You Need A Digital Marketing Agency On Retainer

A New Set Of Experienced Eyes Is All That Stands Between Success And Failure

Hiring outside help to grow can be a tough pill to swallow. That very hesitancy, however, could be completely killing your growth potential. Here are a few reasons why a business that is successful needs a digital marketing agency for growth:

1. Let Experts Focus On Growing Your Business

Most business owners wear so many hats that it's hard to excel in any one particular area of their business. Even marketing professionals in organizations find that they are responsible for so many aspects of their company's growth that it's hard to excel at any one thing. In both scenarios, the biggest culprit is a desire to be very careful with how they spend their money. Neither the business owner nor the marketing professional wants to risk throwing away a decent amount of money. It's hard to trust an external organization to responsibly use your budget - trust me, I get it.

A trustworthy digital marketing agency like Wapiti is often THE missing piece in your organization hitting the next level. A team of experts tasked specifically with finding ways to grow your brand and reach is a powerful thing. The right digital marketing agency will research various options, present a growth strategy, and give you a plan on how they intend to execute. The right marketing relationship ensures the business owner or marketing professional understands what's going on and gives them the power of veto but allows the marketing team to run with a strategy for growth.

2. Far More Value For Your Money Than An Internal Hire

According to Indeed, the average value to companies in the Seattle area for a new marketing manager hire is just over $68,000/year.

As of the time of this post, the average starting salary of a marketing manager in the Seattle area was just over $68,000 a year. This doesn't include increases with time and it doesn't include benefits. Also, this is for only one person being added to your team. If that person has a bad day/week/month you have to deal with it or cut them loose. In other words, the $68k a year is a very myopic view of the actual cost of a new employee.

Compare that to hiring Wapiti specifically (since I can't vouch for other marketing agencies). Our typical retainer client (at the time of this article) is between $4,000/mo. and $8,000/mo. depending on their needs and goals. That means for $48k a year, you can have a team of marketing experts working to grow your business. We already have the tools and training as well as the relationships and connections to create success for our clients. No need to pay benefits and HR costs.

3. Always On Top Of New Marketing Trends

Business owners work to stay at the forefront of their industry. Marketing agencies do the same... and our industry is marketing. Just as the owner of a boutique cupcake shop needs to stay on top of what is trendy in the design of cupcakes, we stay up to date with marketing trends and new ways to grow. Do you remember the boom of online advertising through Google Ads? I do. While Wapiti didn't exist back then, I used them to grow the company I was working with. Remember the golden age of mobile apps? A marketing company will be at the forefront of these revolutions working to take advantage of the high times.

4. Quickly And Effortlessly Scale With Your Growth Needs And Budget

Let's face it. HR is one of the biggest issues for small and medium-sized businesses. Unless your HR department is humming along with multiple staff members and elite recruiters, you're struggling to find quality employees and spending a lot of money on training new recruits. If you're lucky, that recruit will work out and you'll get to hang on to the talent. If not, you lose the investment in training. When you hire a marketing agency on retainer, you leave the employment part in their hands. A well-run marketing agency has systems in place to ensure that, with turnover, your branding and marketing continue forward without issue.

On the flip side, let's say that you scaled up for a large project and, unfortunately, that project didn't happen to the scale you had hoped. Now it's time to lay off employees. This is tough on morale, tough on your mental health... it's just rough overall. A marketing agency can scale with your successes and failures as a business keeping a level of consistency at your fingertips regardless of size.

5. Leverage The Power Of Potentially Cost Prohibitive Growth Tools

With a digital marketing agency, you get the power of expert tools and systems that the agency is already using. This saves you potentially thousands or tens of thousands of dollars each month if you were to use the same tools in-house. An economy of scale is at work here. What would cost individual businesses thousands of dollars, may only cost us a couple hundred. Wapiti, for instance, uses professional tools and services for many of the services we provide. We're able to use the best tools available and get them at far more reasonable prices than an individual business could.

Finally, a good agency won't charge you "hourly" for their work (unless you want them to). They will provide a retainer contract in order to fully serve your needs. Without that contract, it can feel like nickel-and-diming you for more money. Alternatively, the agency could ignore good growth strategies since they aren't being paid enough to pursue them. A good agency generally knows what various marketing projects will cost (or can find out very quickly) and presents them to you upfront.

So here's the thing...

Wapiti is one of these awesome digital marketing agencies I'm referring to. (I know, right? Who would have thought that could be the case?) We would love to be able to offer our expertise, systems, tools, and advice to help your business take off and hit new heights. We work best on a retainer with our clients which allows us to work with existing marketing channels as well as to create new channels of growth. It's like paying for an entry-level employee and getting the strategies of a well-seasoned, expert team.

Are you an existing client looking to add new channels of growth to your business?

Are you looking for someone to help you take your growth to the next level?