Why and When You Should Use an Agency

You have an in-house staff. Why would you choose to go outside for certain tasks and hire an agency? If your company is planning a larger campaign, an agency with a track record in the industry provides you with the skills needed, skills even the most talented in-house team may not possess.

In-house staff members, no matter what the project, will approach it with the tone of voice, background, culture and the restrictions of their company. They will have preconceived ideas of what should and shouldn’t be in whatever it is they’re building, because they are assimilated into and part of the fabric of that company. An agency comes from a different, fresh perspective, without those underlying assumptions. They might see a brand in a different way, allowing them to tap into an interest, idea or concept that will make people pay attention. An agency can take risks, and look at different formats, channels and structures for a marketing campaign or digital campaign in a way that in-house staff members may not be attuned or experienced.

The in-house team should excel at internal communication. Your design and marketing team are good in their niche, but they aren’t an organization built on running successful campaigns for people. A top agency’s expertise is advertising, so your company can go with the experts. Hiring individual experts is not the same as going to a collection of experts who work together in a collaborative way to make sure they have a massive impact. You don’t go to an agency because you don’t have time to do a project in-house. You go to them because of who that agency is and what they represent.

Some companies, rather than an agency, prefer to use freelancers, which is amazing, because they want to make sure they’re working on strategy while qualified pros are completing the work.

The company shouldn’t care what goes on behind the scenes, if the result is good quality. Who does the work isn’t important — what matters is you get the results you expected when hiring the agency.

(When it comes to Freelancers, we believe that Speedlancer is an amazing option. I mean, of course we believe that, we’ve built it!)

Take the example of Porsche in the 1980s. They were releasing a new car and wanted to take a different approach. They used VW engines instead of a Porsche engine, so it was a different proposition, but they didn’t know how to push that.

That was a perfect project for an agency, because they had a chance to reinvent a brand, to play with it a little, and to establish a new kind of persona based around this car and based on Porsche’s different approach. That’s a perfect project because it gives about an opportunity that an in-house team might not necessarily be able to rise to.

Oh, and for the record…they crushed it:

It all comes down to actual sales proving whether your advertising and marketing campaign is really working. An agency proves its value to clients by the impact on their bottom line. The agency tells you the situation was X, but after using them, the situation is Y, as far as sales percentage. An agency proves it value by making this massive promise that your company should have a certain amount of sales, perhaps double what you expected. When the agency comes through, it has really proven its value to your company’s bottom line. That’s what really matters, and it’s not a question of the number of awards the agency has won. It’s a matter of delivering on this massive promise that an in-house team cannot possibly make. It’s definitely money well-spent.

If you’ve enjoyed this piece, make sure you check out Speedlancer, our tech platform that allows agencies of any size to power up their teams and get more done for their clients — and allows businesses who want more flexibility than an agency to get their advertising, marketing and design work done by leading (killer) professionals!