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You know your product, you know your audience. What is an advertising agency really good for?
You may think that you can use your own marketing strategies to reach new customers. And that may be true in some cases. However, effective advertising is probably not your biggest strength – it’s the product or service you’re selling.
Let’s take a look at some ways that hiring an advertising agency can help you boost sales.
Saving Time
When you run a business, you spend the majority of your time ordering inventory or dealing with existing customers and staff. That means there’s not a whole lot of time to launch your own advertising campaign, assuming you have a good idea for one.
You’ll do best when you focus on your own strengths. Taking on marketing duties may end up being not only a drain on your time but your money too.
Different Perspectives
You see your product the same way every day. You know why it’s good and why people should buy it.
However, consider that an advertising agency is an objective third party. They may be seeing your product for the first time. That means they may have thoughts or ideas about how to market it that you haven’t thought of yet.
Cross-Platform Campaigns
Maybe you’ve already sent out flyers about your new product. Or you’ve printed branded T-shirts. And that’s great because print is still an effective way to reach people.
However, if your target market is millennials and you’re trying to entice them with print, then you may be wasting your money. Research has shown that millennials love downloading apps. Do you know how to get your ads into the right apps? Probably not, but an experienced ad agency will.
Your campaign may also have a social media component to engage people. Social media is based on constant interaction, and you may not have time to respond. An ad agency may have a social media manager to handle this for you.
Consider if you want to host a contest and give away a prize. A social media marketing company can administer the contest, answer questions from participants, and even help source a sponsor.
Creative Ideas and Digital Skills
This could be one of the biggest advantages of hiring an agency. You may consider yourself a creative type, but an agency can help think outside the box.
Once the core message you’re trying to convey is agreed on, whether print or digital or both, advertising agencies can go to work creating the actual ads. They will most often have staff whose job it is to make pretty layouts or graphics.
They will likely also have professional copywriters who can come up with a snappy tag line that will reflect your brand and stick in peoples’ minds.
Along with talented writers and graphic designers, you may also get the benefit of an in-house coder. That means if you want to create a new website, landing page, or some other digital product, you won’t have to look elsewhere.
If you want to develop your own interactive app to show off your products, for example, the right coder can do that for you. If you want your business to float to the top of online search engine rankings, then an agency can help improve your search engine optimization (SEO).
Creating a Brand Message
Your company might be all about saving the planet, but your products may not reflect that. But your brand should, as that’s the kind of customer you’re looking to appeal to.
An ad agency can help you identify practices that help set you apart from others, and use them to your advantage. You may have the same product or service as a company down the street from you – but if the customer thinks you have an ethical philosophy that lines up with their own, they’re more likely to buy from you.
Media Buying
Some ad agencies are experienced in not only ad creation but also media buys. That means after the agency has developed a campaign, they will decide where to best place it and negotiate the price.
That means that once you approve the messaging, the ad firm will do research about how your target audience consumes media. Then it will spend money on putting your ad in a newspaper, or a website, or an app, or even radio and television.
Media buys can be expensive, so it makes sense to leave that part to experts that can maximize value for your ad spending. Your goal is to make a profit from the money you’re spending on ads, and that won’t happen if you’re putting ads in the wrong places.
From a time-saving perspective, if a media sales rep approaches you and tries to sell you on an ad in a newspaper, for example, you can just direct them to your ad agency.
Proven Results
Most ad agencies will have some kind of portfolio that they can show you. They may also have case studies that show how much in sales their ads generated for other clients.
Of course, you want to deal with an ad agency that has a positive reputation and follows proper business practices. Check out the Smart Circle BBB page to know what to look for.
What is an Advertising Agency Good For, Really?
Would you try to fix your own car without having the know-how? Hopefully not. You’d likely hire an experienced mechanic. The same goes for ad creation and promotion. You’re putting your campaign into the hands of experts that have a proven track record.
One of the strengths of being an effective business leader is knowing where to delegate tasks. That means you let people focus on what they do best. While that is true among managing staff, it’s also true about recognizing the strengths of your business.
The bottom line is that if you’re not immersed in advertising regularly, then you probably won’t create the best ads. But an ad agency will. Then you can focus on creating great things to sell. What is an advertising agency without something exciting to promote?
Check out ways you can improve your number of Instagram followers that see your products, while you research which ad agency is best for you.