Multifaceted Digital Marketing: Using an External Agency

Written by Stephen Lord, General Manager – Client Services and Marketing, Next Digital

The decision to hire an external agency or develop an internal marketing team is very important and can often be difficult for a company to make. Factors such as absolute control and being able to leverage singular resources with wide range of skill sets make the internal approach seem the more attractive option, at least initially.

However, once you drill down a bit further and consider benefits of an agency approach, such as their breadth of experience, scalability, the cost savings and leveraging relevant experience, the internal option seems to lose its appeal.

Below are some key benefits of outsourcing your digital marketing to hopefully help you to make a more informed decision.

Leveraging experience and learnings
Experience is one of the most valuable factors a client can leverage when partnering with a digital marketing agency. The right agency will have access to a greater level of insight and best practice strategies, most of which are obtained through learnings from other client accounts.

However, it’s not always critical for an agency to have strong experience in your industry, as successful strategies an agency has created can be applied for different purposes. For example, an effective content marketing strategy can be rolled-out for most clients.

Breadth of expertise and scalability
Large agencies employ teams that consist of diverse expertise across all digital marketing functions. This enables you to tap into resources at different levels, depending on the requirement.

The main advantage here is that you can add a production, marketing specialist (i.e. SEO Manager) or strategist resource for an incremental fee, without the need to employee and up skill resources across these different levels internally. This also allows an agency to scale for your spike periods and long-term growth.

This structure becomes even more valuable if the agency is ‘full service digital’, which can offer a range of expertise across all strategy, creative, marketing and technology areas. Having this service mix will allow you to create aligned, multichannel initiatives in the most efficient way.

Choosing a sustainable agency
It’s critical that you choose an agency that will provide ongoing support and successful strategic outcomes. You need to ask yourself, ‘is the agency set up to address our ongoing needs, or are they likely to struggle?’

Ideally, an agency will have a structure that can support ongoing requests and strategic guidance, whether it be technology or marketing focused. The agency should offer services in the form of ‘support agreements’ and/or ‘digital marketing retainers’.

Labour and overhead cost benefits
The saving on labour and overhead costs is one of the most compelling factors for outsourcing your digital marketing activities.  Research has shown that cost savings can be achieved when outsourcing work to an agency such as reduced operating costs, moving production work to an agencies offshore offices, productivity and process improvement and reduced overheads.

Partnering with an agency will provide a significant cost saving on an ongoing basis.

Making the decision to outsource your digital marketing activity with an agency can be quite difficult. However, some of the factors including costs savings and being able to access expertise with relevant experience can make it the more compelling option for your company. 

Next Digital is a leader in creating successful digital strategies for clients throughout the Asia Pacific region.  They combine exceptional marketing thinking, regional understanding and technical firepower to develop and deliver broad digital programs.

Their love for all things digital has been going strong for more than 16 years. That journey has helped them hone their delivery and engagement approach, and has shaped how they innovate and keep in front of a fast changing digital space.

Next Digital is a true full service digital agency with over 170 talented digital specialists working throughout offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai.