Matrix Marketing Group

Digital Marketing Agency | 303-351-1645

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What Do Digital Marketing Firms Do?

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From startups to enterprise organizations, they are all turning to digital marketing firms for help.

In 20`9 alone, businesses spent $209 billion on digital ads. This rapid increase in spending shows just how much emphasis businesses are putting on digital marketing. And digital marketing firms played a big role.

Regardless of the size of your business, you need a strategy for improving your online visibility- and this is where a digital marketing firm can help.

From ranking highly in search engines to attracting more traffic from social media platforms, digital marketing firms can help you reach a wider audience online.

Matrix Marketing Group is a full-service digital marketing agency with offices in Burlington, VT and Denver, CO.

For today’s hyper-growth companies, the management team and investors might want to outsource all of their marketing requirements to gain instant access to expertise, people and technology.

Whereas, a mid-size firm with two to four people on their marketing team might want to augment their team with repetitive marketing activities while still getting outside expertise, lowering human capital cost and reducing risk.

Smart companies know they can’t stop their marketing activities – especially if they plan on establishing long-term value in their business. But, in the face of increasing complexity in the markets and customers, they serve.

Marketers are struggling to keep pace with competing for business demands, proliferating channels and partners, and a disconnect between the talent they have and the capabilities they need.

So, where do they turn when marketing is necessary, but resources, expertise, focus, and funds are scarce? They find the answer in marketing outsourcing.

Understanding Digital Marketing

Digital marketing refers to a collection of activities aimed at improving the online visibility of your business. While your company may attempt to handle all digital marketing activities in-house, hiring a professional firm is almost always a better option.

Such firms have experienced and professional staff that is capable of performing advertising tasks with a high level of efficiency.

Digital marketing firms not only have years of experience in working with many clients, but they also have an in-depth understanding of your specific industry. This experience allows them to bring unique perspectives when generating more leads for your business.

A digital marketing firm can also help you save on digital advertising costs. This is because they’re capable of handling tasks more efficiently and at a larger scale. Digital marketing agencies essentially relieve your in-house marketing team of costly or time-consuming tasks, allowing your employees to focus on more value-generating activities.

Because 40% of all media spending in the U.S is now digital, your company needs to leverage digital advertising channels if your goal is to achieve growth.

Why hire a digital marketing agency?

Digital technology and marketing automation make measuring marketing progress more transparent. The days of hiding behind traditional and vague metrics like influence and awareness are over.

Executive management including chief marketing officers now judges marketing successes and failures faster by using online systems and dashboards that reveal campaign analytics in real-time.

You know that making a business case for your marketing initiatives is a must, but internal marketing teams may not have the time or digital tools and skills needed to track and prove ROI for ongoing campaigns. The right outsourced marketing partner has the resources and talent to make a business case for all marketing tactics.

Here are some examples of why you might consider hiring a digital marketing agency.

  • Do you have an internal team of 1 – 3, and just need ongoing support to lead you in the right direction?
  • Are you lacking an internal team, and need to outsource everything because you don’t have the time or resources to accomplish it yourself?
  • Do you need help in a certain area of marketing such as content marketing, SEO, website design, social media, marketing technology, or improving your lead conversions?

Benefits of hiring a digital marketing agency

A company can achieve a 25 to 35 percent decrease in salaries and overhead costs immediately. The base salary paid to employees does not represent the total cost to the company.

There is the cost of benefits such as FICA, insurance, workman’s compensation, and profit-sharing plans. Many marketing employees also enjoy incentive and bonus plans. In addition, employers must also pay employees for holidays, vacations, and sick days.

Typically, there are 10 paid holidays each year and a minimum of two weeks of vacation. There are also costs associated with hiring staff, such as job posting and advertising, resume reviews and interviewing expense. When you outsource your marketing functions, you pay only for the work performed.

Here a list of benefits:

  • Manage fixed costs as variable costs. Fixed costs in people, systems, and facilities often account for the largest portion of a marketing budget. Marketing organizations need the flexibility to adapt quickly to sudden changes in customer demographics and markets as well as take advantage of immediate opportunities. Outsourcing marketing functions allow you to modify your marketing services based on your current situation rather than constantly altering your internal team to meet current workloads.
  • Access expertise in marketing and sales strategy and implementation, as well as a critical technology. Marketing is an ever-evolving industry. Because of their multiple responsibilities, an in-house team may not have developed the skills or time necessary to successfully implement a complex, modern marketing strategy, but marketing agencies are solely focused on the marketing and sales discipline. Outsourcing to an experienced team that integrates seamlessly into your infrastructure will infuse your organization with new energies and ideas. You’ll introduce fresh and innovative marketing and sales approaches to your customers and business partners.
  • Eliminate hidden costs. While the specific costs of outsourcing might appear to be higher than doing it yourself, there are hidden costs in maintaining internal fixed marketing assets. These include absorbing delays caused by changing priorities, attrition, lack of support when it is needed, etc. Also, the costs of expansion and contraction of marketing functions, even on a monthly basis, can be expensive when done internally.
  • Scalability. While a three-year retainer agreement with a database marketer may be fiscally indistinguishable from a fixed cost, the level of service provided can scale up or down as the situation changes. While an outsourcer might charge more for any one unit of work, he also bears much of the risk prompted by changes in your strategy.
  • Get an outside perspective on your business. Sometimes you can get too close to your business and not see your marketing strategies, programs, or materials from your audience’s perspective. Even though you may know your business inside and out by living and breathing it each day, your perspective is still one-sided. To market successfully to your current audience – and capture new markets – you need to step out of your shoes and into those of your target markets or customers. Having a group on the “outside” supporting your needs can help provide a fresh view of your customer’s perspective.
  • Minimize the impact of marketing staff reductions. You need to continue with projects, but your resources are limited. By outsourcing, you can find qualified, experienced teams to support your marketing needs so the effort, money, and energy you’ve already invested don’t go to waste. Use outside experience with “what works and doesn’t work” scenarios. Whether it’s planning, copywriting, or designing, the right outsource team will have experience with a variety of different marketing and communication strategies, techniques, and tools. You can rely on their lessons over the years to find the correct solution for your business challenge.
  • Maintain momentum with critical projects. They will never fall to the wayside, drop down the priority list, or become forgotten. Today, people change jobs or are hit with lay-offs, while in the middle of projects. When those people leave the company, they will most likely take the project assets with them (in the form of tribal knowledge). When you outsource your marketing relationships, you have one centralized team as your partner, and your knowledge assets remain protected and archived for future use.
  • Hire only whenever and wherever you need resources (on-demand). Hiring full- time staff can be costly when you add up wages, insurance coverage, office equipment and supply needs, training costs, etc. Finding an outsourcing partner allows you the flexibility to bring on talented, knowledgeable experts exactly when and where you need them. And you don’t have to manage or train the entire team – the outsourcing firm does that while you focus on the daily needs of running your own business and generating revenue.
  • Cost reductions. Not only does outsourcing save money in salaries and overhead, but the outsourcing partner can also save you money in direct purchases on marketing programs as well (e.g., printing, media buys, advertising, etc.). By leveraging their supplier, a good outsourcing partner can manage to save a company 10 to 25 percent in overall marketing spending.

Core functions of a digital marketing agency

Digital marketing firms are becoming more complex by the day. However, there are specific services that almost every digital marketing agency provides. These core services can help your business increase its online presence while remaining on top of market trends.

You can expect your digital marketing firm to provide the following core services:

Creating Digital Ads

One of the core functions of a digital marketing agency is to create digital advertisements. These ads come in many different forms- including PPC ads, social media ads, and Google search ads.

In the digital space, having your ad visible to potential customers is as important as creating the ad itself. Indeed, while you and your digital marketing firm may have spent a fortune in creating the perfect ad, the project will be of little use if your target audience can’t view it.

Digital marketing firms can implement strategies to have your ad become increasingly visible online. From using the right type of ad copy to having your ad rank highly on search engines, digital marketing agencies improve the ROI of your online ad campaigns.

Content marketing

As digital marketers often say: Content is King. Content marketing involves developing unique, relevant, and attractive content for your potential customers. Whether it’s a blog that contains useful information or an e-book that provides industry insights, a digital marketing firm can help you increase your visibility online by becoming a thought leader within your field.

Creating useful and relevant content for your target audience also builds trust among customers, develops brand loyalty, and positions your business as an industry leader within its field.

This includes the content for email marketing, video production, and social media marketing.

Web design

A digital marketing firm can also help with web design. Many agencies contain an in-house team of web developers and programmers who can develop a new website from scratch, redesign a current website, or optimize your website for mobile compatibility and SEO.

With quality and responsive website, you will be able to elevate your brand and draw more traffic to your online platforms.

Carrying out market research

The needs and pain points of your customers change regularly. There are always rising trends that cause a shift in preferences and customer expectations- and you should remain on top of these trends at all times.

A digital marketing firm offers digital marketing services that can help you remain current by carrying out market research and data analysis.

More specifically, digital marketing agencies organize focus groups where they test, analyze and interpret data relevant to your specific market. This allows you to make data-driven decisions when embarking on a digital marketing campaign.

SEO

Digital marketing firms are also experts in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO refers to ranking highly on search engines whenever your target audience searches for a particular keyword. SEO services have become broad and complex, covering everything from content creation to link building and on-page analysis.

Because over 90% of online traffic doesn’t look past the first page of Google, a digital marketing firm can handle your core SEO tasks and help your business rank on the first page of Google searches.

A Business Case for Hiring a Marketing Agency

There is only a small community of successful, talented, and experienced “growth hackers” — or digital growth experts, and trying to secure one full-time can cost well into six-figures per year. For new companies, or a company just exploring digital marketing strategies, this makes little sense.

If you’re a small to mid-sized business or an organization focused on other growth initiatives such as product, outsourcing your marketing efforts to an agency that can strategize and execute across multiple marketing channels, could be key.

Additionally, you can get all of the perks of having a full-service performance-based marketing staff while staying within your budget. Hiring a digital marketing agency provides cross-functional experts — who have likely worked with top-tier brands — at a fraction of the cost and with no long-term commitments.

Outsourcing marketing allows companies to focus their resources and control their headcount. This form of operations allows the company to hand over full responsibility for the outsourced function within clearly defined management guidelines and then monitor the performance.

When you break down the costs of a full internal marketing department versus the cost of outsourcing with an external partner, the business case begins to tip for not allowing the “context” to conceal the “core.”

TABLE

RolesAnnual SalariesCost
Marketing Director$118,000
Content Marketer$80,000
Graphic Design$80,000
SEO Manager$80,000
Website Manager$80,000
Social Media Mgr.$80,000
Annual cost$493,000$120,000
Realized Saving:$225,000 per year

The table illustrates the realized cost savings of 54 percent. There are more soft benefits as well.

Consider the perks of working with a high-performance marketing partner that offers you results, flexibility, and reduction in staff and overhead.

Companies can typically have equal, if not better, results while maintaining product and service quality for a fraction of the cost. In most small to mid-sized organizations, marketing can be outsourced while internal teams focus on the core.

Cost is the most popular reason for outsourcing. You get an entire team of experts, a proven system, and regular accountability—all for less than the cost of hiring one employee.

Not to mention, you avoid the risk of a bad hire, which can cost two and a half times their annual salary. Strategy, such as improving company focus on core business and improving quality, also play a major role in the decision to outsource marketing functions.

On the revenue side, companies with a professional partner can see anywhere from 15 to 25 percent of sales revenue gains. The partner you choose is important and should have a blend of business acumen, sales and marketing experience, and creative insights. This holistic insight provides a complete solution to drive profitable growth quickly.

Wrap-Up

In today’s unpredictable economy, companies are trying to find new and innovative ways to keep the marketing momentum going while dealing with budget cutbacks and dramatic fluctuations in the market.

Look for digital marketing companies that offer high-quality work, can improve conversion rates, and are cost effective.

Boards and CEOs are expanding marketers’ scope of work to include more focus on customer experience and beyond.

Forrester Research report revealed that marketers take on new responsibilities that span the entire organization, like creating social media policies and setting new hiring standards. However, 89 percent of respondents are struggling because they are asked to make the changes without a shift in budget or resources.

These firms are turning to digital marketing firms to help them develop sales funnels, increase lead conversions, and developing a marketing scorecard.

The decision to hire a digital marketing firm can be both strategic and tactical. Many companies have a philosophy of outsourcing any activity that is not core to their business.

For example, developing a positioning strategy may be central to the company, while writing a press release may not be. At the tactical level, companies often find themselves strapped for marketing resources to respond to a rapid or unexpected change in the business or perhaps an increased volume of marketing campaigns.

General FAQ

What is digital marketing?

At a high level, digital marketing refers to advertising delivered through digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and content marketing. 

Why digital marketing matters?

Digital marketing allows you to make marketing transparent, measurable, and accountable for revenue growth. Your finger can be on the true pulse of the revenue growth investments and results across the entire revenue process – from prospects to leads to pipeline to revenue. 

What channels make up digital marketing?

There are seven major categories of online marketing are: Search engine optimization (SEO), Search engine marketing (SEM), Content marketing, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Pay-per-click advertising (PPC), Affiliate marketing, and Email marketing.

What’s the future of digital marketing?

The digital marketing landscape changes so much and so frequently that it’s almost impossible to imagine the future of digital marketing. However, the offline and online worlds are coming together. Traditional devices such as automobiles, door locks, ovens, and even billboards will all be modernized to leverage digital media.

We’re listening.

Have something to say about hiring a digital marketing firm? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or our LinkedIn.

Marketing Agencies are Changing Due to New Expectations

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Marketing Agencies Need to Prove Value

It’s all over the trades. Marketing agencies are facing consolidation. Clients are demanding fluid, “Uber-like” on-demand agency relationships.

As a small business owner, you have limited time and resources. You want to focus on your core competencies like growing revenue and building relationships with customers.

Hiring an in-house marketing team is expensive and risky; there’s no guarantee that they will deliver results or that they’ll even stay long term. Plus, when it comes to marketing, it takes more than just “marketing people” — you need strategists who can help grow your company profitably over the long run.

Get in touch with us today! We’re a full-service marketing agency offering effective solutions for all of your digital needs, including SEO/SEM services, content creation (blogging), social media management & advertising strategies (PPC). 

When big manufacturers and branding gurus like Procter & Gamble Co. and Kimberly-Clark Corp. change how they work with their agencies, the marketing and advertising world takes note.

Procter & Gamble’s Marc Pritchard is leading a large-scale agency consolidation at P&G. His reasoning: “Through consolidation, P&G is upgrading, so we can get better quality, fewer touches and save half a billion dollars that we can hopefully reinvest some of back into building our brands.”

A digital marketing agency online often doesn’t have the results. So don’t fall for the digital marketing agency near me search.

The top digital marketing agency like Matrix Marketing Group, shows results and is a digital marketing agency in the USA.

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What is a marketing agency?

Marketing agencies offer a full range of marketing services to help you implement an integrated marketing strategy for all your brand goals.

For instance, you might hire a marketing agency from a list of marketing agencies to assess your current marketing strategy and help you create a more compelling brand voice or connect to a broader target audience.

The digital marketing agency might use a combination of on-page SEO, off-page SEO, social media, advertising, and public relations to ensure your business goals are met.

When soliciting help from marketing agencies, you might want to focus your search term further — for instance, and you could search “digital marketing agency near me.”

Marketing agencies will have in-house marketing talent ready to help you with marketing related to digital strategies, including search engine optimization, website design, content marketing, social media marketing, and online advertising.

How to Select the Best Digital Marketing Agency

Build an extension of your team to build revenue growth. Grab this handy guide to help in your selection process.

What are marketing agencies?

Marketing agencies come in all favors. A digital marketing agency is a company that provides a wide assortment of digital marketing services.

The agency has numerous client goals, but the ultimate goal is to help you increase your product and service sales through its marketing strategies and efforts.

What is a hybrid marketing agencies ?

A hybrid marketing agency, like Matrix Marketing Group, is a company that provides a wide assortment of digital marketing services, talent, and marketing technology. The hybrid marketing agency has client goals, but the ultimate goal is to help its clients increase web traffic, generate leads, and convert them into sales through its marketing strategies and efforts.

Where are marketing agencies headed?

Have you ever been called by a marketing agency? Did they keep trying to sell you something? Did they push and push? Physics tells us that if we want to move something, we use forces to move the objective.

Marketers might be good at some functions, but sales are not. You will hear all the buzzwords, like inbound marketing, SEO, conversions, content marketing, and it goes on and on.

We have taken a completely different approach. We used a hybrid strategy, talent, and technology model to design, test, and scale marketing campaigns that produce results, like more sales.

The objective is to be found and remove barriers to engagement. If we have something you want and the FIT exists, we have a sale.

Proctor & Gamble Co and Kimberly Corp revitalized their use with agencies and involvement. Proctor & Gamble downsized the number of agencies they work with, as K-C used marketing agencies only as project support.

Clive Sirkin, CMO for K-C, pushed for an “Uber-style” model where he has a core group of brand strategists at key partner agencies focused on building the brands’ future development.

Once ideas were strategically planned and approved, they bid out to multiple agencies for execution. Sirkin’s concern with consolidation?

They had agencies transition into review mode, which means all hands-on deck concentrated on keeping the business but not necessarily driving K-C’s brands forward. The focus revolved around saving face, not the critical KPIs.

This created a new reality for agencies who worked with Proctor & Gamble and Kimberley- Clark.

For other marketing professionals and marketing agencies around, hiring for specific projects would change the partnership between agency and client. It’s a possible sign-in in which marketing professionals feel more pressured.

But, what do marketers and agencies do for situations like Proctor & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark?

Marketing methods and strategies have evolved over the years with trends, software, professionals, and agencies. Due to new aspects and expectations, agencies are changing the way they operate internally and externally.

Agencies should take a step back to re-evaluate their strengths and see if the work being produced aligns with the company’s mission.

The annual RSW/US New Year Outlook surveyed nearly 10,000 marketing service companies in the United States and Canada, from 1M$ to capitalized billings of $500M. 

These marketing agencies included: Advertising, Public Relations, and Marketing Consultants. From this survey, they developed the trends and expectations for agencies in 2021.

The growing disconnect between marketer plans and digital marketing agency expectations for spending occurs today.

Marketing spend flattened out over the past two years, but budget allocations for digital channels are taking up a bigger piece of the pie. 

Many CMOs are using their budgets to make bigger investments in technology, especially analytics. To better understand how the industry will adapt in 2019, we’ve written this article for you.

Since the initial survey conducted in 2011, marketing and advertising spending plans have gradually increased and will continue to do so in 2020.

The survey reported that marketing professionals would continue to become more forceful involving spending habits – 67% of marketers surveyed said that budgets would increase from small to substantial amounts depending on the needs of the agencies.

spending on marketing agency

Although expanding budgets for clients may be an advantage for agencies, there is a growing gap of expectations between market spending plans and what agencies will end up spending in 2017. 

Only 48% of agencies who predicted that their spending would increase little to significantly in 2020 – are one of the biggest gaps that agencies and clients have had since 2011.

Less investment in Business Operations (People, marketing, and sales).

89% of agencies intend to invest moderately or heavily in business operations for 2020 but have declined since 2017, where 96% of agencies reported investing more internally in their employees and marketing and sales resources.

You have to keep up with the marketing industry to be successful. Google changed its search algorithm 3,000 times. How did that impact your search traffic?

P&G and K-C have shifted their usage of marketing agencies that work with them by keeping them on for project-based work or limiting the number of agencies they use.

The shift of marketing agencies who are not investing as much into their resource could be due to marketing and ads expenses going toward project-based work and in-house work.

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A Rise of Investment toward Marketing Technologies.

content plan strategy personas

There has been a push for investment in marketing technology. Marketers are continuously looking for ways to leverage automation and analytics to make more data-driven decisions, a place where agencies would benefit from falling into.

SharpSPring is an all-in-one CRM and marketing automation platform that makes small businesses eliminate waste and increase sales.

Last year there were 8,000 technology options on the landscape. With the latest MARTECH analysis just hitting the web, there have been over 1,000 additions! The market is exploding with new options at every corner, and it can often become intimidating for new users.

Today the number is reaching 10,000.

Committed to investing in marketing technology, professionals adjust their budgets to move their expenses toward new tools and resources for 2021 and beyond.

44% of marketers reported to RSW/US that they would be spending more money on technology, and 74% reported they intended on investing more in technology within the next three years.

Tired of being overwhelmed and worried you’ll never scale your business?

An Increase of Project-based Focused Work Continues to rising.

The shift toward project-based work continues to rise, with 35% of agencies sharing that out of their current work, 60% is dedicated to projects – this being a spike from the previous year with 20% of agencies sharing only 60% of their work is project-based.

Agencies can learn from this about dealing with project pricing for clients and how they go about evaluating their future work processes.

By doing so, agencies will be able to see expanded opportunities with the client after completing an initial project. However, if priced poorly flipped, there is a potential to lose contracts without this evolving relationship in mind.

The Shift of Clients Moving Marketing Services In-House to Marketing Agencies.

During the pandemic, businesses realized that many marketing agencies have been working in a distributed fashion for years.

Matrix Marketing Group works all over the world.

When asked their prediction of clients moving their work and services in-house, 80% of those surveyed believed they would see a tactical change in 2021. 

The RSW/US report shared a majority of the work that will be switching to in-house are smaller projects, while larger and valued projects will be given to agencies.

However, this trend has flipped in 2021. There is a huge shortage of good marketing talent today.

Marketers should keep their eye on the ball and stay focused on ROI. The key to ensuring that both sides (agency and marketer) agree to measurable KPIs. “Grow brand awareness and trial” is NOT a measurable KPI. Some examples of measurable KPIs are:

  • Drive new B2B leads by X% in six months.
  • Drive digital traffic from XX% to YY% in 2021.
  • Increase the lead-to-sales conversion rate by X%.
  • Drive trial of new product at ABC retailer with X% weekly velocity goal.

When marketing agencies and marketing partners agree to measurable KPIs before a project begins, the agency can easily do a postmortem on a program and calculate ROI by comparing spend to results.

Continuing to compete for new businesses and keeping current businesses, agencies should focus on what makes them different. To steal an old Rosser Reeves term, what is your agency’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?

What truly sets you apart from other marketing agencies? The key: once you know your USP, make sure it shows in everything you do.

ROI has become a prominent role within agencies. Is your marketing partner holding you accountable for ROI? If not, bring the ROI to them. Show them how much they invested in your last program and what the ROI was.

Doing so allows for more transparent conversation and a stronger partnership where both sides are focused on the same goal. Most importantly, it will help your clients with their goal of moving more leads or consumers down the sales and marketing funnel.

Change is Good. Embrace it.

Finally, as one of my early mentors in the business always said, “put points on the board. Every day. Always.” What she meant by this was that agencies should bring little extras to their client partners whenever possible.

Quick POVs, competitive alerts, new ideas for B2B content, or photos of displays of their product in a store in a market not local to them are always helpful to marketing clients.

In my experience, it’s those points that keep you in good standing, even when you have a presentation that doesn’t quite hit the mark. Your clients will remember the little things, too, not just the big home runs.

Are you looking for marketing agencies to help your business grow?

We’re a team of marketers who are passionate about helping businesses get more customers. 

Our services include branding, design, SEO, advertising planning, product launch plans, and social media marketing. We also offer analytics and reports, web development, Shopify websites, and marketing technology.

Your brand is the face of your company. It represents everything that makes your company unique from the products or services you provide to how you interact with customers on a daily basis. 

A strong brand can attract new customers while building trust among existing ones which leads to increased revenue over time.

  • SEO Marketing – Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of digital marketing because it helps people find the information they need when they search online.
  • Advertising Planning – An advertising plan includes all aspects of promoting your business including TV commercials, radio ads, print ads, and billboards.
  • Product launch plans – You’ve spent months developing an amazing product but now what? How do you make sure everyone knows about it so they can buy it? That’s where we come in!
  • Social Media Marketing – Social media has become one of the most powerful ways for companies to reach their target audience through engaging content that builds relationships with potential buyers.
  • Analytics & Reports -We use Google Analytics data along with other tools like SharpSpring to give our clients insights into their visitors’ behavior.
  • Web Development -Our developers are the best.

Get a quote here.

We’re listening.

Have something to say about marketing agency experience? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

General FAQ’s

What is a marketing agency?

A marketing agency will help your business develop a marketing strategy, plan and manage marketing campaigns, or provide specific services, such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, websites, or market research. You can retain their services for a particular project or hire them on a retainer basis to assist you over a period of time.


How can a marketing agency help a small business?

A marketing agency can help a small business outline a marketing strategy designed to reach your business goals, identify the right marketing tactics to achieve the results you want and put those plans into action, and measure and analyze the results with real-time data.


Why should I hire a marketing agency?

An experienced digital marketing agency can help you develop a digital marketing plan, execute the projects, and measure the ROI with real-time data. The marketing agency should lower your cost per customer acquisition and drive more leads and sales.

What Does A Marketing Agency Do?

A Marketing Agency offers services like:
– Branding and Design.
– SEO Marketing.
– Advertising Planning.
– Product launch plans.
– Social Media Marketing.
– Marketing technology.
– Analytics and reports.
– Web Development.


How much does a marketing agency charge per hour?

The average blended rate for a full-service marketing agency in today’s market is $175 an hour to $225 an hour in most markets. In larger markets, it runs closer to $300 an hour. The other approach is to use a rate card that creates a specific hourly rate for each employee or position in the marketing agency.

How Much Does Marketing Agency Cost? Hourly vs. Packaged

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Marketing agency cost must be understood by the startup or small business management team

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Our Denver digital marketing agency billing at Matrix Marketing Group has been disruptive right from the start. But we have yet to settle in on one pricing model, however. It is driven by our clients. But the most popular model in our annual programs by far.

Let’s find out why.

You just landed your dream job as director of marketing and you have been tasked with a big project to drive more leads for your sales team. 

You might have some marketing staff but what the marketing team has been doing is not working. Your web traffic has been flat and you’re not getting many leads from the website.

You could do some growth hacking and figure it out yourself. Or you could begin a search for a digital marketing agency that can help you get your business objective much quicker and cheaper.

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If you go to the outsourcing marketing route, you should so go slow and make the right selection.

Hiring a digital marketing agency is a big deal. You must make sure they can help you with your problem.

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As a professional ski instructor, luck me, right? You bet. So, when I see another instructor that could help their student achieve their goal in a different way, I’ll tell them in the locker room.

Because if you miss the correct skiing fundamentals, in the beginning, your progress will be hindered. Have you ever try to break a bad habit? 

Do you golf? Any bad habits?

Because like in skiing, if your digital marketing agency takes you down a road for 12 months they better get it right. If the front end of the marketing program is not done correctly, you will experience waste through the whole process. Try to avoid that.

The marketing agency billing structure should allow for addressing your problem.

Sure everyone wants a quick home run, but most marketing takes time. You have to develop products customers want and then the right messaging to drive a business or sales response. 

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You need a marketing firm that understands your revenue model, your customers – customer, maps out the buyer’s journey, and activate lead generation campaigns. Easy right? Okay, I’ll bite. Tell me at @gschildge

Think about 10 personas and 18 different buyers’ journeys. So know you have to map the sales cycle, gate the sales process, add metrics, test with live content, look over the data and analyze it, and adapt until you are ready to scale.

You need about 1,000 responses for anything to be statistically significant. When was the last time you ran a multi-channel, multi-variant test? What were the results?

Although many of our clients want us to build them hourly, these are small projects, the more common model is a monthly fee that lasts for 12 months or more.

I can recall when I was on the other side of the desk hiring traditional marketing agencies in traditional PR firms. what they would charge me was a flat rate over at $195 per hour and they billed me in quarter-hour increments. 

So the flat rate that I paid was the same hourly rate that I paid for all the personnel from junior to senior. Now I’m sure they went through some cost analysis to come up with this blended rate of $195 an hour but I’ll tell you when I asked for reports they always seem to scramble.

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I worked with some other PR agencies as well as used a tiered rate model billing system. So if I was talking to the senior person of the organization I may pay $350 an hour or if I’m paying for somebody to write a press release and maybe paying them about $135 an hour.

The marketing firm tracks their hours and what they were doing. If not the model breakdown quickly. 

Marketing people work in an environment where there are a lot of interruptions. Therefore, tracking time sometimes is not the most important to them at that moment. I call this the unintended lie. It may or may not be intentional. So why risk it? You don’t have to.

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Weigh Your Options with Marketing Firm Cost

Many marketing agencies bill clients using an outdated method that rewards ineffectual behavior. Traditional billable hours are flawed; both the agency and the client suffer because of this substandard billing. 

Moving towards a progressive, flat fee billing method results in positive changes for the agency and its clients.

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Traditional Marketing Agency Billing

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Traditional marketing agencies bill using an hourly rate. The rate might be a blended rate at $250 per hour or a tiered hourly rate.

The rate varies based on which of the marketing agency’s employees is servicing the client’s account, resulting in a tiered-rate system. 

This tiered-rate system is priced based on the agency’s cost. The agency calculates the costs associated with a particular job and then adds what they consider to be a suitable markup.

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Problems with Traditional Marketing Agency Cost Structures

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Traditional billable hours are flawed because of several issues. The first problem is that it overlooks inefficiency and can even promote unproductive work behavior, whether intentional or unintentional.

It does not motivate marketing agency employees to minimize distractions, maintain accurate time tracking, or adhere to cost-effective work habits. Clients should not have to worry about the efficiency of their marketing agency’s employees.

The second reason traditional billable hours are flawed is that conventional billing is unpredictable. Clients are provided an estimate, this estimate can vary based on how much labor they actually associate with the task. 

Clients may be dissatisfied when their bill winds up being significantly more than estimated.

A final complication is that traditional billing is lacking in transparency. Clients know they are billed by the hour, but they do not understand what work is actually performed for their account. Non-transparent billing can lead to trust issues between the client and the marketing agency.

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A New Marketing Agency Fee Structure

There is a new model that is predictable and transparent. The billing method is a consistent monthly rate (or subscription) and it eliminates several of the issues associated with conventional billing. 

Matrix Marketing Group uses this approach and we base it on the value that we provide to the client rather than on associated costs. To do so, we charge a flat rate that includes many marketing tasks that we feel can offer significant lasting value for our clients. 

Benefits from effective marketing techniques are realized over time rather than all at once.

There are tiered billing models suitable for different sized businesses and are aligned with the company’s growth goals. The entry-level package is ideal for small businesses with a limited marketing budget. 

The mid-level package is attractive for small to mid-sized businesses who desire to grow their business. The final package is appealing to businesses striving for ambitious growth in revenue.

With that said, the digital marketing agency still has to adhere to a tight project schedule. And make sure you add metrics to your project.

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Why Marketing Package Billing Methods Makes Sense?

denver marketing case study Matrix Marketing Group
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The fixed price billing method is transparent. Clients know what their rate includes and what services they can expect. They do not have to concern themselves with scope creep or paying for additional hours for the marketing agency to complete a task. 

The hybrid marketing agency billing models are all-inclusive.

Also, clients don’t have to worry about a fluctuating billable rate if it requires a more specialized staff member. Regardless of who winds up working on their account, they get the expected product for the same rate.

Billing based on value gives clients predictability. Traditional billable hours are flawed in part due to their variability. Predictability is a vital characteristic for small or new businesses with a limited marketing budget. 

The rate for the company’s marketing package is the rate that they pay for the agency’s services. There are no last-minute surprises that may cause the client to rethink working with the agency.

With fixed monthly costs, efficiency and strong work habits are encouraged. The firm bills the same, regardless of how many hours a project requires. This eliminates any incentive to work at a less than timely rate. 

Employees with superb work behavior are not punished under our model. They bill the same amount as an employee who takes twice as long to accomplish a task.

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If you are an agency reading this, get this problem correct quickly. We use many training elements, but the staff loves guided micro-learning modules. Trust me it works, make the certification process a snap to get. 

Traditional billable hours are flawed; this is an outdated model that can drive clients away. 

Matrix Marketing Group’s progressive billing system makes our marketing services more affordable, drawing in a larger number of clients. 

Clients understand the billing method and are more satisfied with our digital marketing services. After all, do you care how the donut is made? Or do you just want a donut?

We focus on what value our marketing services add by using flat-fee pricing that applauds an efficient work environment.

The digital marketing landscape is changing quickly. A training program is essential to keep your staff up-to-date with micro-training, webinars, conferences and more.

Wrap-up on Marketing Agency Cost and Service Programs

The cost of a marketing agency may not be cheap but can pay off huge. Hiring a full-time marketing staff is even more expensive.

Marketing agency billing must align with what needs to get done to meet the client’s expectations.

If you engage with a digital marketing agency, you should bet some quick wins, I mean within a month, but the real leads start to flow in around month six and around nine to twelve marketing become free.

As we say in the ski business, go with the PRO!

Getting serious about considering outsourcing some of your marketing? 

Check out our white paper to help you build your business case.

We’re listening.

Have something to say about your thoughts on marketing agency costs? 

Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

 
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General FAQ’s

How do digital marketing agencies charge for their services?

Digital marketing agencies typically make money by charging their clients an hourly fee for their services. But, blended and project-based fee structures are available, as well. Look for a new pricing model that eliminates hourly billing.


How much does a digital marketing agency charge?

Digital marketing pricing is all over the map, but ones that have been in business over 15 years might charge a monthly fee from $3,500 to $20,000 per month for small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs)


What do Facebook advertising agencies charge?

Facebook, as most social media advertising, is a percentage of ad spend. These fees are between 10 – 20% of the monthly ad budget, and this is for larger ad budgets. Flat Fee – if you have a focused campaign during a limited period, then a flat fee makes sense. Hourly rates are charged based on how long you spend doing the management and track your time.


How much does a marketing agency cost?

Most marketing agencies will create packages and pricing that is scaleable for many different-sized companies. For instance, we have comprehensive inbound marketing programs priced at $3,500, $5,000, $7,500, and $10,000 per month that include our full range of services.

 

 

8 Benefits of Hiring A Marketing Agency

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Benefits Hiring Marketing Agency Digital Outsourcing

Are you think of hiring a marketing agency? Learn why marketing outsourcing is a great option.

The digital revolution began years ago. If you are not involved with digital marketing you are missing out but your competitors may not be.

When was the last time you reviewed your demand waterfall? How about your sales processes? Are leads and sales predictable?

The table below will give you an idea of what happens if you apply marketing strategies to the top of the funnel and middle of the funnel. What does your demand funnel look like? What are your conversion rates?

Do you have too much on your plate to get done? Are you up-to-date on the latest digital trends and marketing technology? How about getting a new perspective on things?

I hear this all the time, we need this, we need that. With the digital landscape changing quickly and the war on digital talent is just starting. Sure you will hear from time to time AI is going to replace SEO specialists or we generate our content from AI. Sure you do. If you do how is that going?

Whether you are running a 20 person marketing department, small business, or a single business owner, you can save time, improve your marketing spend return, and drive more leads and sales.

How? Find a good digital marketing partner, with a track record, to help increase your digital presence and watch your business grow. Good digital marketing companies are hard to find.

Increase Your Marketing ROI

Easily Manage Your Marketing Results With An Easy-To-Use Marketing Planning Tool

Get the Marketing Tool

With over 19 years of in the marketing agency world, you don”t need a digital marketing agency based in your hometown. A full-service digital marketing agency like Matrix offers both online marketing and traditional marketing. They offer an outsourcing marketing service.

These marketing agencies can help create digital marketing campaigns, improve user experience, SEO, PPC, social media. Look for a digital marketing agency that is data-driven and shows you results over time. These are result-driven marketing agencies.

You will get answers to the following questions:

  • What are the benefits of hiring a marketing agency?
  • Why hire a digital marketing agency?
  • Why should I outsource marketing?

It is important in selecting a digital marketing agency that can help you grow or cut costs. How would you like to see your user search keyword have your webpage pop-up on the top of Google search?

Do this test for me. Put yourself in the show of your best customer. What would they enter in the search bar if they were searching for what you offer?

Below are two examples of what great SEO and content do for your company and marketing efforts.

How did find this post? See just some of our results.

denver digital marketing agency
Matrix Marketing Group

Marketing is increasingly responsible for more and more. Teams are feeling strapped with limited resources, tight budgets, and there is not adequate training available.

If you keep your entire marketing team in-house, you could wind up spending your entire budget on payroll and still not have all the skill sets needed.  

On the other hand, if you outsource all of your marketing, quality, and control become concerns. All industries are struggling with this dilemma, and it’s something that every company, manager, and employee should weigh carefully.

Here’s an example of holistic integrated marketing strategies in an omnichannel or multi-channel marketing environment.

matrix marketing group sharpspring constant contact

Companies and organizations outsourcing their marketing for the following reasons:

  • They have an internal team of 1 – 3, and just need ongoing support to lead you in the right direction.
  • They are lacking an internal team and need to outsource everything because they don’t have the time or resources to accomplish it themselves.
  • They need help in a certain area of marketing such as content marketing, SEO, website design, social media, marketing technology, or improving their lead conversions.

But there is a real crisis happening in the marketing industry.

In 2020, the United States needs to 265,000 more people with marketing skills. Marketing is essential for any company that wants to grow. Small businesses may not have resources for a full-time marketing hire, but they still need these skills which range from branding, social media, and digital marketing, to SEO and website development.

Given how critical marketing skills are across sectors, I was surprised to find that the U.S. has a national shortage of people with marketing skills.

Deciding whether to hire in-house marketers or a marketing agency requires research and analysis. If you’re on the fence, keep reading my eight reasons to consider outsourcing some or all of your marketing activities and programs.

1. When Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency You Get More Than Just Marketing Expertise

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What if you could have predictable revenue growth? An effective marketing system that generated and nurtured sales leads? By outsourcing some of your marketing, you get marketing talent, proven strategies, shared experiences, and access to advanced marketing technology.

You can seamlessly synchronize the end-to-end customer experience, and touch each stage of the buying cycle with agile, timely, and relevant marketing campaigns.

The marketing skills gap is very real. 75% of marketers say their lack of skills is impacting revenue in some way, and 74% say it’s contributing to a misalignment between the marketing and sales teams, according to Oracle.

The game is changing, and marketers need to master the new rules. An agency helps you bridge this gap and provides a team of diverse people that have the education and relevant experience.

In a startup or small business, the head of marketing is wearing a lot of hats. And they just can’t do it all, nor should they. Hire a good marketing agency and you get access to versatile professionals with proven backgrounds in business strategy, marketing, content marketing, communications, business strategy, graphic design, web design, internet marketing, and SEO.

With a senior-level partner under one roof that can provide you a uniquely holistic approach that allows you to launch multidisciplinary campaigns with one highly qualified agency being completely accountable for development through deployment.   

2. You Want To Be Nimble and Manage Costs

Hiring a digital marketing agency is much less than the cost of one full-time marketing executive You get an entire team of marketing experts, and can expect cheaper ad costs, software costs, among other costs.

Few companies appear to possess a strong internal marketing leader succession plan.  72% of CMO appointments in Q1 & Q2 were external hires and in the technology industry, 89% were external appointments, according to Russell Reynolds Associates (RRA) report.

Outsourcing marketing teams are very common among startup and small business companies. This practice is especially good for product-based businesses.

It’s good since forming a marketing team with talents that have the same level of competence as the ones that work for marketing agencies can cost well over six figures per year, which is the price that most of the smaller companies are not able to pay. Additionally, venture capital firms want to keep funded companies nimble and reduce the burden of layoffs during uncertain times.

Marketing agency costs are much lower, and their rate is usually much smaller than one executive salary. For this price startup companies get an experienced team of marketing experts, which is definitely a high value.

The fixed cost is huge. People, systems, and facilities account for the largest part of the internal marketing budget. And the cost of a bad hire can easily cost a company over $200,000 (Calculate it here).

By comparison, digital marketing agency resources do not need a full-time salary, benefits, and other overhead. When you hire a good marketing agency, that team should provide a wide range of strategic, tactical, and technology skills.

Not only does outsourcing save money in salaries and overhead, but the outsourcing partner can also save you money in direct purchases on marketing programs (e.g., printing, media buys, advertising, etc.). By leveraging their suppliers, a good outsourcing partner can save a company 10 – 30% in their overall marketing spending.  

You do not have to pay a marketer’s full-time salary.

Salaries for marketing professionals can be expensive, and they’re increasing every year. From 2016 to 2017, the average salary of a Director of Marketing increased by 17%, and the average salary of a Content Strategist increased by 40%.

3. You Get Access to the Latest Marketing Technology

Let’s face it marketing technology is expensive when you add up all that is included in a marketing and sales stack (often called MARTECH). This cost can easily range from $500 to over $10,000 per month.

Marketing departments are often technology-deprived, or they have a mixed assortment of incompatible marketing technologies. While companies have access to over 7,000 marketing technologies available to them, how do they know which ones to pick?

And it’s often the case that marketing organizations are at the bottom of the IT departments priority list, so there might be a lack of support and guidance. I have seen marketing technology take up 65% of the total IT budget.

benefits of a marketing agency

Marketing tools increase efficiency, productivity, and performance. There are tools you can find for free or of little cost, but often they are limited to producing results. But performance-driven agencies give you access to premium-level services, software, and analytical data reports.

Also, consider that advanced marketing automation tools do not provide marketing services. They require a professional who can set up the technology, tune the system, interpret marketing data, and make smart decisions to achieve results.

4. Your Existing Staff Becomes More Efficient with Outsourcing Marketing

Some companies try to get around hiring in-house marketers, social media personnel, content writers, and SEO experts by just having existing employees pick up the slack.

Dumping the marketing burden onto existing employees (who may or may not be skilled in the area) increases the likelihood of burnout and reduces productivity in the long run. As well as, your marketing efforts will lack consistency and effectiveness even if they have all the necessary training.

If you outsource some of your marketing needs, you maintain momentum with critical projects they will never fall by the wayside, drop down the priority list, or become forgotten.

And when employees leave the company, they will most likely take the project assets with them (in the form of tribal knowledge). When you outsource your marketing activities, you have one centralized team as your partner.

5. When Hiring a Marketing Agency You Don’t Need to Train Them

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Finding, acquiring, training, and supporting direct hires is expensive.  In addition to requiring long and sometimes expensive training, entry-level marketing personnel usually do not get attached to their first position within the company.

When they gain more experience in the industry, most of the experts tend to look for another position, often in different companies. It is also important to know that currently, with the rise of digital marketing, there is a lack of qualified and experienced marketing staff, so marketing sector employees often get a lot of good offers from other enterprises.

High employee turnover rates can affect a company’s business negatively way since it requires additional time and funds to hire and train new experts.

The average cost-per-hire is $4,129, while the average time it takes to fill a given position is 42 days, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM’s) new Human Capital Benchmarking Report.

It’s the marketing leaders job to produce results, including drive quality sales leads, increase website traffic, build followers and subscribers, yet they often lack the skills, technologies, and strategies to pull it off.

Forrester Research stated in its report, B2B CMOs Must Evolve or Move On, that 96% of marketing leaders believe the breadth of skills required to succeed in marketing has increased, and 44% say they can’t find the right combination of people and skills in the job market.

Performance-driven agencies, like Matrix Marketing Group, provide a unique, holistic approach that allows clients to launch multidisciplinary campaigns with one highly qualified contact.

Your dedicated resource is accountable for a strategy through deployment. You don’t have to train your existing staff members because your agency has the depth and breadth of skills needed.

6. You Can Easily Scale Your Marketing Efforts

When the economy tightens, companies tend to cut costs. Marketing is often the first to go because they are seen as a discretionary expense. Big mistake. And when times are good, marketing often gets more funding. It contradicts the CEOs responsibilities.

But reducing and expanding the marketing budget is expensive. In the short term, reducing or canceling marketing activities incurs the cost. In the long-term, costs associated with attrition, staffing, industry, and company knowledge can be expensive.

Under a traditional in-house operation, the only way you can increase the output of your marketing team is to hire more employees.

Marketing agencies like Matrix Marketing Group already have cross-functional professionals on the core team that has been senior management with some top agencies, design firms, or leading companies in the world.

marketing trends learning curves

Marketing is changing quickly, in fact, it has changed more in the past five years than it ever has. Don’t believe me? Each year, Google changes its search algorithm around 500 – 600 times.

Google rolls out a major algorithmic update (such as Google Panda and Google Penguin) that affects search results in significant ways. Can you tell me what impact that has had on your website ranking? Don’t know to check it here.

What in-house marketer has time to read up on all the latest social media, SEO, technology, content marketing, and branding news? Usually, they are so buried in day-to-day tasks, there is no room to grow, change, and evolve.

The majority of reputable digital marketing agencies take education very seriously. I invest about 5-7 hours weekly in keeping abreast of the changing marketing ecosystem and the latest trends, tools, technologies, and strategies to serve our clients better.

According to the report above from Capgemini, only 4% of companies align their training efforts with their digital strategy.

8. You Benefit From an Outside Perspective

It’s easy for in-house Marketers to lose sight of the big picture. They tend to be immersed in day-to-day activity and wearing many hats. They can’t see the forest for the trees.

Employees may find it hard to express new ideas or bring up concerns, for fear of losing their jobs. But we’ve seen amazing results by collaborating with marketing team members.

Sometimes you can get too close to your business and not see your marketing strategies, programs, or materials from your audience’s perspective. Even though you may know your business inside and out by living and breathing it each day, your perspective is still one-sided.

To market successfully to your current audience and capture new markets you need to step out of your shoes and into your target markets or customers.

Having a group on the outside supporting your needs helps to give you the customer’s perspective, not just your company’s.

Whether it’s planning, copywriting, or designing, the right outsourced team will have experience with a variety of different marketing and communication strategies, techniques, and tools. You can rely on their lessons over the years to find the correct solution for your business challenge.

Examples of Outsourced Marketing Campaign

When considering hiring a marketing agency to be sure that they walk the talk.

Here is an example of an outsourced marketing content campaign. In the first month of the campaign, we may only do one blog post that attracts 20 new followers on social media and generates ten leads.

In the second month, we may publish two more blog posts, add two content offers, attract 40 new followers, increase our search engine ranking for eight keywords, which generates 20 leads.

By the sixth month, we may have published a total of 30 blog posts, created ten content offers, have a total of 200 followers, and are showing up on page one of Google for five keywords, and generate 100 leads.

The compound effect from creating those assets over time didn’t just double the leads in the second month, they generated 10x the results in only a few short months. So you can see the value right?

Here’s another example of an outsourced Facebook Ad campaign. Most people think that creating Facebook ads is a very basic process.

They know who they want to talk to and what they want to say. Based on that knowledge, they create an ad, choose an audience (thinking Facebook will figure it out), and let the ad run. They believe the cost is what it is, and they can’t do anything about it.

If we create only one version of the ad and put the word third-wave coffee roasters only in the post text, we could potentially miss out on the best ad we ever made.

To help find the best ads, Matrix creates several versions of an ad, altering where the text appears and the image that appears in each version.

Specifically, for one ad, Matrix creates three lines of text (A, B, C), where A is the post text, B is the headline, and C is the description. Then in Power Editor, we duplicate the post and switch two of the placements (for example A, C, B).

We continue in this way until we have created every text placement combination, which is six different versions. Each ad in the set has the same text, but the text placement is different.

Next, Matrix tests four different visuals with the six versions of the text. This brings the ad set up to 24 different ads. We’ll also do another version of the text (lines D, E, F), and put those six variations with the four images.

When we are done, the ad set contains 48 ads that include two versions of the text (ABC and DEF) and four images.

We get asked about how Matrix Marketing Group knows what text to write. Matrix recommends thinking about what will get someone to click or watch a video.

We want enough text to give value, but not so much that your audience doesn’t want to click. Also, we make sure we don’t say the exact same thing in three different ways.

For the visual, Matrix recommends using video instead of still images because we’ve noticed that the cost per impression of images has increased compared to videos.

Matrix Marketing Group created a 10-second video that featured four still images and free music from Facebook and reduced the cost per lead by about $0.25. So if we can use a video in ads, even if it’s just a basic slideshow, do it.

Also, when we choose images (or video), think about why people care about your product and use images that convey what’s important to your audience.

The visual can be anything as long as it looks nice and conveys your message. You can even use stock images in some cases.

Sound simple right? I think you get my point.

Wrap Up About Hiring Marketing Agency

Companies of all sizes use outsourcing to help grow their business and stay nimble. By outsourcing some or all of your marketing, you have flexibility, access to trained professionals, and advanced marketing technology.

When you hire a marketing agency, you don’t assume that you are getting senior-level marketing professionals with a wide range of skill sets. When picking a marketing agency, some companies worry about product knowledge and try to find vertical industry firms.

Your employees should have product/service knowledge to provide guidance. I call this core vs. context. The marketing agency you choose should provide you with an outside viewpoint on where to find your market, how to talk to it, and help you build your brand.

The ideal situation is to have at least one point person working internally who can collaborate with the marketing agency to help them understand your brand voice, key messages, content, and demographics.

A performance-based agency will have lots of ideas to contribute based on trends, statistical data, and competitive analysis, but we find the best results come from working with a dedicated staff within our client’s company.

We’re listening.

Have something to say about the hiring and benefits of a digital marketing agency? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

General FAQ’s

What is digital marketing outsourcing?

Digital marketing outsourcing involves hiring and subcontracting digital marketing services like website design, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media management, sales funnels, paid search advertising, and marketing technology.

What services does a digital marketing agency?

Freelancers, consultants, and marketing agencies provide digital marketing services, and a digital marketing agency, like Matrix Marketing Group, a hybrid agency, is different from a traditional marketing agency. A digital marketing agency typically focused on results-based marketing, where measurable marketing and ROI can easily be measured.

Why do people hire a digital marketing outsourcing agency?

Here are eight ways you know it’s time to hire a marketing agency:
1. Sales are Stagnant with Weak Sales Pipelines
2. Marketing is Not Getting Done
3. You Don’t Enjoy Marketing
4. You Don’t Have Digital Marketing Skills
5. The Sales Team is not Getting High-Qualified ((MQLs)
6. Your Marketing Results Are Not Predictable
7. You Do Not Have a Marketing Attribution Model
8. You’d Like to Outsource Your Complete Digital Marketing Services but Lack the Budget

What are digital marketing services?

Digital marketing services, provided by a digital marketing agency, include website design, paid search (PPC campaigns), SEO services, marketing content, branding, SEM, social media marketing, video, marketing analytics, and marketing technology that produce results.

Marketing Agency: Tips for Finding the Right One

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A marketing agency can boost leads and sales.

I’ll explore what to look for in a Denver Digital Marketing Agency

Finding the right Denver digital marketing agency is one of the most important decisions you can make for your business in today’s competitive marketplace. 

There are many Denver digital marketing agencies, however, be sure you vet them. What is there speciality? Do they practice what they preach? Have them show you.

Matrix Marketing Group has worked with over 12,000 clients and projects. And trust me, when we are asked for a reference for a $10,000 project do you think our clients want to be bothered by calls from our prospective clients.

With over 75 requests for some marketing help a week. And each of them asked us for three references that are 225 calls to our clients per week. 

My point here is rather than calling a reference (have you ever had a bad one, let me know) have the digital marketing agency show you how they do for its digital marketing agency and what results they have seen.

Sure at an every macro-level a case study works, but after doing this for over 20 years it is rare after running multivariate testing that any one company is the same. If they are they are in big trouble.

Companies, of all sizes, are struggling to find digital marketing talent so small businesses are turning to a digital marketing agency.

No matter what type of business you’re promoting, a good agency can help your business grow — or destroy it.

What is a marketing agency?

A marketing agency offers a broad range of services to help you implement an integrated marketing strategy for all your brand goals. Unlike a firm, a marketing agency is made up of a group of “agents,” or individuals who operate under one brand, but typically act independently.

What is a digital marketing agency?

A digital marketing agency is an outside resource that provides a wide variety of digital marketing services under one umbrella that a business typically does not have in-house expertise. The digital marketing agency has numerous client goals, but the ultimate goal is to help you increase your product and service sales through their marketing work.

What Prevents Small Business from Sales Growth?

Small business is on a tight budget and needs to fire on all cylinders all the time to be successful.

In our experience companies that select the wrong digital marketing agency to end up missing one, two or all three important elements:

  1. The right digital marketing strategy
  2. The right marketing
  3. The right technology

Let’s take each one of these and break it down.

After running a digital marketing agency for over seventeen years, I have seen the marketing industry advanced faster and it is speeding up. What’s happening in our clients there are huge gaps in marketing talent, marketing technology, and marketing strategy.

The marketing departments and sales teams are facing pressure to measure their rate of return on their marketing campaigns and CEOs are demanding that they connect every dollar they spend to the bottom-line results. However marketers today are unprepared and underperforming.

 I recall reading your report by Adobe called digital distress and what keeps marketers up at night in the report stated that 68% of marketing professionals feel more pressure to show return on marketing spend, only 40% think their company’s marketing is effective. Sound familiar?

Right now it’s an exciting time to be in marketing if you’re in digital marketing. Digital marketing has revolutionized the industry and the job market. 

We’re seeing a huge shortage of people with the proper digital marketing skills. Corporate marketing departments, small businesses, and some marketing agencies struggle to recruit and keep qualified professionals.

 And it’s no wonder that we’re seeing the shortage not only because of the demand and that fact that the universities are not providing the right course curriculum for students to come out qualified for the positions that are open.

Then there’s the marketing technology gap. It has traditionally been the role of IT to select technology and implement it. But with today’s SaaS models installing and getting up and running is easier.

The hard part is the digital strategy, buyer’s journey mapping, personas, messaging, sales funnel, and workflow development.

Marketers are being called upon to take a leading role in the selection, and implementation and running the marketing technology.

So here we have a shortage of digital marketing skills and a shortage of marketing technology skills. then I would like to know who is developing the marketing strategies specifically the digital marketing strategies.

Because without the talent and knowledge there is no way you will create a digital marketing strategy that works. Your digital marketing strategy has to be tested in multi marketing channels.

And to do this you will need technology. And you will need the right marketing technology but also people that know how to use the technology.

The right technology for your business depends on your strategy. You need a technology foundation that supports, manages and scales your marketing activities. 

Let me go back to the Adobe report for a minute where they asked a thousand marketers what do you think will be the most important to marketing in the next 3 years?

All you can imagine there was no consensus. And it’s a lack of consensus they could tribute did the variance in the industry, budgets, company sizes, geographic regions or many factors.

But it can also highlight a growing strategy gap in which marketers lack the knowledge and capabilities needed to effectively prioritize activities and allocate the proper resources.

This is so dangerous for startups and small businesses that rely on very thin budgets. So they’re spending their money on marketing programs that have not been tested and their marketing burn rate is too high. So if you don’t have the expertise find it, hire it, and outsource it.

So you can see this is a three-legged stool with marketing talent, digital marketing strategy, and marketing technology to scale the marketing operation.  Notice that if you’re missing any of those elements the three-legged stool only has one leg maybe two its will not stand on its own.

At Matrix Marketing Group, a Denver digital marketing agency, we advise our clients to have the following – a marketing automation system, a CRM system, a sales communication platform, and a social media platform (if the marketing automation tool doesn’t have it).

You don’t need an expensive marketing automation system, to begin with. During your initial prep phase, you should be doing market research, honing your sales marketing messages, and do multivariate, multi-channel testing before you scale.

If you are not understanding this, you should brush up digital marketing more. There is a tone of micro-learning for digital marketing found here.

They often look for a marketing agency near me. But do you need your digital marketing agency near you?

Not today, Matrix Marketing Group doesn’t have an office in Italy or Switzerland yet we do business with clients in those countries. Sames goes in the US with California and Texas. You get my point, right? 

Companies that have adopted marketing automation out-perform those that haven’t

Why are top-performing businesses winning with marketing automation? In a nutshell:  higher conversion rates and better data. 

Marketing automation provides a digital infrastructure to manage, measure, and optimize your sales and marketing funnel. 

You can get in front of prospects earlier and stay engaged with modern buyers who are hyper-connected, empowered, and impatient.

Marketing Agency - Matrix Marketing Group

But even more important than the latest shiny tools of the trade, is finding the right talent to guide your efforts. If the agency doesn’t have the right people, they will run you straight off a cliff. 

Having just the right mix of talent to guide and execute your marketing strategy will make or break your ROI.

As important as concrete skills and experience are, it’s just as vital to have a marketing agency that integrates smoothly into your business. 

It’s rare to find a true collaboration that can happen when the marketing agency becomes a seamless part of your business. You’re looking for the best marketing agency in the business, one that can become as savvy about your industry as you are.

What Type of Marketing Agency is Right for You?

If you’re searching for a successful digital marketing agency partnership for your business, you have several types to choose from.

Here are some pros and cons to consider when selecting a digital marketing agency:

Freelancers or independent contractors

Freelancers are the least expensive option. They’re a good choice for small businesses that need a single project complete. 

However, freelancers are specialized in a particular area, so you must manage more than one freelancer if you need more than a single task to support. This is what I call communication overhead. Hidden costs.

Traditional Marketing Firms or Boutique Firms

These traditional marketing agencies focus on one or two marketing techniques and avoid the rest. If your strategy is to increase your social media presence, for example, these types of agencies may be all you need. 

On the flip side, if you need additional services to grow revenue, you might search for another agency or agencies to fill the gaps.

Hybrid Agencies

Digital marketing agencies combine the best of all worlds, offering marketing talent, marketing strategy and execution, and marketing technology to grow a business. 

The digital marketing agencies use an agile marketing approach that is holistic and provides you with the talent, technology, and strategy to map your sales process, test digital campaigns, and scale your sales and marketing operation to help grow your revenue. 

They have a senior-level team with cross-functional talent, so you get experts in all areas of marketing. 

There’s a lot of peace of mind with this approach since your outsourced marketing resources support all of the areas of marketing your team may lack or just don’t have the time to get everything done.

Finding the right agency-partner will be one of the most important decisions you’ll make in the lifetime of your business. 

Choose wisely — the digital marketing agency you select will help you create more qualified leads, invest in your future business growth, and monitoring your marketing return-on-investment (ROI). Where it is a digital marketing agency near me or in another geographic area.

Think of it this way, your digital marketing agency will need soft skills as well. Can they think of 30,000 feet with your business strategy and get dirty with keyword research and SEO implementation at the script level.

And help you develop a predictable revenue model that you can scale to grow your business. No more complicated than that.

The agency you choose should address your business’ specific goals. They are nimble, action-oriented and can quickly leverage real-time marketing opportunities. Look for a team that is diverse — of skill set, thinking, and experience. 

You want teams that are unselfish and autonomous, but one that is cross-functional. Everyone on the team has a clear view of the future and becomes a seamless extension of your team.

Matrix Marketing Group is an example of a hybrid agency, offering both strategy and implementation of marketing techniques designed help you find active vs. passive buyers to grow your business. 

Matrix Marketing Group will design packaged marketing solutions customized to achieve your business goals. 

Wrap-up on Denver Digital Marketing Agency

denver digital marketing agency

As a marketer if you’re feeling overwhelmed, unprepared, understaffed, and under increasing pressure to perform despite the odds, you’re not alone. Your competitors face the same in posing marketing gaps. And I bet some of your peers do too.

Traditional marketing talent, marketing Technologies, and digital marketing strategies must evolve.  there’s a huge opportunity for you to re-engineer your approach to digital marketing whether you do it yourself or hire a digital marketing agency, like Matrix Marketing Group.

 The one tip I can give you about digital marketing is you must be continually learning and keeping up-to-date. When Google updated, a major update, all the forums were light up with businesses wondering what happens to their track.

I spoke to a prospect on Monday and they saw a 50% drop in traffic. Yeah, that hurts. They were getting about 10,000 visitors per week and it dropped to under 5,000. They had no idea Google was performing an update on their search algorithm. 

Whew, we were able to get 50% of the traffic back in 2 weeks. Business is not a game when there’s stakeholder involved.

Google rolls out 500 to 600 changes to its search algorithms each year. However, many of these changes are minor and the average web user wouldn’t even notice that changes have taken place. So watch out.

May 2021, Google has Page experience update rolling out. Are you ready?

Here’s an example of worldclass SEO practices. These result were in 3-months.

Be able to know your numbers analyze those numbers and create effective digital marketing campaigns that can be scaled to drive predictable revenue. 

We’re listening.

Have something to say about your thoughts on selecting the right marketing agency and share the good and the bad? 

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General FAQ’s

What does a Denver marketing agency do?

Denver marketing agencies can help your business develop a marketing strategy, plan and manage campaigns, support marketing technology or provide specific services, such as public relations or market research. Some focus specifically on startups and small businesses.

What is a marketing agency?

A marketing agency creates and executes a marketing strategy, conducts market research, test strategies, and scale a marketing operation to increase the sales and profits of a company, seeks to build relationships with your target audience. There are three types of marketing agencies.

What can a marketing agency do for me?

A marketing agency can help you get more leads and convert more leads into sales. They can build a predictable sales model done through multi-variant, multi-channel testing and technology to scale.

What makes a good digital marketing agency?

A great Denver digital marketing agency should be excellent in acquiring, engaging with, and retaining customers. The agency you partner with must prioritize your customer’s needs and build marketing campaigns around your business objectives.


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