Should you work with a marketing agency or handle that in-house?
When marketing your business and attracting more customers, jewelry business owners need to determine if they can achieve their goals independently or need help from a digital marketing firm. As any business owner knows, investing in marketing can be rewarding or, on the other hand, it can deplete your time and resources if not done successfully. It’s a tough call, especially if you struggle to grow your business further and your marketing budget is limited. So, how do you determine if you should hire a digital marketing agency? Should you have a go at it with an in-house marketing team? All great questions, so we hope this article can help you make your decision.
What marketing activities should you be doing?
Of course, each business is different and unique but in the present day, implementing an effective marketing campaign that continues to drive sales and captures new customers is challenging. In our opinion, it is necessary to implement and try multiple marketing activities. We are not looking to advise on what digital marketing campaigns you should do in this article. Still, a multi-faceted campaign can attract customers in many ways. Landing that next customer may come from a Google search or while scrolling through social media. For others, a regular email campaign with great offers can pique your customer’s interests. Beyond these, there is a whole slew of promotional activities that can support your online efforts. So how can you get it all done?
Internal team or hire a Digital Marketing Agency?
The answer to this question depends on your situation. If you can answer yes to these questions that may mean an internal team can achieve what you need.
- Do you and your marketing director have the marketing knowledge needed?
- Can you dedicate enough resources to hire the necessary people to implement your marketing plans?
- Do you have enough time to monitor and review results and objectives?
If you can answer yes to each of these questions, it seems that handling your marketing activities in-house can be a good choice for you. Make sure you put the right people on your marketing team and let them do their thing.
Now, if you can’t answer yes to all of these questions, looking for outside help may be a good choice for you.
Here are some comparisons between building in-house marketing teams and working with a marketing agency.
- Management – An in-house team can be a lot of work needing supervision and management. Working with a marketing agency can avoid the responsibility of growing a team.
- Branding – It would be more difficult for an outside agency to be as familiar with your branding as an internal team would be.
- Accessibility – Outside teams typically handle multiple clients. An internal team can give you the focus that you may require.
- Adaptability – Internal teams are much faster at refocusing energy on new initiatives and promotions. Agencies would review their workload and priorities first, which can cause delays.
- Communications – It will always be easier and faster for internal teams to communicate with all stakeholders needed. Agencies may take longer to reach the right people and get the correct information.
- Software/Tools – Depending on your needs, the tools needed to achieve the results may be expensive for an internal team. Agencies typically spread the costs among the client base.
- Scalability – If you wish to ramp up your efforts, marketing companies have an easier time allocating more resources to your campaign if needed.
- Costs – Hiring, training, and developing an outstanding in-house team can be expensive. Working with agencies can give you results without the heavy financial burden.
Overall, there are many reasons to handle marketing internally or with an outside digital marketing agency, but you don’t have to choose one. Hybrid marketing teams can be successful for your store to handle various aspects of your marketing. However, this can be expensive and depend on how you structure the responsibilities.
Like anything in your business, it is always better to research and get all the facts. After all, marketing your business is very important and needs to be done right, or you could be wasting valuable time and resources. So weigh out the pros and cons for you but make sure you don’t ignore marketing. It can be the difference between surviving and thriving!
If you need help with your marketing and want to learn more about Jewelry Store Marketers and our services, please schedule a digital marketing strategy session or see us at one of the upcoming trade shows.
