Hiring a Marketing Company Versus Do it Myself

Hello my friends. My name is Chad Napier and Welcome to some more SEO Bullshit. Now, this is going to be no holding back on my advice or it could be my own bias opinions but I feel you will get some great information. Even when I thought about this topic, Hiring a Marketing Company Versus Do it Myself, I ventured on Google to look up current blogs on the subject matter. I was surprised that a lot of the blogs were from actual marketing agencies, SEO Companies and SAAS Software companies who mainly sold to agencies (lol). Kind of funny to me and utterly ridiculous but lets see what these so-called agencies have to say, shall we.

The number one thing I found was…

When to Hire a Social Media Agency

This is one agencies advice: Hiring a social media agency is a better choice if you relate to all these scenarios:

• You don’t have time and bandwidth to micromanage or manage an in-house team.

Seriously, you have to micromanage a Marketing Agency way more, I would rather hire in-house.

• You don’t have more than 2-3 hours a month to contribute to social media marketing in any way.

Hmmm, the average person spends 2 hours and 24 minutes per day on social media–2020 stats.

• You need more business leads and brand awareness with social media in the shortest possible timeframe.

This is only true if you have extra money for ads, which is paid media.

• You have good money to invest every month.

Only in opinion, paying an agency is not an investment. 

 

Pros and Cons of Hiring a Social Media Agency

Pros:

• They have the team of experts to take care of each social network.

This made me laugh. Most marketing teams in agencies have very little experience because they are underpaid. Just research salaries. For example, I interviewed with an agency today for digital marketing manager and the pay was between $20-25 in Los Angeles.

 

• They have the expertise from strategy, planning, publishing to lead generation.

My question, have any of these marketing experts actually built a company, department, startup or an account. Probably not! 

 

• They already may have a database of influencers and a network to start with your promotions.

HAHAHA! Seriously! If they did, it would make sense to me that any marketer working their would create their own product and promote it through the database. Nonsense!

 

Cons:

• The complete social media account management can cost you $1500 to 5000 per month.

This is the only thing that they said was true! Further you can check out some more social media scams here. 

 

Pros to Hiring a Marketing Agency

Lets continue to see what other Agency Blogs have to say…

• • Agencies are experts.

This one makes me sick to my stomach. Most Marketing Agencies hire non-qualified people, mainly do too low salaries. You will be surprised, most agencies will pay a few dollars above minimum wage. Further, you can do your own research on this one – just pretend you want to work for a marketing agency, and check the salaries. You will be shocked.

The way you make money in marketing:

1. You are in charge.
2. You work in-house, not with an agency.

I am not done yet with this one, lets continue…

Now, most of the time, when you are in charge, your staff has very limited experience. This is pretty common in agencies and even in-house, you are surrounded by limited experience. Especially within agencies, most of the time, it is the marketing coordinators, marketing specialists and  SEO specialists working on your business. It is not the SEO Director or the VP of Marketing!

The issue with marketing coordinators, marketing specialists and  SEO specialists working on your marketing needs is that they are new in their career. They have 1 or 2 years of experience. Now, the excuse here, many will state, “well, the Directors or VP’s work hands-on with the client or client file.” This is totally not true and is a lie. 

The BIGGEST issue is that it makes no sense why you would hire a marketing agency that has inexperienced employees giving you advice. Think about it this way. You are an entrepreneur and have a business and you hire a Marketing or SEO Agency, which then, gives your file/business to a coordinator or specialist. Does the marketing coordinator practice what they preach? Do they have a business? Have they built any company or product? Have they built business accounts, departments or done Mergers & Acquisitions? The answer is probably a “No” to all of these questions.  

So, Why are you taking business advice from people who have not done what you want to accomplish?

 

• They have more capabilities. A digital marketing company often comes with skills that in-house teams can’t match, especially internal marketing teams at small-to-midsized businesses. These capabilities can range from accessing beta features in Google Ads to data on effective tactics or strategies.

For one, I would like to know what skill set a digital marketing agency is really going to have over in-house teams?

Now, to be honest, an agency who has larger clients, this will give the agency a little advantage when helping smaller businesses because they see what larger clients are doing in the same field. This could also be a disadvantage because larger clients have a bigger budget and more money to spend on ads and other services. When it comes small businesses, they will not have the same money resources as a large client does.

So, at this point, it comes down to strategy from the agency; strategy comes from experience; and strategy takes time. The more time the agency spends on a client, either they will charge the client more money or just get rid of the client because it takes too much time. For example, if an agency has one client that takes up too much time for various reasons, well that time is money for the agency. The agency is thinking,

“This one client is costing me getting 5 clients.”

So, in this example, it makes business sense to get rid of the one client taking too much time, so you can manage 5 clients in the same amount to time.

• Their marketer’s have more software and tools.

Any company or business can get access to any saas software that agencies use. The issue here is HOW marketing agencies are using all the tools and software. Almost 100% of the time, agencies use all the tools to create fancy reports for their clients. Within the reports are sales tactics to keep the client paying every single month.

Within my experience, it is not efficient how agencies are using these software and tools via reports and most of the time, it is a waste of time and resources. For example, when I am doing my own SEO or marketing, I am not printing myself reports like I do for clients! So, it makes me ask a question – “if I am not creating reports for myself, WHY would I do it for clients?”

Further, I have worked for digital media companies that spend 75% of their time creating reports with numerous Saas Software and preparing for client meetings. To me, this is a huge disadvantage for the client.

• They have diverse specialties.

Most digital media agencies have very small teams with the same skills. Plus, agencies have a habit of hiring staff with limited experience because the salaries are too low.

• Scalability: Compared to an in-house marketing team, an agency can scale quickly to your business.

This I disagree with 100%. An In-house marketing team will understand your brand, voice and product way better than an agency. Most of the time, an agency will end up hurting your brand and voice because they want to take control so they can charge you more money. For example, I always encouraged clients to manage their own social media because it’s their voice and brand that people follow, not Chad’s voice or brand. But I can remember, the CEO getting so upset with me because he wanted us to handle their social media to charge them more money.

If we are supposed to have the best interest for our client, the best is for the client to manage their own social media.

• Cheaper than hiring in-house. 

This is true! It is cheaper to hire a marketing agency rather than hiring an employee in-house. And, the agency will use this as a sales strategy against you. They will say something like…

“In los Angeles, if you hire an expert in SEO & Marketing as an employee, you will have to pay them a minimum monthly salary of $6,000 per month. But with us, with our agency it’s only $2,000 per month.”

Here are have several options to consider.

1. Quality of work from an agency.
2. Can you afford hiring in-house? Now, in my opinion, even if you hire somebody new in their career, this is better than a marketing agency.
3. Do it yourself.

Let’s Continue On with
Hiring a Marketing Company Versus Do it Myself…

The SEO BS continues…

• Marketing is a Full Time Gig – You Don’t Have Time for That
• Hiring a Marketing Expert Saves Time & Money
• An Opportunity to Learn & Grow
• Social Media Marketing Is Complex: You Need an Expert
• Improve the Bottom Line with a Marketing Expert

What Should I Do, Chad?

This is a great question and I actually get it all the time from friends and acquaintances. My usual answer is, “I would never hire a marketing agency!” 

1. For one, I have worked for many of them and I know what exactly goes on behind-the-scenes.
2. Now, If you hire a marketing company, you have to understand, you will have to extremely micromanage them.
3. If you micromanage, well from experience, you should just do it yourself OR learn how to do it. Because if you have micromanaged anybody before, you know it is a time waster, it’s stressful and that’s all you worry about if work is being done.

With all this information, the major objection is “I don’t know how” or “I don’t have time.“

1. If you don’t know how: Well, you have to LEARN how. Most small companies, the CEO and COO does the marketing unit the company grows to a point to hire either part-time or full-time a marketing or SEO person.
2. If you don’t have time: You have to make time. You make time for what is the most important. Learning to market is the Number 1 skill.