Let’s say you’re a small to mid-sized company, just breaking into the market. You’re getting some decent contracts but want to expand your reach and get more work.
You need to hire a marketing or communications expert to get you to the next level.
It’s a big job. That person will likely have to develop a brand, website, print collateral, social media presence and strategies for all of the above. There will be launches to organize, newsletters to produce and perhaps media relations to manage.
Can you can really expect one person to provide top-notch strategy, digital and graphic design, writing for print, online and web, media relations, event management, social media planning and management—and, and, and…?
I wouldn’t want to be that one-man-band. One minute, you’re developing strategic plans. Next, you’re running to the sign shop. You spend all night banging out a PowerPoint for a meeting the next day and updating web copy for a site that needs to go live.
Anyone who can do all this—and provide a high-quality product every time—is truly a unicorn.
And if this unicorn exists, working on the same subject matter every day gets old. Junior to mid-level marketing and communications professionals change jobs every two to three years. They take all their training and experience with them, and you’re left to start fresh again with someone new.
Perhaps not a unicorn this time around?
Instead, consider contracting a marketing and communications agency.
With an agency, you benefit from the collective expertise of individuals who are each really good at what they do and have years of collective experience and education.
An agency:
- provides access to an entire creative team, not just one employee.
- can cost less than an annual salary, because each individual team member is just working on one thing for you.
- allows you to grow your business and client base instead of on-boarding and training a new employee every two years.
Agencies hire staff for their individual expertise—digital strategists (who love Google Ad analytics and algorithms), writers (who turn plain text into stories), graphic designers (who can work online and with print), webs developers (who understand user experience), strategists (who are great listeners).
Once upon a time, hiring a single person made sense. Today, however, the news cycle runs 24/7. The invention of Facebook, Twitter and their various offspring offer a plethora of channels. Whoever you hire needs to be good at all of them and stay on top of best-practices and trends as they’re constantly changing. A crisis can erupt in seconds. You better be ready. Print is experiencing a comeback, as more and more customers want products they can have and hold. You better be good at that too.
A single person adept at posting pictures of their lunch on Instagram won’t have the training or experience to strategize and maximize your business potential (but we might know a few people who do).
Still wondering which option is best for you? Our team can point you in the right direction. Chat with us today.
