A business owner like you is well aware of the importance of Marketing and how a good marketing strategy can make your product more visible and appealing to potential customers. Having an effective marketing strategy can become the voice of your business.

Now that you already know the need for marketing, let us proceed with what kind of marketing. In this post, we will help you decide which marketing is best for your business or product.

Types of Marketing

With the advent of the Internet, everything’s changed, including advertising tactics. On the one hand, “Traditional” marketing is focused on print media, radio, t.v. On the other hand, in-store marketing, “Digital” marketing considers all online marketing techniques, including email and social media advertising.

Following is the list of types of marketing:

Branding: When you create an identity and decide some values for your business.

Advertising: presenting your product in front of customers.

Social media: advertising through social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

Email: an essential campaign that can convert your visitors into customers.

Search Marketing: SEO and PPC strategy to rank on search engine result pages.

Market Research: researching the needs of your potential customers.

If your competitors grow through a particular marketing strategy, it would not necessarily work for you the same way. So a million dollar question here arises which one is better for your business: In-house Marketing or Agency Marketing?

Which one to rely on Agency Marketing or In-House Marketing?

Agency Marketing

When you do agency marketing, you hire a third party for handling your business’ marketing. There are several marketing agencies to choose from depending on your business niche, which can provide A to Z services for marketing. No matter how small or big, a marketing agency has a team of experts capable of managing all your marketing affairs.

Finding a marketing agency that best suits your business and understands your brand and mission can completely take the burden of marketing off your plate. All you need is to develop a relationship with your marketing agency and let them help you grow and do all the marketing stuff on your behalf.

In-house Marketing

In-house marketing might be quite economical, but you have to hire marketing professionals for your company and train them to work together with your entire staff. You can train your team the way you like and make them work on specific goals and expertise in mind. This marketing is quite tilted on the disadvantageous side as the team you hired may not necessarily learn quickly or adopt new marketing strategies and that team won’t take risks for your business and work the way you train them, which ultimately gives you the burden of creating a marketing strategy.

What does a typical In-house Marketing team look like?

Deciding the type of marketing for your business is always your call as who knows your business better than you, right? Perfect marketing is the key that defines your business’ marketing goals, and you need to determine whether you want in-house marketing initiatives or require outside experts’ assistance.

Key factors to consider while deciding between In-House marketing and Agency Marketing:

Factor #1: Your Company Culture, Vision, and Values

Nowadays, most businesses prefer working with marketers capable of taking their business marketing to a whole new level. If you, too, are such a business firm who finds it better to work with marketers who get along with your company’s culture, vision, and values that you have set for yourself, then you are more likely to grow in better ways. Also, in general, it’s quite easier to hire a team internally for your marketing strategies as that team is your own employees who are more closely invested in your company’s success and growth rather than an external marketing team. It is a well-known fact that for external agencies working with several businesses just like yours, it becomes tough to understand your company’s day-to-day cultural values.

Factor #2: The Need for Wide-Ranging Skill-sets

You very well know your business’s nature and need, and that’s how you make strategies. Your in-house team needs to be skilled in different fields like web development, social selling, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising. This is not an easy task to build an in-house team equipped with all these skills.

The agencies which are already working with businesses like yours already have a team with all the above skills. In other words, hiring an agency for your business marketing can prove to a one-stop-shop for all your marketing needs.

If you are planning to recruit a digital marketing agency or an in-house marketing team for your business, you should dedicate some time and patience in researching for the same by keeping in mind all the outcomes you are expecting from them.

Factor #3: Keeping a Competitive Edge with Industry Best Practices

You being a business company, must be well aware of the evolving landscape of the digital marketing world. The need to stay ahead in the competition is also a well-known case scenario for you. It’s not necessary that the tactics or tools that provided you a great number of leads previously would provide you the same every time. With the growing competition, technologies are changing at a lightning pace, and keeping with that change is the only key that will promote your business.

This is simply a cakewalk for Digital Marketing Agencies to keep your marketing latest and greatest always. This is because marketing agencies often adapt to the latest technology as they have access to the same sources. On the other hand, this is not the case with an in-house marketing team.

Factor #4: A (Much) Larger Network of Brainpower

This is quite simple to understand that an in-house marketing team that you hire for your business marketing campaigns is not much exposed to large networks as they were hired by you and are only familiar with your business. No matter how skilled your in-house marketing team is, but this advantage can make you pay in the long run. On the other hand, an agency providing marketing services are more likely to have supplementary sources and resources to promote your business on a whole new level. 

So if you are ever in need of marketing services, you need to think about what is best for your business and agendas; they could be video production, script-writing, social media promotion, email marketing, etc. For all these requirements, hiring an agency marketing could be your best bait.

Factor #5: Easy Communication

You need to have efficient communication if you want your business marketing to run smoothly. This best works with an in-house marketing team that you hire internally for your business. You can conduct various sessions with your marketing team members that will let them feel more connected to your business.

Digital Marketing Agencies, on the other hand, are not easily accessible as they are working with other businesses as well, along with yours. In this case, you might feel left out as well, sometimes. Day-to-day communication is not possible with them as they have to look into their every client’s needs. They would prefer weekly or monthly meetings regarding your campaigns’ progress and share reports of the same. 

Although both methods work, it’s always your call that you’ll choose which one.

Factor #6: Access to Tools and Platforms

While a digital marketing team can access several difficult tools for an individual business, like yours, to buy, when you hire a digital marketing agency, you no longer have to worry about researching or purchasing marketing tools or software for your marketing campaigns. These keywords are more important than you think. If you hire an in-house marketing agency, you would need more budget than you have estimated to buy all the tools. You need not even think about this if you are working with an agency marketing service.

Also, digital marketing agencies have access to more platforms for marketing purposes, then you. So if you consider this point, we would highly recommend you go with a digital marketing agency without any second thought.

All about Digital Marketing Agency

Pros of a digital marketing agency

How sure are you about the effectiveness of your current traditional marketing campaigns? Suppose you are unable to answer this question. In that case, it’s high time you switch to digital marketing services and start investing in them to drive valuable results for your business’ marketing campaigns.

Let’s drive into the following undeniable advantages of agency marketing for your business

Cost-effective

One of the biggest benefits of agency marketing is that it not only generates more leads for you but also is cost-effective.

With traditional marketing, it would become quite difficult for you to compete with large businesses as they have more money advertising and sources to make their marketing campaigns successful. On the other hand, digital marketing methods will put your business on the same playing field as your competitor.

Easily Measurable

True, it is essential to invest in a proper marketing strategy, but it is more important to track those strategies and know if they are driving results for you and helping your business grow.

In- house marketing methods don’t allow you the same, while in agency marketing, you can track your campaign’s results accurately rarely.

Helps you in targeting customers

Out of all the perks, the most significant one is it makes you able to target your potential customers. It’s a challenge to obtain leads through an in-house marketing team, but via agency marketing, you reach the specific people who exactly match your business niche.

Improves match version Rate

Investing in agency marketing services like Conversion Rate Optimization(CRO), you ultimately increase your conversion rate as it gives you the ability to target more potential customers for your business. A better conversion rate is always a plus point that helps you grow effectively.

The expertise of a digital marketing agency

The expertise to have a marketing agency that has a team of experts who can develop has integrated all your marketing needs. Digital Marketing Agencies have both inbound and outbound marketing strategies, including SEO, PPC, advertising, social media and content marketing, etc. They help you with devising a strategy, providing you creative insights and designs so that you can stand out in the competition.

But also keep in mind that not all the agencies expertise in all the above factors, and that is where you need to do a little homework. Ask the agency you are planning to hire if they are well aware of the above technologies or not. This will help you in the long term run when you start getting results for your business marketing campaigns. This is why you need to have complete knowledge of all your needs would be fulfilled or not, and if that agency understands your needs and the values of your business.

Capabilities of a digital marketing agency 

Now, you must be curious to know what a digital marketing agency is capable of doing for your business’ growth. Have a look at them too: 

Social Media Marketing

There is no denying that today, social media is the most powerful network that can grow and take down any business in seconds. An excellent digital marketing agency is well equipped with how to turn the power of social media in favor of your business campaign.

Content Marketing

You very well know the importance of finding the right content, which has the ability to engage your audience. It is essential to earn your audience’s trust, and good content opens that door for you. It would not be wrong to say that “content is the king” and can set you apart in the competition.

Community Building

Even if you are just starting with business marketing, the first and foremost thing you need to do is focusing on building a strong community. Building a community is also important as it improves SEO, and also you become a trusted brand among your audience.

Agency Marketing services are beneficial in providing you a constant engagement as they target your business’s people’s niche, which is always a plus point for you.

Influencer Marketing

To stay one step ahead of your competitors, it is essential to identify your relevant influencers. Anyone capable of affecting your business positively could be an influencer to you, and you need to harness their expertise in order to grow. Digital Marketing agencies are a big help in this too.

Software and Tools used by a digital marketing agency

When you hire a digital marketing agency, you no longer have to worry about researching or purchasing marketing tools or software for your marketing campaigns. This is because marketing agencies are well equipped with all the marketing tools like keyword research that you would need for your campaigns.

Having years of working experience, some digital marketing agencies have software that can measure and track your online marketing campaigns. This software uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, through which they track your marketing strategies and ultimately help your business in generating leads.

Here’s a list of the tools that you should enquire about before hiring a marketing agency: 

File Storage Tools

To store all the files as a backup so that you have all the information available at one click

Customer Relationship Management tools

Look out if the agency you are hiring has the tools to manage their relationship with your business

Project Management Tools

What is the use of hiring an agency if they don’t pay attention to keeping a project management tool? You must put that too on your checklist.

Resource Planning Tools

Make sure the agency you hire has access to all the relevant resources for your business marketing strategies and that they have all the relevant tools for the same

Reporting Tools

When you hire an agency, it’s your right to have timely reports of all the campaigns they are running for your business so that you know if your business is growing effectively or not. Watch out for these tools as well.

Diverse specialties of a digital marketing agency

Social Media Management

A digital marketing agency promotes your business on all social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. Which helps you attract customers.

Email marketing

By email marketing, you can directly get in touch with your potential customers or target audience. Digital Marketing makes that feature available for you

Paid Advertising

Digital Marketing Agencies provide you all sorts of paid marketing for your business to reach an even more comprehensive range of audiences.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Digital Marketing is capable of converting your visitors into customers and customers into buyers. This helps you in gaining popularity very quickly and thus increases your profits.

SEO

A good digital marketing agency is your key to a better SEO by making you rank on search engine pages.

Web Design

You need to update your website regularly according to the change in technologies, and digital marketing agencies can help you with that. A well-designed website doesn’t only bring a new audience for you but also increases your revenue.

Copywriting

In today’s era, when digital marketing is significant everywhere, copyright has become more significant than ever. A marketing agency is capable of getting your reader to take action on your website through this technique.

Cost Comparison between In-house Marketing and Agency Marketing

Let’s look into the cost of In-house Marketing and Agency Marketing to help you get more clearer and to let you decide which one to choose: 

In-House Marketing

If you hire an in-house marketing team for your business marketing campaigns, you need to keep each member( in your marketing team ) in mind. The median salary of a marketing manager or multiple marketing specialists full-time ranges between $60,000 to $70,000. However, the cost of each campaign entirely depends on your marketing needs; that is why you should make a proper plan before making a decision.

You may think that if you hire a single person, you would need to spend less on your marketing strategy. This fact might be accurate, but this is also true that the process of hiring might belong as you need to train that person and make sure that he/she fits appropriately in your business.

Apart from this, you need to have a proper space for them in your company to work and have to spend on computers and programs and other things that they need.

Agency Marketing 

A Digital Marketing Agency, on the other hand, offers you different plans to choose from. You may select any plan from the pre-set price based on your business type and marketing needs. One plus point here is that they are negotiable.

An agency has a team of experts, its own software tools, tech, and all the other requirements that take the whole burden off your head. 

Cons

Everything, no matter how good, does come with some disadvantages. Have a look at some of them-

Based on Location

There are several agencies worldwide, which could be a disadvantage for you if you are planning to extend your business on a local level and want a local marketing company for the same. Even if you find a perfect company for your marketing needs and they are abroad, then also you are at a loss here.

So if you are planning to work for such an agency, you need to do a lot of research and have a backup plan too if that doesn’t work. 

Multiple clients

Having a good relationship with your digital marketing agency is something that always gives you an advantage over your competitors. The fact that an agency works with a number of businesses at a time may make you feel a bit left out. Though this is not the same while working with an experienced and client-focused marketing team.

A good agency is one that understands your needs and goals prior to you, and that is how they make you feel like they are part of your business team. In any case, if you are not feeling the above facts, then probably it’s time for you to change your marketing agency.

Control

When you trust some agency, you need to give them some freedom to carry out their work more efficiently. If you are someone who wants to have complete control over your business, then hiring an agency marketing team might prove to be some pain for you.

Digital Marketing Agencies work best when you allow them to devise your marketing strategy or let them carry your marketing campaigns. This provides them the freedom to make strategies that work best for your marketing tactics and help you grow positively. That is why you are advised to give some freedom to the agency you hire.

Comparison between: In-house and Agency Marketing

Pros of In-House Marketing Team

Dedicated and focused team

The best reason to hire an in-house marketing team could be that you will be having a team of dedicated on-site staff. An in-house team is available 24*7 for you and is 100% focused on your business.

Stronger knowledge of the brand

If there is someone who knows your business best, then these are your employees. This means that your in-house marketing team knows your customers, culture, and industry well.  

Better access to resources

Since your in-house marketing team is on-site, they have better access to your business’ audience and processes.

Cons of an In-House Marketing Team

Expensive

The in-house marketing team is on the expensive side as you have to pay each employee separately and also pay for their needs at your office.

Lack of skills

If you have a low budget, you won’t hire the best skilled in-house marketing team for your business.

Tunnel vision

The in-house marketing team is often behind in acquiring new marketing trends, making your marketing still or stale. They are not exposed to the world outside your business, which leads to a lack of ideas in them.

Pros of a Marketing Agency

Breadth and depth of knowledge

After hiring a digital marketing agency, you are relieved from all the marketing problems because they have profound knowledge of every aspect.

Cost-effective

You won’t be worrying about your budget with an agency marketing team as they provide a variety of plans to choose from

Access to technology and resources

A digital marketing agency is always equipped with all the essential tools which your business might not easily access. They give you all the data and resources for a seamless marketing campaign for your business.

Cons of a Marketing Agency

Less access and attention

Since an agency is working with more than one business at a time, you would have less access and attention.

Slow learning curve

If the agency is not an expert in your niche, it would take some time to understand your business.

Requires management

Some of your employees do need to manage the outside marketing agency to manage their efforts and introduce them to your business.

In-House vs Agency Marketing: How to decide which one is best for you?

Are you still confused about which marketing type between in-house and agency is best for you? We are here to help you compare both, have a look:

Skillset

Skillset is defined as the skills required to complete a job or project successfully.

It depends on your budget. If you can afford to hire multiple people with different skill sets and train them to work according to your requirements, you should go with in-house marketing. But if you want a team to go with each marketing strategy altogether, then hiring an agency makes more sense.

Creativity

Creativity is nothing but the use of imagination to develop original out of the box ideas for your marketing campaigns.

An in-house team hired by you may or may not be very familiar with your business working style, but an experienced agent and has worked with several businesses like yours is always full of creative and great ideas for your business marketing campaigns.

Adaptability

Adaptability is the ability to adapt to situations or tasks that change with time.

Your marketing team needs to be adaptive to any change that often occurs in the field of digitalization. If your agenda is to have constant communication and gradually change your project or campaign, you should consider going with an agency marketing team.

What types of digital marketing can agencies perform better?

Digital marketing agencies tend to have more capabilities in using these tactics: 

SEO

Let us start with SEO, which is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. This simply means making your business website optimized for search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. It ranks high on these search engine result pages, which improves your visibility. In turn, you receive more audience. Think from the visitors’ point of view, would you bother to scroll more than two pages while searching? No, right? This is the sole reason that you need a good SEO value to rank high on SERPs. This is quite a long process and takes time before it gives you some positive results.

Digital Marketing Agencies provide you the information about your place among your competitors by doing keyword research and ranking analysis of your website. By this process, they optimize your website and build good quality content for you so that your website can rank up high on search engine result pages. They also build quality links for you, which helps your website crawl up on SERPs efficiently. When a user searches for the solution to their problem, Google does research and returns the most relevant results to their queries; this is why you need to have a good SEO value.

PPC

PPC is an acronym for Pay-per-click, and this is a kind of advertising technique on search engines. Unlike SEO, it is a way of moving up on the search engine result pages by paid methods. When you hire a digital marketing agency, they promote your website in different ways, and this is one of those ways, and you are charged every time someone clicks on your advertisement. The cost you are going to spend ultimately depends on your website’s quality score, the number of clicks, and the competition among the keywords you have selected.

PPC campaigns can be short term campaigns when you want to promote your product for a particular season or for a short period.

Selecting appropriate keywords in this method is crucial. There is no denying that digital marketing agencies are experts in keyword research, and they can provide you the right keywords for a PPC campaign on your business website. Not only do they find appropriate keywords, but they also don’t charge you much for that. You need to stay a step ahead of your competitors and not have some positive leads.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is yet another form of marketing or rather say, a direct form of marketing as it involves keeping in touch with those people of yours who have already been your customers in the past. It consists of sending them information about new features or promotions running on your website directly into their email inbox. It is a technique of luring them in by providing some loyalty discounts too.

Your email will disappear if you don’t make it eye-catching, and for this, you need to address your customers with their names to make them feel more connected.

A digital marketing agency can be a big help in this regard as they can save your time in creating those personalized emails. They use tools that can not only assist you but also provide you the right audience to target. They use your existing mail list to send in the advertising emails directly to your potential customers. Always keep in mind that this remarketing technique is very frequently used by your competitors to lure in the audiences. That is why you need to acquire this technique too. This simply brings in more traffic to your website.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is proving to be the most powerful tool in the present scenario, and if you are not advertising on social media, you are losing too much. You can advertise on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. So that your business grows at a faster rate. For this purpose, you need to invest in agencies providing social media marketing services.

Like other campaigns, where you target your niche audience via ads, the same is done on social media platforms, flooding with your niche audience, waiting for you to reach them. Digital Marketing agencies collect data of users who might be interested in taking services from your business. This information can be used effectively by you in advertising your business, services, products, etc. Social media marketing can be a long-term and short-term campaign for you as per your needs. Thus, maintaining your social media is the key to digital marketing in this age. Target your audience via ads, and you will see tremendous growth in your business sales.

Website Design

In today’s fast-evolving digital market, your company’s website is considered one of the most important digital marketing channels. Your website can make or break the first impression of your website in the eyes of your visitors. You need to provide the relevant information that your visitors are looking for and provide them the necessary information about your product and services.

Website design involves many factors, and you need to keep in mind all those factors while designing a website for your business. Providing a seamless surf experience to your visitors should be on the top of your priority list and the layout, images, designs, logos, etc.

A digital marketing agency assists you in developing an attractive and optimized website for your business. Their team of experts makes sure that your site is clearly labeled, user friendly, and easy to navigate. They also make sure that your website can provide relevant information to the users. This ultimately acts as a funnel and converts your visitors into buyers and which is a massive success for your business.

Monarch Web World is a full-service digital marketing agency

Now that you have reached the end of this article, we assume that you have decided to hire a Marketing Agency to take your business to a whole new level, then Monarch Web World is the one-stop destination for all your needs.

Monarch Web World is a Google AdWords Certified Marketing Agency with 8+ years of experience with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. We provide you our services in Marketing Management, Digital Strategy, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Advertising, and Sales, Agency Management & Business Partner Management.

If you are looking for an agency to help you in your marketing campaigns, Monarch Web World will help.

Read more: 7 Unique hacks to stay creative with an SEO-driven Content Strategy