Today, finding the best-fit marketing specialist or agency solution for the unique needs of your business is more complex and confusing than ever. Given the current fragmentation of the service provider landscape, finding the right specialist can be a stressful and time-consuming process, one that often deters businesses from sourcing professional marketing help entirely.
The truth is, finding the best fit solution to outsource your marketing requirements to doesn’t need to be a difficult task. With the right knowledge and a comprehensive database of suitable specialists and agencies, hiring should be something that removes your pressures, not adds to them.
If you’re looking to hire the services of a marketing specialist or agency, consider these tips for finding the right fit for your business and use our DIY and/or concierge search functions to find your best fit marketing solution be they locally or interstate based.
The first key step in finding the best fit specialist for your business is to be clear about what your organisation requires. Once you’ve established your needs, you can start the process of shortlisting (and ultimately selecting) your partner.
Engaging any marketing service provider should be approached as a calculated risk. It can be a significant expense and influence the outcome of your business decisions, so you need to take an objective, insightful look at all the potential pros, cons, and associated risks.
Growth & Search minimises these risks for you, not only by presenting you with a carefully curated portfolio of best-in-class agencies but also by helping you make better decisions about who to select. We don’t accept any old marketing providers to our database – they must be approved through our referencing process and then benchmarked against our best practices checklists and related content.
Once you’ve identified and shortlisted your best-fit marketing agency specialists using the platform, we recommend you always make initial contact by phone. Email and contact forms may seem like the easier option, but having direct contact with their customer service representative will help you get a better feel for their potential fit.
Even better, arrange a personal visit to their offices, where you can meet the team and fire some probing questions their way to see if you like their answers. Initial questions you may want to consider asking include:
We recommend you pick a minimum of two to three specialists and/or agencies for initial comparison and then narrow your list down to two for final selection before committing to a contract. However, this may vary depending on the scope of your marketing project and the levels and scope of specialisation required from your best-fit marketing provider.
In a perfect world, hiring a qualified specialist in any profession would guarantee the high-quality results you are looking for, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. When figuring out who is the best fit for you, here are some helpful tips to keep in mind:
Small provider businesses often have a more creative, collaborative approach with lower rates. Many businesses think that by going to large providers, they’re guaranteed high-quality work, however, that is often far from the case.
Many large providers outsource their work to smaller agencies or design firms due to the volume of work they get, or simply to make a bigger profit margin. It’s cheaper for them to outsource than it is to hire full-time employees, so large providers typically have core staff who work on the most important projects and then use partner firms, subcontractors, or freelancers to handle the rest.
In order to compete with the bigger providers, small creative specialists and agencies focus on teamwork and creativity. In many cases, small teams are carefully crafted to consist of talented individuals that excel in their area of expertise, who all work together to achieve a common goal. For this reason, smaller providers are often able to deliver outstanding results in a shorter amount of time. They will typically also be able to offer competitive pricing due to their lower overheads.
Today’s marketing ecosystem is complex, and agencies are now required to have a significant amount of skills, competencies, and knowledge to stay up to date with all technologies and platforms. This demand is challenging, not to mention difficult to sustain.
A full-service agency offers a one-stop-shop arrangement, providing an array of skills with a host of experts available under one roof. An advantage of using full-service marketing agencies is that they’re better placed to provide customers with campaign cohesion across multiple channels and strategies, as the project is managed collectively by one team. This allows the benefit of collective synergy in creativity and more timely outcomes.
In theory, working with a full-service agency makes complete sense, as having one agency voice to communicate with and manage makes life that little bit easier. However, the reality is this integration is often more difficult to achieve than you might think, and working with full services agencies isn’t always smooth sailing.
As a downside, the one-voice approach of the project leader means the diversity of specialist perspectives and challenges often go unnoticed. Also, when dealing with full-service agencies, work is often passed around and can be handed to junior or less experienced staff, especially when it comes to social media marketing.
A specialist marketing agency offers highly specific knowledge in a certain domain, providing skills and insights with expert focus and personal delivery.
If you’re running several projects with multiple specialists, naturally this approach will require greater levels of communication and inter-agency coordination. However, campaign cohesion can still be achieved by having a contact person for each agency, an integrated marketing plan, and establishing appropriate agency protocols upfront.
When choosing a best-fit marketing solution, whether it be a full-scale agency or specialist provider, the key to a positive return on investment is for the provider to have expert skills in a particular competitive service area. Both models have their merits, and it may be worth considering a combination of full-service and specialist agency models to get the best possible outcomes.
Overall, what really matters is understanding the experience and skill level of those who will actually be doing the work. If an agency outsources, sends work offshore, or is operating under a white-label service, these approaches present an added risk to your marketing project and you need to carefully consider those risks before going down that path.
Once you’re satisfied on that front, take time to do your research, with basic pre-preparation and due diligence around what you need before starting to search and select your best-fit solutions.
When you reach out to marketing specialists and agencies, make sure you’ve prepared a marketing brief first.
Providing users with a database of high-quality, professional marketing specialists and agencies with outstanding reputations for providing expert service is something we at Marketing Search take very seriously. It is our mission to help users find their best-fit marketing solution for their unique needs and to do this, our selection criteria adhere to a strict list of values and guidelines.
We believe that no one agency is the best option for everyone, and as such, we are impartial on selection or promotion. We simply deliver a detailed search function and display of reputable, qualified providers to make it easier for you to find the best-fit marketing agency for your project and business overall.
Email us with your requirements and we can assist you in finding your best-fit marketing solution today at enquiry@developer.wordpress-developer.us
Written by Neil Anderson
20th December14th , 2022
Written by Neil Anderson
20th December 2022
Neil Anderson is the founder and director of Growthandsearch.com a privately owned business specialising in the provision of business growth-related knowledge and services for Australian small and medium size businesses operating in the services sectors.