3 Signs Your In-House Marketing Staff Needs to Partner with an Agency
If you’re operating with an in-house marketing staff then there may be a huge opportunity to take your efforts and results to the next level by partnering with an agency.
It’s possible that your staff is already demonstrating symptoms that indicate not only a desire for third-party assistance, but a genuine need for extra help.
In particular, there are three tell-tale signs that give it away:
1.) Stagnant Ideas
Symptoms:
- The same challenges continue to emerge.
- The same audiences “need to be reached” time and time again
- The same, ineffective solutions continue to implemented
The most classic key indicator that your in-house marketing staff needs to partner with an agency is when they start generating the same, stagnant ideas. If this is happening in your business then don’t panic–this is a common occurrence that especially affects more mature teams.
Unfortunately a lot of businesses result to firing their full-time staffs when ideas screech to a grinding halt. This naturally creates a need to fill in the holes with new people, and though different thinking may initially surface from this new staff, eventually they too may also fall into a rut of stagnant ideas.
Rather than purging your staff, consider jolting them with some energy. Recruiting a marketing company recruits the expertise and diverse perspectives of a fresh group of experts. This second wind of creative thinking will investigate your problems from a different angle, evaluate your goals and interject new ideas into your conversations.
2.) Fatigue
Symptoms:
- Tasks continue to fall through the cracks
- Particular platforms become neglected altogether
- Your team consistently has an exhausted appearance
- Your team is consistently pulling overtime hours
There’s no amount of coffee or overtime compensation that will ever solve the problem of employee fatigue. The only way to fix the strain is to give your employees more time with their friends and family.
Yes, marketing often requires long hours. Yes, some projects require additional time in the office. Yes, not every day will be a 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. adventure.
Make no mistake though–consistently grueling hours and crippling workloads will cause tasks to slip by, miserable staff members and brand-damaging missteps.
By partnering with a marketing agency, you can start distributing the burden. You can also let your team handle what’s best accomplished in-house, while having someone else worry about everything else.
3.) Poor Results
Symptoms:
- Declining sales numbers
- Low-quality end products
- Customer dissatisfaction
Like we discussed before, sometimes poor results are caused by stagnant ideas. In other situations, however, poor results are caused by subpar products created by your in-house staff.
The truth of the matter is that your team might not have the talent to pull off every project, and hiring the necessary staffers–developers or high-level designers to name a few–for the required quality may be out of budget.
A partnership with an agency will keep your costs down and will expose you to an entire concentration of top-tiered professionals who can fill the holes in your team. The best part is you can bring in an agency on a project-to-project basis, which takes the pressure off of your budget in the long run.
Have you considered a partnership with a marketing agency?