Should I hire a marketing agency?

So you’re at the point that you’re considering hiring a marketing company to grow your business, but you’re not entirely sure that the investment is going to generate enough of a return to make it make sense.

You may have seen others have success working with agencies, or you may have an agency assuring you they can help, so it’s easy to feel like turning over your marketing is the right thing to do. So, should you hire a marketing agency?

The truth is, you need to be READY to hire a marketing agency before you start asking whether or not you should spend the kind of money an agency is going to ask for. Marketing agencies are great at helping companies to do more of what they are already doing well. Meaning if you’re already selling a healthy amount of products through E-Commerce, an agency can help you sell more. If you’re already running paid advertising successfully, an agency can help lower your costs and grow your audience.

What agencies are historically not good at is working with companies who are struggling to sell products and connect with audiences on their own. That’s not to say that it can’t be done, but you’re going to spend a fortune engaging them to work through what you can and should be doing on your own. Being ready to hire an agency is going to save you time, and more importantly, a substantial amount of money.

So how do you get ready to hire an agency? How do you put yourself in a position that you may not even NEED to hire a marketing agency?

For every company we’ve ever worked with successfully, they’ve got 4 key areas nailed both individually AND as a system. These areas are product, offer, audience, and sales funnel. When you have a great product, a solid offer, the right audience and a converting sales funnel, you’re going to put yourself in the best possible position to grow and scale your business. And you should have these pretty well dialed in before you even start to ask “should I hire a marketing agency?”

Before considering hiring a marketing agency, here are some questions that you should ask yourself to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward with product, offer, audience and sales funnel.

Do you have a great product?

Everyone thinks they have a great product or service, but it’s less about what you think about your product and more about whether the market thinks you have a great product. Ask yourself things like “Does my product or service solve a problem for my audience?” or “Does my product or service create a new opportunity for my audience?”

Great products are more than just high quality ingredients or ethical guarantees, they clearly identify how they are going to improve the lives of the consumer. Start thinking about your product from the perspective of your consumer, as it’s going to be far easier to speak to how your product will make them feel better, look better, do business more effectively than it will be by competing on materials, ingredients, or superior information.

You should be able to clearly communicate the features and benefits of your product or service in a way that doesn’t leave your audience with any questions. The quicker you can get your audience to understand what it is that you are selling them and how it is going to improve their lives, the quicker you’re going to see some sales. If you find that you’re having to explain your product or service over and over to people, it’s clear that you’ve got some work to do.

Am I speaking to the right audience?

Knowing your audience is as, if not more important than having a great product. When you know your audience intimately, it will help you determine where and how to communicate with them, making ALL the difference on how you approach your marketing. Beyond their demographic information, you should know things like how do they feel? Are they frustrated? Are they in some sort of physical pain? Are they worried that they wouldn’t have the time to make the most out of your product or service? Knowing these sorts of things about your audience is going to make it easier to craft your messaging, get that messaging out on the right platforms and connect with them in a more meaningful way.

If you’re not sure if you’re speaking to the right audience, have a conversation with some of the people who have bought your product or service. This can be through focus groups, online surveys, or through asking people to comment their answers on social media. It’s all too common that companies just assume that they are solving their customers’ problems without actually taking the time to talk to them. Putting the effort into getting to know your audience up front is going to save you a ton of headache and resources down the line.

For anyone looking to better understand the reasons people do or do not buy, there’s a great book called “The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy” that will walk you through the way people think and how it informs the way they buy. You can find it HERE.

How strong is my offer?

It’s easy to think that your “offer” is as simple as great pricing on a great product, but a strong offer quickly conveys WHY someone should buy your product or service. A great offer will speak to both the logical and emotional triggers your consumers have, as well as get in front of any objections they may have that would stop them from purchasing.

Think of your offer as if you were standing face to face with a new customer and they had never seen or heard of your product. You wouldn’t just walk up to a stranger and say “Hey! Buy my stuff!”. Since we know that every buying transaction inevitably starts with the customer asking “What’s in it for ME?”,  you’d likely start by quickly showcasing how your product is going to solve the problem they’re having, and then you’d go into all the features and benefits of your product. If they started to object to buying your product, you would potentially have counterpoints that would ease their concerns. You might even show them how your product has solved the problem for other people, or give them confidence through a product guarantee.

Offers online or through advertising are no different. You want your offer to cover everything that you would give to a consumer face to face to be there wherever and whenever a consumer comes across your offer. It doesn’t matter how great your product is or what the price is if your offer is not crafted to convert.

Is your sales funnel ready to convert?

Your sales funnel is the piece that takes your product, audience and offer and organizes them in a way that makes them ready to convert into sales. Now, to be clear we’re not talking about funnel pages offered by some of the funnel softwares out there, we’re talking about the entire sales funnel process. Those softwares are fantastic and will more than likely work to your advantage, but we’ll break those down for you in a different article.

If you google “funnel process” or “funnel stages” you’ll get a number of theories about how you should be structuring your funnel, most of them identifying 4 to 6 stages depending on who you ask. In most cases, you’ll see 1.) Awareness 2.) Interest 3.) Decision 4.) Action 5.) Loyalty. Now before we get lost in the sauce of what each of those mean, you’ve probably already thought about most of these stages already. What will help you more than anything is asking yourself:

1.) Is the messaging congruent with the audience, offer, and product?

2.) Have all friction points that can be removed been removed?

3.) Does each step of the sales funnel make sense to the user?

4.) Can each step of the sales funnel be tracked effectively?

5.) Is the existing funnel currently converting at an acceptable level?

We’ll be doing a whole series about sales funnels in the future, so be sure to join our mailing list to be notified of when that series comes out. In the meantime, there’s a fantastic book called “Dotcom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online with Sales Funnels” written by Clickfunnels founder Russell Brunson that lays out just about everything a business should know about crafting their sales funnel. It’s a book we go back to regularly, and feel like every business should have at the ready. You can find it HERE.

Before you ask “Should I hire a marketing agency?”, readiness is key.

“By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail” – Ben Franklin 

If you’ve gotten this far and you’re saying to yourself “Yes, I have all of those areas working smoothly and don’t really have any questions for myself”, fantastic. On the other hand, if you’ve read this far and you’re starting to doubt how strong you are in any of these areas, fear not. We’ve got a quick assessment you can download which asks all the questions we would ask clients when starting to work with them at marketing agencies. We’ve used it countless times, and it always helps us figure out where clients can improve their foundations before spending a dollar on marketing.

Download the Quick Assessment

So, should you hire a marketing agency? If you’ve got the budget, and you’re already selling your products and services consistently and effectively, a marketing agency might be right for your business. Otherwise, save your money. Almost everything that marketing agencies do, you can do for yourself and at a fraction of the cost.