We speak to CEO’s, Marketing Directors, Communications Coordinators and Small Business Owners every day who continually tell us the same thing: “We take care of our own online marketing.”
One of the best parts of my job is how confidently I can guarantee our clients that doing their own social media marketing, running their own AdWords campaign, or building their own backlinks will never be able to compete with quality agency work.
In 2013, the average entry digital marketing coordinator made over $42,000 after bonuses, according to PayScale. These individuals either work alone or as part of a team, and are often responsible for a combination of, or all of the following:
- Monitoring/management of paid search campaigns
- Social media management
- Blogging and newsletters
- Inbound online marketing
- Management of website content
Is it even possible for one person to professionally complete all of these tasks? If they are the most intelligent, driven, organized and autonomous digital marketer on Earth, then yes, it is possible. But in reality, individuals do not possess the skills to complete all of these tasks at a caliber that is comparable to agency work at a similar annual cost. All that, and we haven’t even considered the headache of actually having to manage and monitor that individual, provide them with benefits, and vacation time.
Here at Spark we employ professionals in every major service and piece of the online marketing puzzle. We have teams of SEO specialists, paid search experts, social media gurus, content writers, graphic designers, web developers, and account managers. They have worked on hundreds of accounts. They know what works, what doesn’t, and they use the most powerful software available (that you likely do not have in-house) to make sure that campaigns are optimized and clients are satisfied.
This model makes sense even when you assume a one person in-house team. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Far too often, we discover that firm ABC is spending $200,000 a year on salaries alone in their marketing department. This would be great, if management could confidently say that their direct internal efforts generated the company the best ROI possible. When does that ever happen, though?
We take great pride in being as transparent as possible, and letting clients’ return on investment be the only true measure of our success. Every client gets access to a real-time dashboard that monitors site visits, clicks, leads, conversions, where they all are coming from, and how they are changing over time. It takes all of the guess work out of the equation, and allows our clients to focus on providing the best product or service, knowing that customers are interested in what they have to offer.
