Your marketing to-do list is growing. There are social media posts to draft and post, advertising campaigns waiting for implementation, and e-newsletters to send. And although a strong marketing plan is critical to your business’s success, you simply don’t have the time or resources to keep up with the growing demands.
When the situation has gotten to this point, business owners and marketing professionals often do one of two things: hire an in-house marketer or enlist the expertise of a digital marketing agency.
Here at Yokel Local, we’ve worked with hundreds of clients who opted for the latter - then watched their lead generation and sales conversions soar. We also understand that hiring a marketing agency can be a big step for a business. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the advantages of hiring Yokel Local to manage your marketing needs vs. hiring an in-house marketer.
First, there are four primary concerns that generally pop up when hiring a marketer: trust, understanding the brand, knowledge of the industry, and effectiveness and success. This is true whether a business owner or marketing executive is looking to hire in-house, freelance, or agency marketers.
And the concerns shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, marketing represents a significant portion of a business’s annual spending. In 2020, WebStrategies reported that marketing budgets for B2B firms are roughly 9-11% of total expenditures, and 5-12% for B2C companies, with costs expected to rise for B2Cs. Business owners and marketing executives want to be sure their investment will get results.
Let’s take a closer look at each of the four concerns:
It’s hard to overstate the importance of trust in business. This is especially true with marketing due to its very public nature. Business owners and senior marketers might worry about whether or not their marketer will protect proprietary information or have their company’s best interests in mind.
Another concern is whether or not the marketer will understand a company’s unique brand or persona, and be able to translate that into strong, authentic marketing material. Luckily, skilled marketers will quickly learn brand familiarity.
Will the marketer understand your industry, especially if they haven’t marketed for it before? Again, this is something that a skilled marketer will learn very quickly and without draining your own time and resources.
Lastly, business owners and marketing executives are obviously concerned about the effectiveness and success of their marketing campaigns. It’s essential that you hire a person or team who will deliver content that will ultimately ensure your business meets its sales and marketing goals.
Now, with those concerns in mind, let’s talk about the factors you need to consider when hiring a marketer. They are:
Here’s a bit more detail on these factors - and how Yokel Local stacks up against an in-house marketer for each of them:
Does the marketing team have the talent required to build effective campaigns? If not, you’ll be spending a lot of money on something that looks nice but doesn’t give you the results (i.e. sales, lead generation, etc.) you need.
An in-house marketer is generally a single-discipline marketer. Meaning, they specialize in one aspect of marketing - good for depth of knowledge, but not good for having the range of skills and expertise you need to make a campaign successful.
When you hire Yokel Local, you gain access to a team of experts in all aspects of digital marketing, from email marketing to SEO to data and analytics. No matter what is included in your overall marketing strategy, our professionals will have the skills and expertise to implement it.
You might assume that in-house marketing will be more cost-effective than hiring an agency. But according to data from Salary.com, hiring an agency vs. an individual can save a company on average $78,000 per year.
Why is hiring an in-house marketer more expensive than hiring an agency? Because the costs go way beyond salary. There’s the cost of recruitment (and the time lost while the position is vacant), benefits, office space, equipment, and unforeseen expenses like unexpected absences from work. Businesses can basically afford to hire two agencies full of experts for the cost of one in-house marketing manager who has limited expertise.
When you hire a marketing agency, you pay a single fee (one of our most popular packages is only $5,000 a month). And included in the fee is not just one employee, but an entire team of marketing experts ready to work for you on day one.
Marketing is a 24-hour endeavor. You need a reliable and competent team that will monitor your marketing streams and be ready to correct any issues or grab any opportunities that appear.
With only one set of eyes keeping watch on your public communications, the likelihood of missing something (say, one of your slogans involves the word “explode” on the day there’s a terrorist attack) could result in public embarrassment - or worse.
You need a responsive and proactive marketing team, and here’s how Yokel Local delivers:
Does your marketer know the difference between front-end tech stacks and back-end tech stacks? Do they understand all the technologies that go into both? In today’s digital world, they have to.
It’s very difficult for a single in-house marketer (or even a small team of 2-3 people) to fully understand all the different technologies that go into running an effective marketing strategy. Plus, it can be daunting or nearly impossible for one or two people to keep up with the latest and greatest technologies and tools for marketers.
At Yokel Local, we employ a vast team of technological experts - some specializing in front-end, others in back-end - with the full range of access to the platforms and tools that are critical to a modern, successful marketing campaign. With a big team of experts, it’s much easier for each of us to stay on top of the best martech.
Marketing trends can change over time or overnight. If your team isn’t able to pivot quickly, you could miss out on a key opportunity or risk coming off as out of touch and inauthentic.
You’ll need to be sure to hire someone who has flexibility and adaptability on their list of marketing skills. It’s possible, but you’re starting to see how you’re asking a lot of one person when you aim to keep your marketing team in-house.
Yokel Local has the experience and the human power to remain hyper-flexible. We’re able to respond quickly (usually within 24 hours) to address any needed changes or problems.
No marketer is going to create effective content if they don’t understand your company’s brand or the larger industry itself. If your team doesn’t understand these factors, their marketing content won’t ring true to your target audience.
Let’s be very honest here: mastery of brand and industry is an area in which in-house marketers tend to excel. When your only client is your own organization, you develop a near instinct for the company’s brand and its industry.
That said, it’s a mistake to assume an outside agency can’t also master your brand and industry. The best marketing companies excel at this, and at Yokel Local, we are confident we have the same learning curve as an in-house marketer - if not better.
How do we do it? By maintaining a team of marketing experts who have years (even decades) of experience with a range of industries. There's a good chance that at least one person on our team has extensive experience with your industry. If not, we're pros at getting up to speed quickly and know the right research to perform and questions to ask to become an expert in your field.
Regular meetings are essential to ensuring you and your marketing team are on the same page. You’ll also need comprehensive reports that will show how your marketing campaigns are performing. A lack of one or the other will lead to costly miscommunication errors or time and money wasted on non-performing campaigns.
Creating marketing content isn’t the same as reporting out its effectiveness, and one person may not be able to maintain sufficient objectivity about their work to report out areas that need improvement. A poor meeting schedule will waste your and your employees’ time.
Here at Yokel Local, we hold monthly comprehensive meetings with our clients, so everything is covered without taking too much of your time. Of course, some clients want to meet more than monthly, and we offer that option as well. Our clients also receive detailed, easy-to-respond-to emails when we need to reach out with questions, and in-depth monthly KPI reports.
In addition to providing industry-leading customer service, Yokel Local maintains a workflow based on the Scrum framework and the agile Sprint process.
What’s Scrum and Sprint and how would it help my business?
In short:
Working together, the Scrum and Sprint method produces faster, more effective marketing strategies.
Here’s how it looks in action for you:
Ready to up your marketing game (and free your precious time while also saving money) by hiring Yokel Local as your digital marketing agency? If you’re ready to make a move or would like more information about how we can serve your specific needs, our free coaching call is your next best step. You’ll meet with our team to review your marketing goals and objectives, and discover our vision for turning them into business success.
We’re standing by, ready to deploy our agile, results-driven online marketing services when and where you need them most.
If you’re not ready for a coaching call yet, learn how we utilize inbound marketing to meet and exceed client sales goals.