But what exactly are the benefits of hiring a digital marketing agency? And how do you know if it’s the right time to invest? 

Today’s post will explore 5 reasons why a digital marketing agency is the key to your brand’s growth, as well as pinpointing the signs you’re ready to make the leap. 

What Is A Digital Marketing Agency? 

A digital marketing agency is a team of well-versed, experienced marketers who specialize in various marketing paths. They work together with a clear vision on marketing campaigns to help grow and develop your brand.

How Do You Know When You Should Hire A Digital Marketing Agency? 

In business, timing is crucial. So, here are 5 signs that you’re ready to outsource and hire a digital marketing agency:

1. Your marketing strategy is no longer working, and it demands a fresh, new outlook. 

2. You physically don’t have the time to dedicate to your marketing efforts. 

3. You’re feeling overwhelmed, which may be manifesting itself through inspiration blocks, unproductivity, or lack of confidence. 

4. Your brand is desperate for new leads, but you’re finding it challenging to capture them. 

5. Your brand isn’t clearly defined and washes out to your competitors. 

Why Should You Hire A Digital Marketing Agency?

Now we’ve addressed 5 symptoms suggesting you need a digital marketing agency, let’s consider why a digital marketing agency is the right route for your business. 

1. It Frees You To Work On The Elements You Want To Work On 

When you decided to launch your business, it’s likely you didn’t realize quite how time-consuming marketing is. In fact, it can be so time-consuming that you’ve lost many opportunities for business growth due to your chain of marketing and exposure. 

Outsourcing this, however, means you’re able to work on the elements you choose to. Plus, you can be sure that the team you outsource it to will be well versed in marketing strategies. 

2. You’ll Be Working With Experts.

You can listen to every podcast, download every freebie, and follow every Instagram post within the industry and you’ll still be dipping only your little toe into the marketing field. 

As such, when you work with a digital marketing agency, you can rest assured that you’ll be working with experts. Armed with the latest SEO and social media algorithm knowledge, alongside the know-how to launch a successful marketing campaign across multiple platforms, you can ultimately guarantee growth. 

3. There Are Plans To Suit Almost Every Budget Which Grow As Your Brand Grows

One of the best things about a digital marketing agency is that they can accommodate almost any budget. So if you’re a startup, you need only a small package. Then, as the results pour in and you see a clear, positive return on investment, you’ll be able to upscale your package.

In other words, as your business grows, your digital marketing agency’s efforts and inclusion grow too. 

4. You’ll Be Given Evident Results. 

Many business owners market their business without evaluating their data. However, a digital marketing agency is well versed in the metrics and key performance indicators. In fact, digital marketing agencies are highly data-informed, and they use this to shape your marketing strategy.

Members of the agency will track the data and explain what the metrics mean, so you can see the efforts of the team paying off and assess how your strategy is functioning. 

5. You’ll Be Able To Expand Your Brand’s Reputation Across Multiple Channels 

Omnipresence is almost impossible when working as a solopreneur. Being a one-person band means you have your limits. It’s impossible to create high-quality content according to the users of various platforms.

However, with a digital marketing agency, your brand can master omnipresence, allowing you to capture more leads and never miss an opportunity to sell again. 

Digital Marketing Agencies Allow Your Brand To Grow

In a nutshell, digital marketing agencies are adaptable to your brand. While the prices and packages can adjust depending on the size and position of your business, one thing remains consistent: their goal for your growth. 

If you’re doing business without SOPs, you need to stop!

But if you don’t know what SOPs are…that may have gone over your head. 

Here’s the definition of SOPs, the impact they have on your business, and why your brand’s growth depends on them.                                                          

What Are SOPs?

SOPs stands for Standard Operating Procedures. These are brief, clear documents that contain actionable steps and workflows.

Ultimately, SOPs create easy-to-follow flowcharts for individual tasks.

An example of an SOP would be a documented flowchart of your onboarding process or employing a new team member. 

The SOPs will outline the general direction and process of particular elements of your business.

Why Your Business Needs SOPs To Grow

Think about a brand you admire. Chances are, that brand uses SOPs to keep their processes consistent and their growth on the increase without too many variations. 

The benefits of SOPs are extensive. Here are four reasons your business depends on SOPs:

1. You’re Laying Down Consistency Across Your Team

Everyone knows that consistency is vital when it comes to business growth. As your company evolves, you’ll need to outsource and build a team – if you haven’t already. 

With that in mind, it’s fundamental that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.

A standard operating procedure will ensure that every team member performs the same process for the good of your company and your employees. 

2. SOPs Make Hiring And Retaining Employees So Much Easier 

When you onboard new employees, you can save time, money, and resources by introducing them to your standard operating procedures. Within minutes, your new employees will be able to understand what needs to be executed, how, and in what order. You’ll be giving them clarity so they can fulfill their true potential. 

This also takes the pressure off of you, as you’re able to provide a document for direction rather than needing to explain it step by step verbally. 

3. SOPs Help You Locate Any Gaps In Your Business 

Until you write it all down, you’ll likely have holes in your processes. But, if not, there are definitely elements you can improve upon, making them swifter, smoother, and more effective. 

Creating and perfecting your standard operating procedure allows you to view any gaps within your business to fill them for business growth. 

4. You’ll Be Improving Reliability Levels In Customer Service. 

As mentioned previously: consistency is vital. This is accurate for your team but also for your customers. Should there be a complaint, feedback, questions, queries, or any other interaction between your brand and its buyers, you’ll need to ensure everyone is treated the same way. 

Without this consistency, your brand will be viewed as unreliable. So, create and streamline your SOPs for maximum consistency. 

Stop Doing Business Without SOPs. 

With these four reasons why your business’s growth relies on standard operating procedures, you’ll need to begin documenting the processes within each factor: marketing, sales, customer service – to name but a few. 

Above all, SOPs promise consistency within the brand, which translates to reliability and trust. Both of these are crucial for business growth. In fact, they’re so vital that businesses cannot grow without them. 

With 1.3 million new social media accounts being opened every day on average, many people live their lives through various social platforms. These include, but aren’t limited to, Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok, Twitter, and LinkedIn. 

Due to social media playing such a large role in our lives, marketers and business owners understand the massive amount of opportunity within social media marketing. And, if done properly, a solid social presence can revolutionize your business. 

What Is Engagement In Social Media Marketing? 

Social media engagement is what every marketer strives for with their social media campaigns. It’s what communicates a successful post and overall strategy.

Engagement consists of many different sub-metrics, which can be infinitely valuable when crafting and re-evaluating a current strategy. These sub-metrics include:

– The number of shares

– The play rate

– The number of likes

– The number of comments

– The number of saves

The engagement rate shows you how many people have interacted, in some way, with your post.

Why Is Engagement So Important For Social Media?

Your engagement rate shows you how many people have paid attention to your posts. This will tell you if your social content resonates and creates the impact you set out to create in your social media strategy. 

Engagement is the first step toward profiting from your content and marketing efforts, so it’s arguably the most important and telling metric when using social platforms to market your business. 

How to Keep Your Audience Engaged On Social Media

Now that we understand how engagement works and why it’s so important, let’s look at how to keep your audience engaged on social media. 

Remember, engagement is absolutely pivotal. If you can cultivate a loyal following with a high engagement rate, you’ll see your efforts paying off quickly and effectively. 

1. Analyze Your Current Engagement Rate 

Before improving your engagement rate, you need first to know where your social media platform sits on the engagement scale.

For example, on Instagram, generally speaking, anything between 1% and 3% is classified as a ‘good’ engagement rate. 

Learn where your engagement rate is currently so you can monitor it as a KPI to assess whether your strategy is working.

2. Determine Your Strategy

After considering your current engagement rate, you need to outline your new strategy. This should all revolve around your ideal buyer or client, considering carefully what form of content will capture their attention and encourage engagement most. 

Lean on your foundations. Specifically, consider your ‘why’ and ensure your content communicates this. 

3. Conduct Audience Research 

This step will inform the second, too. 

Conducting audience and market research will indicate what type of content resonates most with them.

Reflect on your audience avatar, and find a handful of social media channels that encompass similar qualities to that of your avatar. Trace their activity, paying particular attention to how they engage with business and brand pages. 

Try to spot patterns between each of the accounts, looking too at what they are posting.

4. Conduct Competitor Research 

Similar to audience research, competitor research can open up a world of possibilities. 

You should aim to research direct and indirect competitors, focusing on what they post and where. 

This is especially useful if their target audience is similar or even identical to yours. Focus on the metrics of their posts before breaking down why the post was or was not successful.

These findings will play a prominent role in your new social media strategy. 

5. Provide Value 

The key to social media marketing is to provide value. This can be through educational, inspirational, or motivational posts. You’ll need to know what your audience is hungry for so you can then cook them up some content with value sauce. 

People act when they are triggered to act. Therefore, providing value will create an emotional response, particularly if you address a pain point and offer a solution. 

Social Media Marketing Revolves Around Engagement 

Social media plays such a pivotal role in our lives in 2021. Being a business owner nowadays means leveraging the power of social media to benefit our businesses. 

However, it’s not as easy as simply posting a few cute photos. 

Everything needs to be underpinned with strategy, with a solid reason for posting that particular piece of content. 

Use the 5 methods above to keep your audience engaged on social media so you can build a presence and grow your business. 

Steps to Building a Good Team

1. Communicate Expectations

Communication is essential for building a strong team. You need to explicitly communicate goals and expectations to your team members (from the very beginning!) while allowing them to come to you should they have anything to communicate.

Check-in with employees regularly to find out about their progress and where they are with goals. Communicate what they’re doing well and areas where they can improve—without reviewing their job performance, they’ll simply think they’re doing a great job when you might actually be unsatisfied behind the scenes.

2. Lead With Respect

Mutual respect is an important element of successful teams. Leaders who treat their team members as equals, acknowledge their input, and in turn gain their respect, lead significantly stronger teams than those who put down their subordinates.

Embrace each of your team members’ unique talents and encourage them to share insight with teammates. This technique can help you build a well-rounded and confident team. 

3. Celebrate Team Wins

Instead of solely scolding your team for mistakes, it’s critical to celebrate their accomplishments. Affirming your staff’s positive work will encourage continued personal success, which will lead to the success of the business.

That doesn’t mean you have to celebrate team members with financial bonuses, which can be challenging for new businesses’ that are just getting off the ground. Instead, there are numerous ways to show appreciation for your team. An authentic message of gratitude goes a very long way.

Or, consider rewarding them with new responsibilities and privileges or opportunities to attend business-related conferences. These forms of celebration not only instill confidence in your team members, but they’ll help better the entire business.

4. Admit Your Mistakes

We all mess up at some point. If you discover that you’ve made a mistake, particularly one that affects the entire team—admit it. Strong leaders openly acknowledge their errors and use them as learning examples.

This behavior can also encourage your team to admit their mistakes if and when they make them, building mutual trust and integrity within the team structure.

A Strong Team Begins with a Strong Leader

Building a good team begins with you. As a business owner, you have an immense impact on your company culture, team mindset, and overall success. Inspire and encourage your team to grow individually, and the business will grow with it. Be a team leader, not simply a boss.

If you are ready to build a great team, learn more about our business development and coaching solutions. We’re here to help you position your team for success. 

However, wrongly organized outsourcing can cause severe problems for your business. Asides from poor management and communication, one major mistake entrepreneurs make when outsourcing is timing. Outsourcing too early or too late can cost your business heavily while destroying the whole outsourcing process.

Factors to Consider Before Outsourcing

The following factors must be in place in your business before you decide to outsource.

The scale of demand

For outsourcing to make sense and be profitable, your business must be at a stage where there is a massive inflow of demands. When your team’s workload is more than they can handle, then it is time to outsource. If your business’s demand and workload are low, the cost of outsourcing and financing a team might be more than the benefits.

For outsourcing to be profitable, you would have to get as much value as possible from your team and your outsourced employee or firm; This would be difficult when there is hardly enough workload to go round. Idle or underutilized employees cost you and your business heavily.

Capacity and competence of your team

Outsourcing would require you and your team to take on new roles. Most of these roles would be supervisory.  Outsourcing might see your team members moving up the corporate ladder to supervisors, managers, and heads of specific departments.

To fully utilize outsourcing’s benefits, it is advisable to designate a team member to supervise and manage the firm or employee you are outsourcing to.

However, this would require a high level of supervisory, communicative, and managerial skills on the part of you and your team. Therefore before outsourcing, be sure that you and your team are capable of handling the new roles.

If you feel your team members might lack this skill set, then organizing a training program might be a simple way to fix this. There are excellent companies such as Si Mar Inc that specialize in providing your team with the skills necessary for this next stage in your business.

Conclusion

Outsourcing is a critical step in the growth of your business. It opens your business to expansion and new opportunities. However, it all depends on how and when you do it. Deciding when to outsource comes down to two basic things. Demand and Workforce, once they are both in position, then it’s time to outsource.

• Be prepared all the time. In everything we do, preparation is a vital tool that will shield you from any anxiety or roadblocks turn your way. When you know precisely what you are talking about, you can gain full control of your emotions and create decisions with more clarity and precision.

• Be kinder to yourself. It may sound humble to criticize your shortcomings to others but doing so will negatively ricochet unto yourself. People’s perception will be torn both ways and this could impact your own perception about yourself. So, at the very least, be kind to yourself.

• Stop complaining, procrastinating, and overthinking! Everyone have issues of their own. What could be simple to you can be devastating to another person. Wallowing in negativity will only isolate you from the rest and prevent solutions from shaping up.

• Try to uplift yourself every now and then by celebrating your victories no matter how simple or small. Boosting your own morale does not have to be a gargantuan effort. Treat yourself to a full body massage in your favorite spa. Buy something to make you feel special. For every victory won, you are actually raising your confidence level.

• Learn the beauty of mindfulness through yoga or meditation. This helps to relax the overthinking mind, bring more focus to your commitments and stimulates sources of pure joy. It also helps channel nerves and tension to lucrative means.