These days, sales and marketing are everything. Without the right branding, logos, social media attention, and target audiences in place, it’s hard to have your product or services reach the right kind of people and in enough numbers to matter. So what can you do if you feel your business needs a little extra boost? Working with advertising agencies could be the answer in your case! Although some might scoff at the idea of an advertising agency making a significant difference, these agencies are doing far more than just putting up posters or sending out emails. Indeed, Google gets around 95% of its total revenue from advertising and in 2014, over $170 billion were spent on advertising — some of this certainly the work of advertising agencies. Advertising agencies work on everything from strategic branding, to making sure your business is hitting all the target points in digital and social fields, and help you plan and buy media.
What Do Ad Agencies Focus On?
This can often depend what their client wants them to focus on. Some clients may want better brand recognition. Others may want an increase in sales. Other clients just may not have the feel for the marketing industry and be lost in putting together an effective marketing plan. Ad agencies save your company the time and research needed to create a good marketing campaign, and eliminate the need to build your own marketing and research team, especially if you’re doing a one time push for a specific project, or don’t need to draw on these resources too often. They draw on their creative and research skills, discuss goals and strategies with the client, and create a campaign that will be attractive to prospective customers.
Creative execution, strategic branding, digital and social marketing, media planning and buying, and web development may all be utilized during such a marketing campaign. In each area, the advertising agency has specialists on hand who are experts at their field.
What Are the Benefits of Hiring An Advertising Agency?
When you hire an advertising agency, you’re paying for their expertise and insider knowledge on marketing and advertising trends in the industry. Their copywriters, art directors, media planners, and other personnel are able to appeal to customers based on text, visual, and auditory preferences (often based on market research they may gather) and are more effective at getting a message across to your potential audience.
A media planner, for example, might be more effective at negotiating the best rates for you to promote your work online or in print formats. He or she knows what’s considered fair in the industry and may have contacts that allow you to get a better deal. Researchers will be able to put together far more in-depth scenarios and assessments of a marketing situation and are able to offer feedback and guidance after the campaign is finished, in terms of what worked and what should be improved upon.
Instead of pulling from your own team and their perhaps limited knowledge in each field, allow an ad agency to use their highly trained team to put the pieces together for you.
What Should I Keep In Mind When Engaging Advertising Agencies?
You’ll want to make sure that you have a good relationship with the account manager or account executive, as they’re your primary liaison between your company and the agency. If he or she doesn’t fully understand what you’re trying to achieve or you don’t click, that could signal trouble for the marketing campaign. Figure out their experience in the industry and the success rate they’ve had; that could signal to you whether or not you want to engage them for the types of services you’re looking for. You’ll also want to make sure the range of services that you offer fit within what the ad agency itself offers and to try and get a feel for the management skills on their end.
Working with advertising agencies can be a fruitful and rewarding process, especially if you gain a steady working relationship out of it. Boost your revenue and brand recognition today with the help of an ad agency!