Introduction
Promotion is a crucial component of any business strategy a company follows. Most small and medium-sized organizations have outsourcers for various services, including marketing. Although large companies usually have an advertising team, medium ones can have only a marketing manager, whereas small companies may not even have such a person. The critical question is how to organize marketing so that its work remains on the agenda. One of the options is to hire a marketing agency to oversee all processes of advertising campaigns. However, before deciding to use a marketing agency, evaluate why working with a marketing agency can be necessary for the business context. Therefore, the paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of such outsourcing.
The Importance of Using Marketing Agencies
Whether to use an advertising agency is an important topic as an agency contributes to implementing a company’s marketing strategy. This could be a practical approach for small companies as it is not needed to pay a salary to a full-time marketing specialist while all the processes are controlled. An advertising agency specializes in creating, producing, and placing the communications message (Belch & Belch, 2021).
For example, at present, there are different agencies aimed at solving various challenges. These include creative, media, digital, direct marketing, design, and PR (Jensen & Sund, 2020). Advertisers’ most common marketing issues are managing the media mix, technology implementation, marketing communication, and missing capabilities (Jensen & Sund, 2020). Advertising agencies ‘ services can facilitate the promotion process and help organize campaigns aimed at particular cultures or ethnicities (Belch & Belch, 2021). This option is also suitable for those organizations that have temporary advertising tasks.
Advantages of Marketing Agencies
The main advantage is that most agencies have experience mobilizing and managing creative resources for various specific tasks. For organizations, the usage of marketing agency services is a “make-or-buy” choice (Jensen & Sund, 2020). This is because agencies provide services performed by professional staff (Belch & Belch, 2021). Agencies are trying to attract skilled people to their workforce who take the opportunity to realize their creativity in fulfilling orders of multiple clients. Since agencies can provide their employees with regular tasks, they pay them adequately; this is another reason why most creative people tend to settle in advertising agencies, not in the marketing departments of organizations.
The next advantage is the agencies’ practice and the large base of resources. As a result, advertising agencies are more likely to enter the market, establishing connections with the right people faster than their clients. For instance, it mainly concerns digital agencies as they are considered the most critical partner in value creation (Jensen & Sund, 2020). According to Jensen and Sund (2020), about 30% of Danish advertisers use digital agencies’ services to resolve marketing challenges. This is because they are well aware of the possibilities of advertising media. Moreover, agencies know how to meet deadlines and find the best and cheapest suppliers in the shortest possible time.
Disadvantages of Marketing Agencies
The disadvantage of advertising agencies is that their services can be expensive. Agencies rarely agree to waste their creative and time resources without adequate compensation. For instance, the research conducted by Porto and de Abreu (2019) shows that, regarding online advertising campaigns, outsourcing to an advertising agency is profitable only when the amount of investment in the campaign is high.
According to Porto and de Abreu (2019), an increase in investment in online advertising via Facebook and Google generates increases in profit margin. Therefore, if the company has no budget to pay for the agency’s best resources, it cannot count on the full attention of top agency employees (Porto & de Abreu, 2019). At the same time, the services of less experienced employees can end up being more expensive because they need more time to cope with the order. Thus, using marketing agencies requires additional investments to achieve the desired financial outcome for the company.
Furthermore, using an advertising agency requires constant cost control. For instance, according to Keegan et al. (2017), the widespread use of digital marketing negatively affected the relationships between agencies and clients, making them more complex. These days, cooperation requires joint efforts on scheduling and ensuring that it is adhered to by both parties (Keegan et al., 2017). Thus, there is increased monitoring of agency work to prevent prematurely executing expensive designs.
Conclusion
To sum up, the advantages of using an advertising agency include the confirmed professionalism of employees, which is more efficient than having a specialist on a full-time basis. The disadvantages are that the result of the campaign is directly dependent on investment and costs as many agencies raise prices. Furthermore, control is required; consequently, the company that uses the marketing agency services needs to inform the agency about the problems and goals. However, I believe that it is better to use marketing agencies, but first, the advertiser should define an advertising campaign strategy with the agency. It is recommended to determine how the campaign should be perceived among the target audience and how the ad should resonate and co-operate in promoting processes.
References
Belch, G. E., & Belch, M. A. (2021). Advertising and promotion: An integrated marketing communications perspective (12th ed.). McGraw Hill
Jensen, H., & Sund, K. J. (2020). Marketing challenges and advertising partner selection: Exploring advertiser-agency relationships in the Danish media industry. Nordic Journal of Media Management, 1(2), 297-313. Web.
Keegan, B. J., Rowley, J., & Tonge, J. (2017). Marketing agency–client relationships: towards a research agenda. European Journal of Marketing, 51(7/8), 1197–1223. Web.
Porto, R. B., & de Abreu, F. A. (2019). Investment in online advertising and return on sales: Does it pay to outsource the services to an advertising agency?. Journal of Marketing Communications, 25(8), 843-860. Web.