Importance of Digital Marketing
TL;DR – More important now then ever
When it comes to marketing your business, digital marketing is extremely important. In this day and age, you can no longer stick to traditional forms of marketing, while ignoring digital and internet marketing. If you do, then your business will definitely suffer as most consumers look online first, before making any buying decisions.
You will need to do SEO, social media marketing, blogging, review management and perhaps even video marketing in order to have a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. So let’s take a closer look at the specific benefits of hiring a digital marketing company and how they can boost your business.
In-House Digital Marketing
Pros and Cons
First of all, many business owners think that they can do digital marketing on their own and don’t need to hire a digital marketing company to do it for them.
However, this could be a mistake, especially if you don’t constantly keep up to date with the changing digital trends and have specific experience in the industry. A digital marketing company specializes in this field which means that they typically have at least 5 years of experience. In our case over a decade of experience. 
In House Benefits
Should you choose to tackle digital marketing in-house there are a few benefits to consider. Firstly, you will have tighter control over the messaging of your brand online. This is because you not only have intimate knowledge of the inner workings of your business but, you will ultimately be paying the salary of the person who is also in charge of the digital marketing campaigns.
Unfortuneatly, that’s about where the benefits end…
In House Cons
Unless you plan on spending a LOT of additional time and money on training and on an on-going basis then whomever you put in charge of your campaigns is doomed to fail from the start.
Unless you plan on investing in a LOT of expensive and complicated software then whomever your businesses chooses to head the digital marketing is doomed to fail.
Unless the person heading up the digital marketing campaigns can also invest a LOT of time reading, studying, learning and continuing their education in all facets of digital marketing, they will be doomed to fail.
I think you get the point… let’s move on.
Hiring A Digital Marketing Company
Pros and Cons
We’ve looked at doing your digital marketing in-house now let’s take a look at hiring an agency to do the work for you.
As you can probably guess, the benefits of hiring a company solve the issues we saw with doing it yourself. Surely, though, there must be more benefit to hiring someone right?
Sure there is.
Pros
You are able to stay on top of the latest trends without any additional cost to you. Digital marketing agencies, like HD Marketing, are CONSTANTLY learning, training, researching and educating themselves because staying on top of or even in front of the latest trends equals success for all parties.
You get advanced insights and reporting prepared and analyzed by people with the knowledge to discern what is important and what is not.
You are able to leverage software and data sets for just a fraction of the cost. Because digital marketing agencies are using the same software across multiple clients they are able to provide access to these vital tools for just a fraction of the cost of ownership.
Or in most cases, subscription because most digital marketing tools operate as a monthly cost for as long as you have access to the tool.
Cons
There some pitfalls or caveats to a hiring a digital marketing company as well. Here are a few to consider:
- No granualar control
- No ‘instant’ access
- Can’t be looking for a ‘quick fix’
- Costs can be higher to repair in-house faux pas
- Long contracts are common, regardless of performance
HD Marketing never has and never will force a client into a contract of any kind. We feel our performance and service quality should make you want to stay on board.
How to Hire a Digital Marketing Company
What to look for
In your search for a reputable digital marketing company there are a few simple things to look for:
- Transparency in Services
- Industry Specialization
- Online Reviews
- Customer Support
Let’s take a peek at each of these.
Transparency
How transparent is the company in how or what they provide in each of their services (if they provide multiple services, most should). Do they explain exactly what it is they do and at what frequency? Do they include any reporting each month?
As an example, we here at HD Marketing provide transparent monthly reports for nearly every service we provide. We feel it is important to show how we are performing whether it’s good or bad that month.
Industry Specialization
Do they specialize in a specific industry? Do they cater to a certain segment of business? An example is a web design company that only or mostly serves, say, law firms. Does this seem like a good or bad thing? The answer is, it kinda depends. In some cases it’s okay but, in most they are just trying to ‘game the system’ by using keywords and landing pages to capture unsuspecting clients.
HD Marketing caters to small and medium sized businesses. We don’t do just one type of business. We’ve helped contractors, chiropractors and paving companies all the same. At the end of the day, marketing is marketing, you don’t have to ‘know’ a certain industry to market it.
Online Reviews
Check the reviews! If they are a marketing company they should be collecting reviews for themselves for crying out loud.
You can view some of our reviews at the bottom of nearly every page of our website or on our company reviews page.
Customer Support
What channels of support do they offer? Email? Chat? Knowledge Base? Help Desk? What is the turn around time if you do need support? Make sure that if you have questions you can get answers.
We have a few different ways clients can get answers. They can search our Knowledge Base, they can submit a ticket to our Help Desk, they can even Tweet at us on Twitter! We care an aweful lot about making sure clients get answers and fast. Our average support ticket is answered and CLOSED in less than an hour!
Want to hire HD Marketing? Check out our service pages yourself. Use the navigation at the top of any page to learn more.
Wrapping Up
We’ve looked at the pros and cons of doing digital marketing in-house as well as hiring an agency. We also discussed what to look for when hiring a digital marketing agency as well as some well placed calls to action 
and weaved in a few emoji just for the fun of it.
In all seriousness, it can be a difficult decision to make as a business owner and all of us here at HD Marketing understand that. If you have any questions you can leave them in the comments below or contact us and we’ll be more than happy to help you out.
Have you had any good or bad experiences in digital marketing?
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