Why hire a digital marketing agency? This is similar to why market my business? This is a very fair question to ask because after all it involves a client handing money to us in exchange for our services.

The first question to ask yourself before even looking at hiring an agency is am I ready for marketing? Some firms are just getting going so if you aren’t ready to sell you aren’t ready to market. You should certainly start planning a marketing campaign, but unless there is product to sell, there isn’t a reason to market your business.

Once you have decided you are ready to start marketing your service or products, the next thing to decide is how you should market. Should you go a traditional route and put up billboards, create television ads and do direct mail? or do something non-traditional like blog, email marketing or social media?

There is no right answer to this question. Some people believe you need just traditional, while some say we need just digital and still others prefer to spread their dollars around.

The value proposition an outside firm brings to companies can be broken down into four components.

Hiring a company can be cheaper than hiring another employee.

If you are going to hire a marketing person, it’s probably going to cost you $40,000 a year and that’s for entry level. If you want someone with experience, it’s going to cost $80,000 a year and if you want a whiz bang marketing pro then you are looking north of $100,000. When you hire a firm you pay for part of an employee’s time. This gives you the ability to try digital marketing without bringing on an additional head. If the value isn’t there, you can let a firm go which is always much easier than an employee.

Companies can bring proven experience to the table.

When you hire a professional firm, you hire someone who is an expert, well at least that’s what they tell you! Your business might be window fitting or a brand new wrist band that cures a golfer’s putting. Your business is the expert in that goods and service. When you hire a digital marketing firm, they bring that expertise to that product so people can find it on the Internet. Doing it yourself is certainly the cheapest way to do any kind of marketing. But how much money are you leaving on the table with a cobbled together website? How much money are you giving Google without getting any results? How much time are you wasting looking at stats you can’t make heads or tails out of? Rather than figure it out on your own, hire a pro. After all I would certainly hire a plumber than try and fix my own pipes.

Digital marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to market your goods and services.

You can advertise in magazines, do direct mail, buy cheap advertising on TV, but every form of advertising except digital marketing is based on simple brand awareness. If you show your brand to a lot of people they will remember it and call you. Digital marketing does exactly the opposite and gets people when they are looking for something and pulls them onto your website. Rather than pay for ad space or for designs, you simply pay a company to deliver a service that delivers people who are already looking for your product online.

The problem with most advertising is that it isn’t accurate or precise.

If you sent out 10,000 pieces of direct mail, how many people actually looked at the piece of mail? What about if you bought a television ad, how many people actually watched it? And if you bought an add in a magazine, how many people actually saw it? And even if a lot of people see an ad, what did they do with it? Probably nothing. With digital marketing we can tell you how many people saw each ad, we call this an impression. We can tell you on each ad, how many people clicked on it to visit your website and we can tell you once they got on the website how many people actually bought something. No advertising in the world can do that except digital marketing. This gives us control over each ad campaign so we can continually make adjustments. By continually making adjustments you can maximize your advertising dollars and increase the amount of people converting on your website. By using all four components, it’s easier for us to deliver a positive return on investment to our clients.

In other words, if you give us a dollar, we make it into two.