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Should I Hire A Marketing Agency, A Marketing Consultant, Or A PR Firm?

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Regardless of the size of your organization, it can be confusing to figure out what type of marketing agency or marketing consultant to hire to help you create awareness, and ultimately cause sales of your products, services, and solutions. The ability to market digitally/electronically — that came with wide-spread adoption of the internet — brought with it the following changes when it came to organizations engaging outside help for their marketing (outsourcing their marketing), whether it be for one-off/one-time work or ongoing work.

How Digital Marketing Leveled The Playing Field For Both Advertisers and Ad Agencies

  • Organizations who couldn’t afford the high costs associated with producing TV, radio, transit, or outdoors (billboards or other) advertising, found new, more affordable marketing activities were now available to them in the form of social media posting and advertising, tactics that support websites being found on Google and other search engines for desirable search phrases (organic search tactics/SEO tactics), paid search engine ads/marketing (SEM), e-blast and e-mail marketing, and more.
  • Since many organizations looking for marketing help no longer required the infrastructure and diverse skillsets associated with marketing tactics that involved large production activities and costs, some realized they no longer needed to hire a full-service large advertising agency — think the type of agency featured in the acclaimed TV series, “Mad Men,” or on “BeWitched,” as smaller marketing shops, like ours, could meet their digital marketing needs and/or traditional marketing needs related to activities that don’t require a lot of production, such as Public Relations (PR), or print advertising.

Getting back to whom your organization should consider hiring for ongoing marketing services or one-time/one-off marketing project work/help, here’s one Boston digital marketing agency’s, Boston SEO company’s, and Boston marketing consultant’s thoughts — yeah, we consider ourselves to be all of the aforementioned, and for clients who engage us for non-PR work, we can also be engaged for help with PR since our Principal has a great deal of PR experience.

This is a square gray image with our Boston digital marketing agency's logo (Results Communications & Research's) logo at the bottom. At the top of the image in big bold letters it says "Should I Hire An Ad Agency, A Digital Marketing Agency, Marketing Consultant, Or PR Firm?" Underneath That In A Dark Powder Blue It Says" Read One Marketing Professional's Thoughts."

How To Figure Out What Type Of Marketing Firm To Hire And Questions To Ask

Branding and Design Firm. A firm that refers to themselves as a branding/brand and design firm primarily focuses on helping you figure out the look and feel of your brand, including the logo, colors, and graphic elements that will be associated with your brand. They usually offer website design services, but not always. And, some do offer other digital marketing or traditional marketing services thru collaborations or partnerships with digital marketing agencies, advertising agencies, or marketing consultants, or marketing freelancers. So, if you know you will need particular digital and/or traditional marketing services after working with the branding firm to develop or execute a new brand identify for you, ask in advance if they offer those services, so you will know whether you will have the burden of hunting around after for someone to help with traditional and digital marketing services — particularly to drive traffic to any new site you engage them to design for you.

Digital Marketing Agency. Digital marketing agencies tend to offer both higher-level strategic planning services, as well as hands-on/execution services, related to any marketing tactic that is digital or electronic related, including: e-blast/e-mail strategy and execution services, social media strategy and voice (actually writing and scheduling of social media posts), online advertising (social media/display advertising, Google Ads or other search engine advertising), blog strategy and voice work (actually writing and posting of blogs to your website), and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Most will offer content marketing services as well to help you figure out what content your target audiences are most interested in, and an editorial calendar for serving up such content on your website. Website content writing services likely will be available as well.

SEO Company. Because paid search engine advertising/marketing (SEM) supports an organization ranking well in relevant search engine results, as our Boston SEO company does, most SEO companies offer strategy and execution services related to both organic search/organic SEO tactics, as well as paid search advertising services. Some will offer some additional digital marketing services as well.

Marketing Consultant. In the almost nine years since we launched Results C & R, we’ve met a large number of marketing consultants. The degree to which they offer hands-on/execution work vs. developing high-level strategic plans tends to really vary. Some offer a number of hands-on services, in addition to helping you develop a strategic marketing plan, while others don’t do the actual marketing tactic execution work. If your organization has a number of internal marketing people who can actually oversee or execute the marketing plan developed by a consultant, a marketing consultant may be just what and all that you need.

Public Relations Firm/PR Firm. The focus of public relations firms is to get your organization unpaid-for-advertising/marketing. By helping your organization develop a strategy for causing various reporters and media to cover your story, they help your organization get mentions and attention without the cost of an expensive advertising campaign. PR firms also tend to offer event planning services since an event may be the perfect way to create awareness of your organization and/or create good will among your target audiences. Keep in mind that if you only need help with putting on an event vs. getting regular/ongoing press coverage, you could consider hiring an event planning firm. Many event planning firms also have experience getting media/reporter coverage for an event as well.

In general, the biggest overlap between a digital marketing agency and a Public Relations firm is that they both tend to offer social media services, since social media posts — particularly organic vs. paid/boosted social media posts — can help to generate good will and create awareness of an organization’s products, services, and solutions.

Advertising Agency. Nowadays, when people think of, or decide to hire an advertising agency vs. a digital marketing agency, it’s related to the fact that advertising agencies can pull in the right team members or hire the right contractors for a marketing campaign that requires heavy-duty production. As we mentioned above, scripting and executing a radio, TV (network or cable) or streaming advertisement requires the collaboration of a bunch of individuals with diverse skillsets, the renting of studios and/or locations in which to film, the hiring of “talent” for the broadcast spot — whether it be aired on the radio or TV. Activities like the aforementioned are often the reason why, in our current day and age, an organization would look to hire an advertising agency vs. a digital marketing agency. Although, most advertising agencies offer digital marketing services, in addition to traditional ones.

Web Design/Web Development Firm. Web design and web development firms are exactly what their name indicates — firms who help design and develop websites for clients. Many also offer logo design or other graphic design services because of their web designers’ ability to successfully complete such work. All web design/web development firms DO NOT offer SEO services nor do they always understand SEO, so if you expect or want to receive SEO services as part of your new website launch, be sure to ask any firms you are considering to design and develop your site, what knowledge they have of SEO and/or who they have on their team that has an SEO background. Otherwise, as we explain in this blog post, you’ll end up with a website that is not easily found via search engine searches.

Unfortunately, we regularly interact with prospective clients who had someone develop a beautiful, effective site for them, but the site is not being visited/found by target audiences because SEO tactics weren’t put in place by the web design/web development firm as part of the site development and design engagement.

This image shows the back of a dark-skinned woman who is wearing a striped white and light blue shirt. She is holding a pencil or pen above a notebook on her right-hand side and her left-hand is hovered over a laptop computer keyboard. The screen of the computer says "Marketing" in big blue letter. The image is being shown in keeping with our Boston Digital Marketing Agency's blog post about how to know what type of marketing agency or consultant to hire.

What Should I Expect To Pay A Marketing Agency Or A Marketing Consultant?

Based, again, on our 9 years of marketing agency and marketing consulting experience at the time of writing this post, we’ve found that, in general, the bigger the agency/marketing shop, the more expensive their hourly rate and marketing project fees are. Why? It mainly comes down to overhead and the costs of maintaining and marketing a larger organization, offering a large number of employees benefits, etc.

If your organization doesn’t expect to need the type of traditional advertising production work outlined above under the “Advertising Agency” section, you’ll very likely fare better financially hiring a smaller digital marketing agency or PR firm or a marketing consultant. Plus, you may end up getting more personal attention than you would with a larger agency. And, most smaller shops can pull in a collaborator, freelancer, or other agency or consultant, as needed.

We’re A Boston Digital Marketing Agency, Boston SEO Company, Boston Marketing Consultant, and Boston PR Firm All In One!

Due to our Principal’s more than 30 years of corporate marketing and consulting experience, we offer all the services called out in the heading directly above! We regularly meet with both start-ups and long-standing organizations — both for-profit and non-profit — for complimentary discussions about their marketing challenges and opportunities, so feel free to use our calendar app to schedule a FREE initial consultation https://calendly.com/gail-moraski.

diverse experience, diverse skills, diversity

An Anniversary Message on The Value of Diversity

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This month marks three years since Results Communications and Research, and I as its Principal, hung our marketing & communications and market research shingle. As I mentally reviewed the past several years, I thought about common themes that might capture both the nature of the work we’ve completed for our beloved clients and the type of clients and prospective clients with which we’ve worked. The word that immediately came to mind is “diverse.”

As far as diversity of work goes, we’ve helped clients issue RFPs for Web site design & development and assisted them in selecting vendors; used client content management systems (CMS) – such as WordPress and Hubspot – to revise existing client sites; and launched new Web sites for clients using WIX. We’ve developed, implemented, monitored, and reported on brand new online advertising campaigns, but have also assumed management and optimization of a client’s existing Google AdWords online campaigns. We’ve conducted research of both internal and external audiences, and of a client’s customers, prospective customers, and competitors. We’ve served as our clients’ blog writer and social media voice. And, we’ve developed integrated marketing plans, executed PR campaigns, and assisted with internal communications needs.

Despite detailing above some of the diverse client work with which we’ve been involved, the emphasis of this post is more related to the diversity of our client base. Our clients have been of all shapes and sizes – one-to-three-employee business-service consultancies to organizations with 500+ employees; of all profit statuses – for- and not-for-profit; and from a very diverse set of industries: food, healthcare, financial services, employee benefits, private investigation, non-profits with a local scope and ones with an international scope, higher education, religious denominations, and the list goes on… One of my biggest takeaways from consulting work completed under the Results umbrella and from other consulting roles is this: when developing a marketing plan, there is great value and learning to be had from exposure to and consideration of the marketing challenges and opportunities of leading organizations outside one’s own industry or niche.

From years of working in both corporate and consultant marketing roles, I can attest that it’s a very common practice for organizations to want to or to actually mimic the marketing, and other general business practices, of the one or several competitor organizations they most wish to be like. Often, a key driver of this “mimicking” behavior is the strong tendency and temptation by an organization’s leadership to look for inspiration in the marketing activities employed by competitors in their industry/niche — organizations whom leadership believes is doing the best job of converting prospective customers into sales customers or at causing a desired set of individuals to complete whatever the next desired step is, such as signing up to receive e-mails. This, in turn, frequently causes the individuals who are responsible for developing comprehensive, integrated marketing and communications plans for a new product, new service, or an entire fiscal year to feel pressured to follow in competitors’ footsteps.

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(Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

While we do think there is value in reviewing the marketing tactics competitors are using to identify a key lead- or sales-generating vehicle or a marketing activity that might resonate best with one or several of your target audiences – for example, your competition may be employing a Google AdWords Display campaign to create awareness of a product or service that is less-well-known and not actively searched on, or pay-per-click advertising for a product or service on which your target audience(s) regularly enters search engine queries – some of the best marketing ideas and opportunities come from focusing on what other successful, world-class organizations, regardless of industry, are doing from a marketing standpoint. Many of those marketing activities may still be applicable and transferable to your organization. And, yes, even if your organization is a non-profit vs. for-profit one, there’s still great value in considering marketing tactics used by corporate organizations.

What are the implications and practical applications of the above?

  • If you’re in the planning stages for a new fiscal year, or new product or service launch, and have a large enough marketing team with the bandwidth to do so, hold a brainstorming session where each member of your team (and if appropriate, other internal staff who aren’t on the marketing team, but who interact with your customers) bring examples of their favorite brands that DON’T compete for your target audience, but whom they think are doing marketing right and/or differently (and we mean positively different :)).
  • The next time your organization is in hiring mode for permanent or contract marketing staff, interview and hire candidates who HAVE NOT worked in your industry and who can bring an objective, new outlook to your marketing challenges and opportunities. We find marketing skills are very transferable, and good marketers know how to effectively educate themselves quickly on the challenges and opportunities associated with any industry.
  • If you’re a business-owner who wears many hats, including a marketing one, or a one-person marketing team, consider hiring a consultant or marketing agency like ours who has helped a diverse group of organizations meet their sales and awareness objectives, and who can share some best or new marketing practices from other industries and niches that might be applicable to yours.

We’re always up for a non-obligatory, complimentary discussion of your marketing and communications challenges and opportunities. As we begin year four of our marketing consultancy, we look forward to continuing to work with a diverse group of clients on diverse work, and we say “thank you” to all our clients for the opportunities they’ve afforded us to help them achieve their objectives. We also want to thank those prospective clients with whom we’ve held engaging and informative discussions.