes out, so make sure it is worth it!

4. How often are you reaching out?

There is a balance you want to achieve between too little, too often, and just right. You can find that balance by mixing up the channels, the presentation of the key message, and then scheduling each for the optimal time.

Remember that time is valuable and you don’t want to be seen as wasting it with communications that seem overly repetitive or irrelevant. On the other hand, not often enough and you’re not going to be top of mind.