You want to save money, be more efficient and retain control of your brand all at the same time correct?
So should you consider an in-house marketing delivery to achieve this? Now, there’s nothing wrong with arguing for in-house marketing, in fact it makes a convincing case and raise some pertinent points in most cases. But they fail to show the extensive demands of successfully moving your marketing in-house.
So before you think of moving your marketing, branding and design in-house, consider the other side of the coin: What value does an agency add to your business and brand?
- Communication Insights and Creative Volition
The argument is that in-house marketing would give you control over your brand and how it is positioned right? While this could work in favour of your business, it could also have a negative impact. Being too focused on your business and your vision can create a blinkered perspective that prevents you from seeing objectively. It could also limit creativity and produce a stale marketing approach that is highly functional and efficient, yet unimaginative.
Alternatively, agencies service more than just your business and this means that we are constantly exposed to new ideas. This allows us to be agile and bold in their marketing approach for you. For example, say your business is in the freight and logistics sector and we also service a brand in the FMCG sector, we could use insights from successful campaigns in that industry to creatively solve your logistics-specific marketing need. The value of agencies lie in their strategic thinking and exposure to best-in-class examples across a range of industries, over a period of time.
- Access and shared knowledge, the Latest Tools and Best Software
Imagine forking out thousands of Rands for content-planning software or a data analytics tool. Quite frankly, it’s not worth it. Especially since you would only be using it to track and plan only your campaigns. For an agency, it is not as costly, since we use the same tools across many of our clients.
For in-house marketers, there is also the cost of hiring someone who can use these tools effectively. What’s the use of having world-class tools if there is no one to put them to good use right? Financially, it makes more sense to use an agency as the cost of access is built into their offering, this cost is effectively less than that of acquiring a whole suite of tools yourself.
- Overall Accountability and the associated Productivity
People often say in-house marketing is more efficient than outsourcing to an agency. After all, your in-house marketing team is only dealing with your business, so it should produce work at a faster rate than an agency, right?
But this is if you ignore the many disruptive internal processes, such as regular staff meetings and sick leave. As part of the internal staff, in-house marketers have to attend staff meetings, training sessions and workshops. The time taken to attend these meetings and workshops is time away from marketing. Sick leave is also a factor. No one has control over when they fall sick – agency and in-house marketers alike.
But the difference is, to the agency, the client deadline is king, so they we will always make a plan to deliver.
Let’s connect and discuss how we can add-value to your business as strategic creative partner.
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