How a Marketing Agency Can Improve Your Marketing ROI

Marketing’s role in business is becoming increasingly important because the sales process has changed.

But for many businesses, it’s hard to see the ROI that the in-house marketing team produces.

Why isn’t the in-house marketing team generating the growth and leads your sales team needs?

Many Marketing Teams are in the Weeds

Marketing’s ever-increasing role across the organization spreads
marketing teams thin.

The VP of Marketing’s job is to focus on strategy. Instead of handling the big picture, several VPs I know are dragged into the tactical weeds creating blog posts and slide decks and making website updates.

Improve Results Inside by Looking Outside

The value of an in-house marketing team is undeniable. The depth and breadth of product knowledge, company culture, brand expertise is hard to achieve elsewhere.

But few in-house marketing teams have all of the skills necessary to drive the ROI the executive team wants to see.

A marketing agency can improve the ROI of your marketing efforts by giving your marketing team the strategic and tactical support they need to succeed.

How a Marketing Agency Adds Value to Your Team

Offers a Fresh Perspective to Existing Problems

When faced with stagnant marketing growth and internal pressure to deliver leads, in-house marketing teams can have trouble approaching problems from a new angle. Plus, they are feeling the pressure internally from the boss and others. This pressure can stifle innovation.

It is an agency’s responsibility to stop and reassess the problem. A good agency stops, steps back, and double checks that the marketing foundation is solid.

Agencies can also tap into a wider range of experience and knowledge. Their experience working with a variety of clients across industries helps them staying on the cutting edge of trends and audience expectations. This outside perspective can help reset a direction or give a new approach to a nagging issue.

As outsiders, marketing agencies are not beholden to the unspoken processes or historical reasons behind the choices. They can speak directly and candidly, even to the boss.

Agencies are not biased by the idea of “this is how we’ve always done it.”

Brings Expertise

Marketing requires an ever-increasing breadth of skills and knowledge: SEO, SEM, CRO, copywriting, web design, web development…

The list is endless

Hiring an in-house marketing team that has all of these skills is expensive.

Relying on an agency means no payroll taxes, no benefit costs, no onboarding, no training. Just expertise, out of the box.

Agencies offer access to specialized experts on a fractional basis. When working with an agency you pay for only the time and involvement from each expert as needed.

And the expertise pool with an agency is deep. Agencies employ expert marketers in-house that can help focus your strategy, coordinate outsourced specialists, and make sure all efforts are pointing in the same direction to meet your marketing goals. The agency works with your in-house team, imparting their skills and strategies, improving and driving your in-house team further.

How an Agency's Fractional Expertise Impacts Your Bottom Line

Offers Access to Other Resources

Agencies have the latest tools and resources to help them do their jobs well. They have tools for forecasting, research, production work, and reporting. By hiring an agency, you get access to the output from these resources that the agency team uses for your projects.

But the resources don’t end there. Agencies foster strong partnerships and relationships, especially with press contacts, media companies, and other vendors. Agencies leverage these relationships for your benefit. You reap the reward without having to invest the years and resources developing and maintaining the relationship.

Defines and Manages Expectations

One of the most significant sources of friction when working with in-house teams is the frustration and delays that result from not clearly defining the scope and expectations for each project. The informal nature of working with in-house teams lends itself to assumptions of time, resource allocation, and priorities. Project success is not clearly defined.

That is not an issue when working with an agency. Before any project begins, you and the agency will agree upon the scope, goals, timelines, expectations, and metrics for success. The scope and duration of the project are defined.

In-House + Agency Can Improve Marketing ROI

The expertise of your in-house marketing team is invaluable. They provide the subject matter expertise and cultural insight that makes you stand out to prospects. But they can't create successful marketing campaigns alone. Providing them with the budget for campaigns, specialists, support, etc., is critical to the success of your business.

Partnering with a marketing agency can give your in-house team more resources to do more, do it better, and do it faster.