Why Choosing an Advertising Agency is Your Best Investment.
Insight
It is no surprise that having a professional, top ranking website can significantly contribute to your brand equity, along with that, having a digital strategy that is incredibly effective and having a brand that follows is where your business begins to soar. As such, choosing one web firm or ad agency over another can be the difference of a real investment with a predictable return-on-investment (ROI) versus just throwing your money down at freelancer that are proficient in one or maybe two of the services you're looking for. Having an advertising agency represent your company is like having a business partner, only you get to write our vendor services off at tax team!
Being in the creative web, digital and print industry myself for the past 20 years I have seen web projects that range from wildly successful to complete lackluster in terms of accomplishing business goals, which are typically to either increase sales directly or indirectly by capturing potential new client leads.
While this failure to achieve business goals on-line in part falls on the business owner for failing to invest time and resources into their website, social media campaigns, digital strategy, radio, OTT and TV advertising on a regular basis, there are solutions: Sprout Strategy . Now you might think, well . . . the image associated with this post shows one person working through various pieces of a design project - what gives? A good team works together, but a great team will focus, study and bring ideas first to an internal agency meeting (where yes, you are not included). We believe that collaborating on your business goals helps us provide you with to think the process through as individuals to define the strengths and weaknesses of your company's customer facing persona. After our internal meetings, we share our ideas and what happens next is magical . . . the brainstorming session begins. The greatest teamwork begins and your personalized strategy comes to life.
The Value of Teams vs. Freelancers
I have personally spent the first 4 years of my web design and ad agency career as a freelancer before building my own team, so I have walked the walk. For the sake of this post, let's consider a team to be a dedicated group of three or more individuals, consisting of at least one expert designer, developer (backend and frontend) and strategist. From my experience, the only main advantage of a freelancer versus a time proven team is typically their lower cost. While at first this is seemingly tempting, in the long run you typically run into many issues, the major ones being quality of work, delayed communication, over promises and under delivery, and not to mention, lack of foresight.
While there are a handful of excellent freelancers out there, our general recommendation is, if you are serious about your business then hire an advertising agency who is serious about theirs.
Salesmen vs. Consultants
While communicating in the pre-sale phases of a general account services that an ad agency offers, we find freelancers will typically make you feel that you are talking to a hungry commissioned salesman. They need your sale and will typically come down on their price just to land any client who wonders on to their virtual sales lot. Their immediate focus is the sale, not the success of your company.
A professional advertising agency, on the contrary, will feel more like you are talking to a consultant. They will ask you questions not just about what you want in a website, social media, radio, print, TV digital display for your companies goals. They are not worried about when a sale happens, they are more concerned about creating a holistic strategy that is aligned with your company's vision and overall sales objectives.
Closing Thoughts
Other significant reasons to select an advertising agency over a freelancer include specialization (where teams can have individual experts on design, development and strategy), their ability and experience building and integrating IT infrastructure, understanding how to plan for future infrastructure and features are typically more polished for a great end product. It goes without saying that if you are new startup company with a minimal budget, a freelancer may be the way to go, but not the smartest for the long haul, as it is a risk that they may or may not still be in business or may get stretched to thin with many clients on low retainer fees.
Working with a team is truly a no brainer, an advertising agency offers it all. Sprout Strategy goes to work for you immediately and creates solutions to internal marketing challenges that currently exist in your business. That being said, we stitch you up, dial you in, and show you conversion rates that perform as you begin to watch you ROI. We're ready to go to work for you. Call us today! 907.390.7287.