Should I Hire a Digital Marketing Agency?

Hello friends! Chad here and let’s continue with some more SEO Bullsh*t. Now the main question here is “Should I Hire a Digital Marketing Agency?” And, this is a great question. I may have a bias answer for you but what I can promise you is that it will be the truth. I first thought about the topic as friends ask me all the time, “should I Hire a Digital Marketing Agency or should I do it myself; what marketing agency would you recommend; what’s the best agency for SEO; and so forth. Matter of fact, you may be surprised by my answer. Like I said from the beginning, I use to work for marketing agencies and IT companies so I am a little bias. The question then needs to be…

Would I Personally Hire a Digital Marketing Agency?

With all my experience in marketing over the past twenty years, I like to ask myself the same question.  Maybe I am a little crazy or playing devils advocate, but I like to ponder such questions because I get asked all the time. But let’s stay focused here. What would my answer be? Hmm…and the answer is, drumroll please…No! This is exactly what I tell my friends! They ask me the same question and I also state, 

“I would never personally hire a Digital Marketing Company, an IT Company or a SEO Company to manage anything of mine.”

Now, of course that is easier said than done, right? Because not everybody knows how to do digital marketing or SEO services. But the thing is, we have to learn. This might not be what you want to hear but sometimes in life you need someone to tell you the truth. Because, when it comes down to business, when people lie to you or just tell you what you want to here–it’s detrimental to your business. You need the truth!

What’s the Issue with Marketing Agencies?

The main reason I wouldn’t hire a marketing agency is the fact that they are trying to scale a job that is considered to be full-time. Think about it this way. Before digital media companies became popular, companies would hire an employee to do their marketing and/or SEO (search engine optimization). Now, the issue with SEO and marketing is that it is very time consuming. It is real work! There are no shortcuts. But yet, marketing agencies are trying to scale these services. What I mean by scale, is the only way marketing companies make money is by bringing on more and more clients.

In essence, if the goal is to increase profits and the only way is by increasing cliental. Well, more cliental equals less efficiency and then shortcuts are created. When I mean shortcuts, I am being polite at this point. Companies will sell you a SEO Package and totally lie to you about even doing the work because they are gambling on the aspect that you do not know.

 

My Interview Example 

For example, I just interviewed for a company looking for a Digital Marketing Manager. They focused on paid media, which is inorganic traffic. I asked “How many clients do you have?” They said around 80 clients. I asked, “what’s your average client investing into ad campaigns?” They stated, “$1000-1500.” So, their niche market is regular consumers with products and small companies. But, what I want you take notice is that they have 80 clients. So, common sense is they are taking shortcuts. Realistically, ad campaigns are easy to scale because once you have it setup, you are justing printing reports to give to the clients. You may only spend an hour a month maintaining the clients ad. But the client thinks you’re working all day on their stuff–It’s just not so.

And It Doesn’t Stop…

Another scenario that happens often is that the marketing agency will have one huge client and all the other clients are consumers and small businesses. You can guess what happens! The company wants to impress their largest client, in other words, all the time is focused on this particular client. All the while, their other clients are neglected. For example, one company that I worked this scenario actually happened. We had one huge client that was losing tremendous business (pretty much on a downward spiral to close its doors). I found out that the CEO had a contractual agreement with the client that if he could turn around the company, increase sales, and keep the business profitable; he had stock options and a percentage of sales from the client. We were pretty much told this is a number one priority. We had no choice but to neglect clients and pretend we were working on their marketing and SEO. Furthermore, at the same time, we were adding more clients to our roster.

“If All This is Going On,

Would You Feel Comfortable Paying a Digital Marketing Company?”

The answer is an obvious “No!” Plus, they are not doing the work either and they are taking short-cuts. These short-cuts are detrimental to your business, brand and ranking.

Or, even if you do hire an agency, you have to micromanage them to make sure the work is getting done, which is a headache. 

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