What is a Marketing Agency and What Do They Do? Tips to Find The Best Digital Agencies

on Blog January 07th, 2022

Although many industries struggled in 2021 and have continued to do so in 2022, the global marketing industry actually exceeded expectations by generating more than $332 billion. There is no doubt that marketing is a necessary component of any successful business plan. But, building a successful campaign and monitoring its performance is a full-time job that’s usually fulfilled by an entire team at a marketing agency. But, what is a marketing agency and how can it benefit your company?

At Fannit, we have decades of combined experience helping our customers develop and implement comprehensive marketing plans. Our team understands the importance of finding a knowledgeable marketing agency partner to relieve pressure from your internal team while allowing you to grow your customer base. In this article, we’ll take a look at the marketing agency definition, go over the benefits of working with an advertising firm, and go over a few tips on choosing the best marketing company.

If you want to experience the benefits of working with a marketing agency first-hand, contact Fannit today to schedule a free marketing consultation.

What is a Marketing Agency?

Before going into the benefits of partnering with a promotion strategy specialist, it’s important to answer the most basic question: what’s a marketing agency? All businesses want to find a sustainable way to attract more clients.

A marketing agency is a company that specializes in helping these businesses attract potential customers through a variety of channels. Also called advertising firms or marketing companies, these promotion experts can specialize in one or many techniques.

This includes traditional approaches like print and television as well as search engine optimization, social media, and other methods.

Some business owners are fortunate enough to attract new customers without much effort, but this isn’t usually the case with most brands.

Marketing agencies can help you attract people that are interested in your solutions, which means that they have a higher chance of becoming customers. That said, you need to understand what a marketing agency can do for you before you decide which areas you need assistance with.

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What Does a Marketing Agency Do Exactly?

We’ve discussed the definition of an advertising agency, but what does a marketing company do?

The answer to the question above may vary depending on what types of services the marketing firm offers and how much help the advertising brand needs.

For example, a marketing agency can take care of a business’ graphic design needs, special media marketing strategies, search engine optimization (SEO) plan, inbound marketing blueprint, and many other activities.

While the specific methods may vary, most businesses expect their marketing agency to:

  • Identify the most valuable marketing strategies
  • Develop all the necessary materials and implement these solutions properly
  • Track and evaluate campaign performance to adjust the content for better results

The truth is that a full-service marketing company is flexible, so you can decide what type of support you receive and which tasks you’ll handle internally.

More helpful reading: What Is Online Marketing?

Marketing Firm vs. Marketing Agency: Is There a Difference?

Is there a difference between a marketing firm and a marketing agency? And are they any different from a business marketing agency?

It may be a bit confusing, but there are many different terms you can use to refer to a marketing agency. These include marketing firm, marketing company, advertising agency, and other variables.

In most instances, these terms are used interchangeably, so they refer to the same thing.

Keep in mind that some agencies may have a specialty, but most of these can be divided into traditional and digital marketing firms.

A traditional marketing team focuses on print, television, radio, and similar types of advertising. Digital marketing agencies, on the other hand, specialize in search marketing, social media, email marketing, web design, online market research, content marketing, target market analysis, and other modern practices.

Types of Marketing Agencies and the Services They Offer

It’s not possible to answer the question “what do marketing companies do?” unless you understand the different types of agencies out there.

We’ve touched briefly on Two of the four types, but we’ll explore each one in more detail in this section.

The four main types of marketing agencies are traditional, digital, specialized, and full-service firms.

Traditional Marketing Agency

As we mentioned before, a traditional marketing services agency focuses on developing print, television, and radio advertising campaigns.

These firms can also develop campaigns for other traditional types of advertising, like live event sponsorship and community events.

However, most traditional marketing agencies still focus on product-centric techniques, which don’t tend to engage the target audience or boost brand loyalty.

And, even though many companies still rely on these marketing strategies, businesses are slowly starting to transition to techniques that can be tracked and measured.

Digital Marketing Agency

Now, let’s go over the digital agency definition.

A digital agency can help your company create online marketing strategies for a variety of web channels, like search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, and other forms of online public relations.

Depending on your business goals, an online marketing agency can help you get on Google’s first search engine results page and create a better user experience for people that visit your business website.

This can improve your reputation, smoothen your public relations, and ultimately become an integral part of your business success.

Today, digital marketing agencies are among the best types of promotion firms because of the relatively low price point and high success rates.

This is partially due to the fact that digital marketing allows you to track and monitor the performance of your marketing materials. In other words, a digital marketing agency can highlight which marketing activities are yielding results and which ones need to be re-evaluated.

Specialized Marketing Agency

Specialized agencies don’t fall within any specific marketing firm definition. These vary in size and services provided, usually limiting the scope of their solutions to a few specialties.

For example, you may find an internet marketing agency that can only help with website interface design, rather than building the entire page from concept to final product.

Keep in mind that specialized marketing professionals usually form relationships with other companies to deliver a better experience to their clients.

If you want to work with a specialized agency to develop your marketing campaigns, we suggest you discuss your strategy with your candidate beforehand to ensure that their services can help you achieve your business goals.

Full-Service Digital Marketing Firm

What do marketing companies do differently if they offer full-service solutions? In simple terms, a full-service marketing agency can handle a company’s entire promotional strategy, from the design through to the development and management stages.

As you can imagine, full-service agencies can develop a tailored marketing plan for your business and implement all strategies that may yield good results.

These include social media promotion, inbound marketing, traditional advertising, graphic design and SEO, content marketing, market research, content development, website conversion optimization, as well as other techniques.

Benefits of Working with a Marketing Agency

At this point, you can probably define a marketing agency and have a good understanding of what these agencies can do for your company in terms of actual work.

Now, let’s explore the benefits of working with an agency and boosting your marketing efforts with the help of a promotion expert.

There are many benefits of working with marketing agencies, besides relieving pressure from your internal team of course.

If you partner with a professional, you can make sure that your web design is designed to collect each user’s email address, name, phone number, and other pieces of information in order to convert them into clients later on.

Develop a Tailored Growth-Driven Strategy

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when managing their own promotional efforts is the lack of a marketing plan.

Simply developing social media or SEO content without a clear set of digital marketing objectives will likely lead nowhere.

Instead, marketing agencies ensure that you have a growth-driven strategy tailored specifically to your company’s requirements.

If you’re working with a full-service or digital marketing agency, this includes keyword research for SEO content, website design, persona development, a Hubspot inbound marketing strategy, and other elements specifically chosen for your brand.

Get a Professional to Handle Campaign Set Up and Management

Building a campaign that takes all of your resources and requirements into consideration takes a huge amount of time. And, this doesn’t include the actual launching or managed phases, which also require a significant amount of attention.

Companies that form good relationships with reliable marketing agencies can rest assured that these firms will take care of all campaign tasks.

This includes the research required to develop article content and to design the campaigns themselves, so make sure to find a company that offers marketing services you can trust.

Ensure Effective Monitoring and Optimization

Digital marketing campaigns are different from conventional advertising for a variety of reasons, but the main one may be the ability to optimize content that has been launched.

Good marketing agencies monitor their clients’ social media marketing performance metrics, SEO content, and other elements to ensure that these are producing the right results.

Additionally, knowledgeable marketing firms can also help make adjustments to their every client’s marketing strategy and help find the ideal target audience based on the information collected.

Streamline Marketing-Related Internal Processes

Digital marketing and full-service ad agencies also focus on improving efficiency across the board. Instead of completing tasks manually, agencies usually have the tools to automate and streamline a significant portion of your marketing efforts.

From assigning tasks to content writers in deciding to hire additional marketing services, you’ll be able to create a seamless mechanism that’s effective and efficient.

Create a Holistic Marketing Campaign with Complementary Elements

Being familiar with the consumer’s decision-making process is important, but you also need to learn how people interact with content on different digital marketing channels.

y partnering with a solid agency, you can rest assured that your website, social media marketing, and other parts of your campaign are working in unison.

Just make sure to work closely with your firm of choice until your provider is familiar with your target audience as well as your business objectives, or example, appearing on Google’s first search results page.

 

How Much Does It Cost to Work with a Marketing Agency?

All marketing agencies have different pricing and the range can vary depending on if you’re targeting consumers or if you’re running a B2B business.

The overall cost of hiring digital marketing services will vary depending on the amount of support you need, how much work your website requires, and the skills that your provider brings to the table.

The budget to hire a digital marketing agency can range from $1500 to $100,000+ depending on what your business wants to achieve.

If you want to learn more about the pricing of the marketing agency services you’re considering, your best bet is to contact the firm and request a custom quote.

Tips to Find the Best Digital Marketing Agencies or Firm

While pricing is important, there are dozens of additional elements you need to consider when choosing a digital marketing agency for your brand.

Every business is different, so you need to keep the resources, your services, and the goals you want to achieve in mind before choosing a digital marketing firm.

Always remember to:

  • Thoroughly research all the candidates and compare their services
  • Inquire how the agency will build a custom plan for your brand
  • Evaluate the potential costs
  • Review the agency’s location and portfolio
  • Assess each agency’s experience and knowledge
  • If possible, speak with your potential account manager

 

Ready to Work with a Full-Service Digital Marketing Firm? Contact Fannit Today

Finding a reliable marketing services provider to boost your business isn’t always easy. But, we hope that the article above has answered the question “what is a marketing company?” and allows you to track down the best firm for your business.

To learn more about our digital marketing services, contact Fannit today and our team will be glad to help.


Recommended Article: How to Hire a Marketing Agency

Neil Eneix

My brother Keith and I started Fannit in 2010 and have been very fortunate to work with a wonderful family of clients, watching their businesses grow through the power of digital marketing. At the office, I work with our clients on developing out their business strategy as well as nurturing our relationships. It’s amazing how much influence and power SEO and good content can have over a business’ health. Connect with me on LinkedIn >