If you’re a small business owner, you may have shied away from agency support in the past—and your worries aren’t unfounded. Some agencies can come with big processes and even bigger costs. But not every agency is created equal, and the right partnership can help you cover more ground as you grow your business.
And if you’re not sure how to tap into an agency for support, here’s where you might consider starting:
1. Market and Audience Research
Before you can execute any marketing campaign, you need to know the audience you’re trying to reach. But getting that data takes time—a commodity often in short supply for marketing teams. Ask your agency to gather generative research on your intended audience and build marketing personas to guide your future work. This initiative will help give your efforts focus and keep your team on track as they build out extensions of your brand.
2. Content Generation
Generating content takes time, research, and strong writing skills. And though some of your content needs to come from internal teams, an outside agency can handle your blog posts, email campaigns, and secondary landing pages. Depending on your budget and flexibility, content generation can be an excellent role for freelance writers. Like an agency partnership, freelancers can contract with you over short-term periods to tackle your content needs.
3. Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing is a powerful way to combine keyword insights with targeted ads through engines like Google or Bing. But even with programmatic advertising (automated ad placement), setting up the system to facilitate that process is a good use of an SEO expert’s time. If you’re unable to set aside time to learn the ins-and-outs of the SEO world, it might be a sign that it’s time to tap into an agency for help.
4. Web Optimization
Did you know your website’s functionality is as essential as its content? When we think about whether a website is good or not, we might begin the conversation with catchy headlines, blog posts, or branded imagery. But we rarely talk about the little things that make a big difference:
- Do the images load quickly?
- Is the site navigation easy to follow?
- Are there broken links on the website we need to fix?
- Does each page have a meta description?
- Does the menu navigation work properly?
A comprehensive audit performed by a development team at an agency will be able to help you identify areas for optimization or improvements on your website (and fix them, too). These efforts will improve your searchability with Google and overall user experience for web visitors.
5. Brand Design
This one might feel obvious, but it’s essential to call out the power of agency design. If you want an outside eye on your brand or know your logo needs a refresh, a creative agency can handle it all. In fact, that’s what they are most known for. But remember, if you already have a solidified brand, you may not need them to give your business an entire makeover. Instead, the agency could explore your brand’s appearance on new channels (i.e., TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) or create evolutions of your brand that you can use as you grow.
6. Technical Education
If you want to handle most of the marketing work yourself but don’t know how, an agency team can be an excellent teacher. For example, if an agency builds your website, add a line item to your contract to hold WordPress training after the website is complete. That education will empower you to confidently manage, update, and improve your website.
Growing with an Agency Partner
Remember, there are agencies for all specialties, needs, and budgets—but it may take some time to find the right team to fit your needs. Not finding anyone fast? Consider starting with a local agency before going big; there just may be someone in your neighborhood ready to help.
