Most businesses need marketing agencies for at least some of their advertising. The strategy of bidding out specific marketing tasks that absolutely cannot get done in house, while common, has its benefits as well as its drawbacks. The benefits are getting the right pricing, professional services, on-time delivery and sometimes magic happens and the outcome is fabulous. The drawbacks are a lack of consistency and continuity, no clearly defined brand or brand strategy, difficulty communicating your vision accurately each time you do a project with a new agency, variations in the quality of deliverables and outcomes and no clear strategic marketing plan.
A full service marketing agency of your choosing will often provide the best of both worlds for your business. How do they do that? A full service agency partners with you and gets to know your business, your dreams, your assets, your competitors, your target audience and much much more. Although it is doubtful that they can beat all of the individual pricing you have bid out to competitive agencies over the years, they will almost always be competitive. More importantly, because they know you well and can strategize with you, they will help you maximize your advertising dollars and your MROI.
What Is a Full Service Marketing Agency?
Most of the marketing world has become highly niched in their efforts, which is great if your only marketing need is SEO, but not so great if you also need a new website, social media, some swag, print materials, a sign, etc. And it is even less great when you don’t have a marketing strategy or are in need of a rebranding.
This is where a full service agency can solve all of your problems by working with you on an overall strategy, by offering a brand workshop, and by identifying the specific needs of your business as well as a timeline for approaching them in the appropriate order so that you can stay within your budget. They offer your business all of these marketing agency services under one roof. This also assures that you keep your brand message clear, up front, and focused. Additionally, any need big or small can be met with efficiency and a clear understanding of your brand.
What Marketing Agency Services are Available?
A true full service marketing agency will offer any and all of the services you need. The best of them will even tailor their services to your needs, learning whatever they need to, in order to meet your needs and expectations. While most marketing agency services are limited to what they do best, their specific niche or perhaps who else they can partner with to meet customer needs, a truly full service agency will not only do anything you need, but will also strategize with you to inform you where your marketing plan needs to get a boost and which areas can be pruned.
This is important because what worked in the past probably is not as effective in today’s culture. And if you want to grow your business you need to either;
1) clearly identify your target market or
2) expand into previously untapped markets.
Because full service agencies specialize in doing these things for nearly all of their clients, their marketing agency services are highly tuned to the various needs of all the different target audiences and what are the most effective marketing tools to reach those audiences.
How to Choose a Marketing Agency
There are always a variety of factors to consider when choosing a marketing agency. Where is your business in the growth cycle? Are you considering hiring a marketing director? Do you need a rebranding? Do you have most of what you need already nailed down, but are looking to upgrade your website and pursue search engine optimization (SEO)? Every business is in a little different place as far as their marketing needs are concerned. So where do you start?
One of the key factors for any business looking for a marketing agency is connection. Explore websites and seek for an agency who’s art, design, previous client work, personality, etc., makes a connection with you. Also it is necessary to make sure the agency does the work you are looking to have done. Contact several agencies that interest you and set up an initial meeting where you can explain yourself and determine how responsive and attentive they are to your vision. It is also important to listen to their ideas, questions and suggestions to see if they connect with your vision and reveal that they have listened to you, heard your needs and have thoughtful & workable solution ideas.
Conclusion
When searching for marketing agency services for your new, growing or pivoting business, you will be presented with a lot of different options. Most of these agencies will have one or more specialities in the marketing world and often will choose a niche market (retirement communities or healthcare facilities for instance) to focus their energies on. On the other end of the spectrum are the full service agencies that can provide your business with anything you need, want or can dream of, and do keep everything focused on your brand.
While full service providers are happy to do whatever projects you need done, the best ones become like your own marketing department. They commit themselves to your business and its continued success and growth as if it was their own. They provide you with expert marketing advice and expertise, while also understanding that your budget may limit what you can do. But they also know that as your marketing efforts grow your business, then your business can take the next steps of marketing for further growth.
If you are interested in discovering what is marketing a full service marketing agency, a great place to start is to go to zo.agency and explore all of the amazing possibilities available to your business when you are part of our tribe!
