You’re working with a shoestring budget, running a nonprofit or a small business, and money is always tight. You know you’ve got to spend money to make money, but you don’t have a marketing budget, and you also don’t have the time or know-how to promote your business yourself.
You shop around for a marketing agency or freelancer to help. You think you can’t afford the agency, so you hire an inexpensive freelance graphic designer instead, thinking you’ll save a little money.
But it doesn’t go so well. They leave you hanging when they go on a two-week vacation. And the quality isn’t up to par and requires multiple rounds of costly revisions. Plus, they’re juggling too many other clients and can’t give you the time you need.
The freelancer is a talented graphic designer, but they don’t have any marketing experience and can’t guide your strategy. Maybe they’re inexpensive because they’re inexperienced. Maybe they don’t have the expertise to handle complex jobs, so your fundraising event invitation goes out late which impacts your bottom line.
Maybe using a freelancer ends up costing more in the long run—more of your precious time, energy, and money.
Sound familiar?
You get what you pay for
Sure, you can hire someone cheaper to do your marketing, but cheaper often turns out to be more expensive in the end.
Think about it like a home remodel. You could either:
1. Hire a slew of individual workers (carpenter, plumber, electrician, painter, etc.) Getting several bids for each, handling permits, emails, phone calls, dealing with issues—that’s a lot of coordination on your part.
OR
2. Hire a general contractor who will coordinate everything for you, saving you the time and hassle of managing all those moving pieces.
Why hiring a marketing agency makes sense
We save you time
Instead of spending all your time and energy coordinating project details with multiple freelancers, an agency provides a single point of contact for the full scope of your marketing needs. Agencies generally hire a variety of skilled professionals such as web and graphic designers, copywriters, social media managers, and project managers. They provide the right experts for each stage of the project to ensure high-quality work.
By choosing the agency, you’ll save time on requesting bids, coordinating services, attending meetings, reviewing drafts, and dealing with any potential issues.
We save you money
Agencies can offer you package deals, like flat project rates or monthly retainers. This can ultimately be more cost-effective than paying several freelancers’ hourly rates.
Also, agencies can scale their services according to your needs. A project that starts off small but grows beyond the capabilities of an individual freelancer can easily be absorbed by the agency’s staff.
Plus, when you hire marketing unicorns (like our team!), you won’t have to worry about your designer going on vacation or getting sick because your agency is 100% prepared for those types of emergencies. We are all cross-trained, so we’ll never leave you hanging.
We save you energy
Not the light bulb kind—we’re talking about the other kind—your physical and mental energy. Agencies take care of all aspects of your project, including scheduling, coordination, and overseeing the work, saving you the hassle of doing it yourself.
Instead of having to communicate with multiple vendors, your agency contact will streamline the process to ensure your project is completed correctly, on time, and on budget. Most importantly, it reduces the chance of errors through misunderstandings or miscommunication.
We provide our expertise
A single freelancer simply can’t match the depth and breadth of expertise an agency offers. Multiple freelancers won’t necessarily coordinate with one another to ensure adherence to your brand guidelines or develop an integrated campaign.
By their nature, marketing agencies thrive on collaboration and creativity. They give you comprehensive marketing strategies, diverse perspectives, and high-quality campaigns. Moreover, agencies are responsible for the quality of the full scope of work, with checks and balances to ensure accuracy and consistency.
We often say that for less than the price of one full-time marketing manager, you can hire our entire team of experts. It’s no joke. We’re more affordance than an in-house marketer and more effective than a freelancer.
We help you grow beyond the status quo
Have you heard of the Red Queen Effect? It’s based on Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking-Glass.
“…it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Many nonprofits and small businesses experience this phenomenon: You’re running as fast as you can, but you can never seem to get ahead. It takes all your energy just to maintain the status quo, and there’s nothing left in the tank to move forward.
But to stay competitive, to further your mission, you have to evolve. What can you do? Hiring a marketing agency will take you beyond the status quo.
Imagine what it would feel like to have more time. When you outsource your marketing to an agency, it frees you up to focus on other priorities, like your core business operations, goals, customers, products, and services. Hiring an agency to become your “in-house marketing team,” allows you to move incrementally further—to grow your business in ways you couldn’t on your own.
Look, we get it. We’ve been in your shoes. We feel your pain (no time, too much work, not enough staff, small budgets). We know what it feels like to run as fast as you can and never get ahead.
When you hire a freelancer, you may save money in the short term, but chances are you’ll still be running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. By hiring a full-service marketing agency, on the other hand, you’re investing in a future that allows you to grow beyond the status quo.
