Can I Afford to Hire a Marketing Firm? Understanding the Costs vs ROI

Digital marketing has crept its way into the "essential" category for almost any small business. 

It's important to be present online, but it's also key to push your content and digital presence. The nice thing about most popular platforms is that you're given the tools to market yourself. 

The flip side of that coin is that your results aren't guaranteed to go anywhere if you don't put in the time. This begs the question: is a digital marketing firm worth it?

We're going to explore the value and return on investment of working with a marketing team in this article, hopefully giving you a nudge in the right direction. 

Let's take a look.

The Value of Working with a Marketing Firm

Let's start out by looking at why you should be marketing your business online in the first place.

It's pretty clear that people spend a good deal of time online, whether they're on their phones or at their computers at home. You can walk down a busy street and hardly find anyone to make eye contact with.

The sites that people are most hooked to are social media sites, which make their revenue primarily from advertising. That means their interest is in creating the most effective advertising tools. 

This is a huge benefit to small businesses that might not have a massive marketing budget as it is. Social media platforms and search engines are equipped with advertising that trumps any of the traditional forms of marketing like television, newspapers, or billboards. 

You can literally target the types of individuals you want to market to and reach thousands of them in a matter of hours. Couple that with the fact that people use search engines and social media to do most of their product research and discovery, and digital marketing becomes a no-brainer. 

The Fundamentals of Digital Marketing and Their Impact

Our most-used platforms make advertising simple, but that doesn't mean it's always easy. 

Digital marketing consists of a few primary factors that work together to boost your bottom line. Generally speaking, these are SEO, SEM, social media, PPC advertisements, and content creation. 

Each of these factors is composed of a web of thought out tactics to increase exposure and user engagement. Let's do a brief examination of these areas of digital marketing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the heaviest hitter in a great digital marketing campaign. Optimization is the challenge of making your website meet the standards of the search engine algorithms in order to rank for specific keywords. 

The algorithms are always changing and so are the keywords that you're trying to rank for. Each piece of content, page on your site, link, keyword, header, and subheader should be created with optimization in mind. There's a lot involved in optimizing successfully. 

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads

SEM and PPC are methods of displaying content to individuals in your target demographic. Most of the sponsored posts and ads you see on your social media feeds are some form of PPC. Further, the suggested posts and products you find as you're scrolling search results are forms of SEM. 

The key here is to hammer down your target audience and optimize your ads and posts for the correct keywords. Additionally, there's an art to posting at the right times, circling back to second-time users, and crafting posts in an effective way.

Social Media

We're all familiar with social media and its function. It's important to remember, though, that social media requires a different attitude when you're using it for business. 

Your mind should be geared toward engagement, content schedules, successful ads, shares, and conversions. These are all metrics of success that come after a series of thought out decisions. 

Your success on social media can impact your search engine optimization results and vice versa. 

Content Creation

Content creation is the piece that ties all of your other efforts together. It's almost impossible to find success online without content that's well-researched and relevant to the interests of your users. 

Digital material should be created in response to keyword research when your goal is optimization and increased results. Let's say you're a marketing firm, and you want to create a post that ranks well in Google. 

Your cursory research might tell you that "marketing firms near me" is a trending keyword. Your response might be to create a post that details the process of finding a great marketing firm in your area. 

This way, you create content in your field of expertise, you know that people are searching for your target keyword, and you know that you're giving the answers to questions that people are actually interested in.

What Does All of This Do for Business?

All of these factors work together to bring business to your door. You'll find that your website is bustling with new customers, your in-store traffic is increased, and your sales show steady improvement as things start to take off. 

Those factors are the end result, but a lot of the ROI of marketing is exposure and engagement with your brand. These metrics lead people into your sales funnel and get them started on the path toward making a purchase. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that absence online is just a way for your competitors to edge you out. 

Why a Firm is the Way to Go

You might have noticed that all of the information above seems like a lot of work. Digital marketing is a full-time job for any company. 

The cost of working with a marketing agency is far smaller than hiring a full-time employee or group of employees to take on this crucial work. An agency will give you the expertise and confidence of a full team without incurring huge costs.

Interested in Learning More?

A marketing firm can take your digital presence to the next level. Your bottom line will boost and you'll be glad that you took the risk of getting out there online. 

If you're still a little uncertain about the particulars, we're here to help. Contact us for more information on how you can start moving forward with digital marketing.