Most local businesses need more good leads. The easiest way to generate precious leads and bring you more business is to partner with a marketing professional near you who knows your local area. Then you can focus on converting the leads they generate into sales.
To find a local marketing agency, you could just Google “marketing companies near me.” Google will return many results, but how do you sort through them to find the best fit? And what do you do when you’ve found a possible marketing partner?
In this article, we’ll go through:
- What a marketing company is.
- Benefits and drawbacks of using a local marketing company.
- How to find the best marketing company for you.
- How to work with a marketing company.
What a Marketing Company Is
Marketing companies are professionals who help you sell your products or services. They have the impetus to succeed because they know that keeping your business depends on how good they are at generating leads you can convert.
The goals of marketing firms and their clients are usually to:
- Increase sales and revenue.
- Retain your current customers.
- Increase revenue from existing customers.
- Convert more of your target audience into customers.
- Grow brand awareness.
3 Types of Marketing Companies
The three types of marketing companies are digital marketers, traditional marketers, and specialized boutiques.
Digital marketing agencies focus their efforts on the internet. Some of the areas they work in are:
- Social media advertising.
- Social media management.
- Email marketing.
- Pay Per Click or PPC advertising.
- Email marketing
- Search Engine Optimization or SEO through website design and content creation.
The best digital marketing agencies often create a marketing plan using a mix of these avenues to reach more of your ideal target audience. Working with a full-service marketing agency allows you to use the complete spectrum of marketing options available on the internet.
Traditional marketers use:
- Print.
- Public relations.
- Broadcasting on television or radio.
Traditional marketing still works well to reach some market segments. A marketing agency will know which segments you should target using traditional marketing.
Boutique marketing firms usually specialize in one of the above areas. They may be less expensive than a full-service marketing agency, and they can excel at using a particular avenue like content marketing, social media marketing, or email marketing. You may get more personalized service from a small boutique firm.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Using a Local Marketing Company
Working with a local marketing company rather than a national agency has both benefits and drawbacks. The benefits include:
- Accessibility: Physical accessibility is important in developing healthy business relationships. Being able to meet face-to-face has many advantages over email and Zoom.
- Local knowledge and expertise: This is often necessary to understand your local target market and your competitors.
- Local connections: Local agencies have local contacts.
The possible drawbacks to working with a local marketing company are:
- Limited expertise: Local marketing firms are usually smaller than their national competitors and may have difficulty attracting the top experts.
- Fewer resources: Large national agencies can afford to invest in the best resources.
- Less reach: Larger agencies have connections and clout with national publications.
Bear in mind that the internet has gone a long way toward leveling the difference between local and national marketing companies. The same digital tools are available to both.
How to Find the Best Marketing Company Near Me
Search engines return overwhelming results when you search “marketing company near me.” Doing your homework before searching will enable you to quickly sort out possible marketing agency partners to contact and question.
Determine What You Want
Ask yourself some questions:
- Are you after fast results using paid advertising like PPC on search engines and social media platforms like Facebook?
- Do you prefer slower, steadier growth using content marketing and email marketing?
- Do you need a mix of traditional and digital marketing? It’s common to split advertising budgets between the two.
If you’re not sure, you can always schedule a consultation with an expert.
Examine the Marketing Company’s Strengths
If your goal is to dominate a search engine niche, it won’t make much sense to engage with an agency specializing in social media advertising that only dabbles in content marketing as a sideline. You’ll need a professional team who can:
- Analyze your current content.
- Research the most likely niches you have the possibility of owning.
- Create the high-quality content necessary to rank on page one.
Examine Their Record
Knowing what kind of results they’ve produced in the past will give you a reasonable idea of what to expect. Answering these questions in your research will help narrow the field.
- What clients have they worked with?
- How have they helped those clients? Get measurable results if possible.
- How long do clients stay with them?
Price
What’s their pricing model?
Marketing companies typically bill by the hour. Prices range from $80 an hour for small boutique operations to over $200 an hour for big firms. This rate is for a single person, so it doubles if two people are working on your account.
You may also be billed per piece or per word if you choose content marketing.
Many agencies offer a flat monthly rate for services like email marketing and social media marketing. Figuring the rate depends on how much time they’ll put into your account and how much content you want.
How to Work with a Marketing Company Near Me
You’ll enjoy a much more successful experience with your marketing agency if you approach it like a collaborative partnership. The best marketing agencies attain their goals by working with you to develop a successful marketing plan tailored to your business needs. The steps outlined in the marketing plan could be to:
- Analyze your current marketing efforts to determine what is or isn’t working.
- Do market research to develop your ideal customer profile.
- Determine the best methods to reach your ideal customers.
- Create the materials to engage the chosen target market.
- Analyze the results.
- Tweak the marketing plan or devise a new one.
The goals developed, the personas created, and the plan formulated combine to make up your marketing strategy. Once you and your marketing firm clearly understand your strategy, the marketing company can propose the tactics and content best suited to reach and engage your target persona and attain your goals.
You can help your marketing agency succeed by applying these simple tips.
Be Clear about Goals
When you and your marketing company work towards the same goal, your efforts will be in harmony. You also remove any doubts about what criteria to use in evaluating the outcome of your marketing plan.
Be Clear about Personas
The marketing personas that you and your agency work together to develop will determine the type of content they create and the delivery avenue they use. Getting personas right is critical in placing the right message in front of the right audience.
Educate Yourself
If you understand marketing terminology and have a basic knowledge of how the different marketing avenues work, you’ll be able to make intelligent, informed decisions. You will also instinctively know what material and information you need to share with the agency to best help your marketing partners.
Keep Your Marketing Agency Informed
Be sure to tell the agency about events you will be participating in as far ahead as possible. Then they will have time to be creative and make the most of it by building buzz. Webinars, launches, events, and sponsorships represent opportunities for your marketing firm to get creative about developing leads.
Understand that Marketing Requires Time
Savvy marketers understand that inbound marketing efforts require time to bear fruit. Organic traffic doesn’t start flowing immediately from content marketing.
Time is needed to research suitable topics and write unique, informative content that readers love, and search engines rank high. Then that killer content needs to be displayed in an attractive web design, and the proper link structure must be built. After the content is ready, Google needs time to crawl the content and rank it.
After you have executed all the steps correctly, the result is a flood of organic traffic. When you have been successful with one piece of content, you can design multiple pieces around it. Soon you own the niche.
Email marketing may also require some time to get right. You need to constantly grow and prune an email list of the right contacts responsive to your brand. If an email to your list doesn’t bring the hoped-for results, the solution is to take what you’ve learned and design a better email.
Local SEO efforts using the right tools also take time. After about 4 to 6 weeks, you should start enjoying significant amounts of traffic.
Get Started With an Outstanding Marketing Company Now
Feeling overwhelmed or think you could benefit from professional advice?
The internet brings the best digital marketing agencies to your doorstep — making them local. Redstitch will help you develop the best marketing plan for your local business.
