A strong digital agency can provide unparalleled benefits for growing brands. You become free to focus on matters you and your team alone are equipped to handle and thrive within your own unique abilities by offloading your key work into reliable, skilled hands.

Here are five common reasons brands like yours decide to make the switch from in-house to agency management.

1. Analyst Redundancy

While there are a number of ways marketing agencies are able to provide unique value, one of the biggest is redundancy.

There’s too much on the line for your business to rely on the part-time (or full-time) expertise of a single person. And if this person is you, there are probably higher-level business growth initiatives that you want (and need) to focus on.

Sure, you can hire yourself a rockstar. The right agency, however, gives you access to an entire team of rockstars. As an extension of our clients’ teams, everything our proven digital experts do revolves around your success.

Having multiple minds to tackle an issue is always better than only having one.

To even start building an operational safety net with an in-house team, you’d need to hire at least 2-3 expert analysts who are fully dedicated to each digital channel. The most powerful growth lever is the honest self-awareness to double down on your strengths and outsource the rest.

2. An Ocean of Expertise

Great agencies are able to identify untapped growth opportunities for brands not just by adding redundancy but also by having a deep expertise in digital marketing. You can rest easy when you’re able to rely on a team of experts like the digital mavens at ROI with 20+ years of experience in brand and digital marketing.

Something magical happens when you live and breathe digital advertising – and that’s what agency teams do.

The world of ecommerce and retail is continuously evolving, especially in the current digital marketing landscape. Some changes are minor, while others can have a transformative impact on the strategies and tactics brands need to do to gain a competitive advantage.

Agencies keep their finger on the pulse, with the latest developments, features, betas, strategies, and tactics for achieving the strongest campaign performance constantly top-of-mind. Teams collectively manage millions of dollars in ad spend per month for hundreds of brands selling across a variety of industries and channels.

Digital expertise is never one-and-done. Campaign management should never be treated as an add-on task for existing members of your sales or marketing team. Your brand has too much to lose by treating digital advertising as a “checklist” duty.

While this can work when you are just dabbling with online marketing, top talent and expertise within each domain (e.g. Google, Amazon, Facebook) accelerates your brand’s profitable growth, potentially transforming the dynamics of your business as a whole.

3. Insider Access to Exclusive Partnerships

Campaign management platforms have do-it-yourself functionality that can be managed in-house. But if you have experience doing this, then you know that questions and issues often arise that have no clear solutions. Getting any personal attention is often an arduous task, even if you’re one of the top 1% of advertisers who are offered an account manager. Online documentation, help forums, and automated feedback channels are typically the only support options available.

Top agencies like ROI have access to a back door. Our strategic partnerships with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook provide a direct line of communication, early beta access, and otherwise inaccessible information to give your brand a competitive edge. Brands that are clients of agencies with these types of partnerships are able to piggyback on the direct access mediated through their platform relationships.

In addition to support, inside connections often provide first-in-line access to powerful new advertising features and invitations to test new betas. It’s nice to get an edge!

4. Efficiency of Operations

It’s technically true that self-service ad platforms provided by Google, Amazon, Facebook, and others provide you with everything you need to build and launch an advertising campaign for your business by yourself.

But when your goal is to win, out-of-the-box reporting and manual workflows can only take you so far.

In highly competitive industries, the ability to optimize campaigns efficiently is a critical element of growth and profitability. Just as it doesn’t make economic sense for individual book authors to buy their own printing press, it rarely makes economic sense for individual brands to develop their own advertising campaign management systems, tools, and technology integrations.

Agencies often have proprietary technology and advanced workflows that empower them to operate at significantly higher efficiency than in-house teams. ROI’s Revolution Suite enhances our clients’ strategies to help them win their market faster through strategy coordination, performance analysis, smart AI and automation, and data storage and structuring.

“We apply human intellect on top of smart technology to drive profitable revenue growth for our clients.” – David Austin, Director of Technology, ROI Revolution

If your goal is growth, set-and-forget just won’t cut it. ROI’s expert teams combine hands-on, manual account oversight with our proprietary tech built on automation and AI. We know when automation makes sense and when it does not, and we don’t box our clients into one bidding software, platform, or mindset.

With fierce competition in 2021 and beyond, the battlelines and growth opportunities for brands and retailers of all sizes are constantly in flux. An expert can choose the right tools for the job – but the real work is always strategic before it is tactical. Without expert human oversight, technology and automation can do little more than maintain a steady state.

5. Decreased Overhead & Business Risk

Outsourcing certain tasks can make your business more nimble on the path of growth because you’re better able to respond to changes in capital, cash flow, and the fluctuating market. Minimizing upfront expenses and tying costs to resource utilization whenever possible are always good business practices.

You’ve got a department to run, perhaps even an entire business. A good agency frees you up to excel within your core strengths without distraction.

There’s considerable risk in hiring an in-house analyst to manage your campaigns, especially given the central role advertising plays in your overall business success. Internal hires require unappreciated investments of time and money for recruiting, onboarding, training, and managerial oversight. And even successful hires with strong cultural fit and on-the-job performance can quit with virtually no warning.

Hiring an agency often ends up being the more cost-efficient solution once you factor in the expenses required to acquire, maintain, and scale an in-house team and resources.

Conclusion

A strong digital agency provides unparalleled benefits for your business, freeing you to focus on matters you alone are equipped to handle. You’ll thrive within your own unique abilities to the extent that you’re able to offload key work into reliable, skilled hands.

“I have always enjoyed working with ROI. […] Our team is timely and responsive. We are happy with and would always recommend.” – Russ Kyff, Manager of Ecommerce, Guy Harvey

Why have brands made the switch to ROI Revolution as their proven digital marketing agency? Here are some common reasons our clients decided to make the switch from in-house to agency management:

Is it time for you to make the switch to a digital marketing agency? Connect one-on-one with an industry expert here at ROI to see what wins and areas of opportunity we can uncover together.