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How to Work With (the Right) Marketing Agency

April 17th, 2020 4 min to read

Let’s say you’ve come to the realization you need marketing support. Do you rely on freelancers, hire someone, build your own team, or hire an agency? Each option has benefits, drawbacks, and unique considerations. Your decision probably rests heavily on what exactly you need compared against what you can afford. You're probably also wondering how to work with a marketing agency, or firm, or freelancers. It can be overwhelming.

We believe the fact that small to medium-sized businesses have trouble competing with “the big guys” is a product of the industry. We also believe it really shouldn’t be that way and, quite frankly, doesn’t have to be. So, we changed it for our clients.

How it works

Most of our clients are on a retainer model, which means they get access to our entire team for an affordable, fixed monthly fee. We build marketing plans and scopes with them, which considers their immediate needs and their long-term business strategy. This gives them full flexibility to scale up or down as their business needs change.

Some clients need large-scale work-intensive projects like building a brand from scratch, re-branding, building a brand-new website, or multiple marketing campaigns. Other clients need something as simple as monthly social media and content support. Each retainer is unique to ensure that, as a client, you’re paying only for what you need. What doesn’t change is access. Our team is your team, plain and simple.

The idea from the beginning of any retainer is that we are going to become your marketing department. Our goal is to eliminate the question of how to work with a marketing agency. It should be easy. We’re getting to know your business and working with you on a strategic level to ensure the marketing is helping to achieve your business goals. For clients that have been with us the longest, we’re not a marketing agency. We’re their marketing department. We’re at your fingertips like any other internal department. We get to know your business and really care about you and your success because we believe it’s the only way to be truly effective. We also love being invited to team bonding events (but please, no trust falls).

“Affordable” actually means what it means (know what we mean?)

Affordable might mean different things to different business owners. Our model is designed to fit that definition regardless of the size of your business. That means that whether you’re thinking about hiring a freelancer for a handful of hours or building out a team to carry out 200 hours of work each month, our model provides more for less. Significantly more capability for the same affordable cost, or the same robust capability for significantly less cost. More, for less.

[caption id="attachment_2489" align="alignnone" width="1000"] *the word “typical” is used loosely because you can hardly count on a typical structure or service offering from one marketing agency to the next, which is another reason we focused on making ours simple and straightforward.[/caption]

There’s no secret to how we make this work. We set out wanting to provide the best possible solution for businesses that otherwise could not afford robust, effective, and strategic marketing, and we developed a model that made it possible.

The proof is in the pudding

Unless you hate pudding, of course. In that case, choose any other dessert. The point is this: success to us looks like building a genuine relationship with a client and moving their business forward. It’s not about prestige, or winning cool marketing awards, or anything like that. Do we always try to produce award-winning work? Of course, but we do it to help you get your business to where you want it to be, not to get our name on a piece of metal.

We’ve seen a lot of our clients take their business to some incredible places, and that’s why we do what we do. And we do it by being strategic, effective, and through a model that ensures no matter your budget, you have access to the best marketing possible to support your business strategy.

The question should never be how to work with a marketing agency. It should be how to work with the right one. Once you've found the right fit, everything else is easy.

 

Want to learn more about our approach to better marketing? Drop us a line any time. We're happy to chat.