Choosing the best approach to resource a company’s marketing can often be challenging. Larger businesses are typically well served by big agencies. With a greater volume of work and deeper pockets, the traditional client/agency model is often ideal.
However, small and medium-sized companies, in particular, face a real conundrum. Their marketing requirements can be less frequent, the type of work highly varied and budgets much tighter to play with.
So what is the ideal marketing solution for small and medium-sized businesses?
The first route often considered is an in-house solution, with a dedicated marketing resource. Hiring an in-house marketing expert sounds great on paper, but success requires a blend of specialisms—from strategy and digital campaigns to content creation and design. It would be a perfect solution if one person really could be an expert across all the marketing functions but in reality, a marketing superhero like this simply doesn’t exist.
Another in-house resource solution is to share marketing responsibilities across existing team members who may have limited marketing experience. Whilst existing staff have the real benefit of being product or service experts, this route is often ineffective without the core skills to deliver. When times are busy, team members naturally prioritise their “day job” and marketing support often ends up being sporadic or forgotten.
Looking beyond in-house solutions, the natural place to start is the traditional agency model. Most agencies want a clear idea of the annual marketing budget to check it’s in line with their minimum spend threshold. This sounds like a negative approach from agencies (reminiscent of the “I don’t get out of bed for less than..”) but in reality it is sensible.
Agencies understand the sorts of clients they will service well and want to recruit clients that fit that type. Large agencies’ overheads are relatively high and they have a higher level of bureaucracy which means that screening smaller clients at the outset is good for them and ultimately good for smaller clients. There are always exceptions; sometimes smaller clients are taken on board, but these are normally passion projects or not-for-profit organisations. These accounts provide non-financial rewards for flagship agencies such as CSR or the opportunity to win a prestigious award.
Small and medium-sized businesses often do not qualify for an agency’s threshold level. In reality, businesses of all sizes often embark on marketing without knowing how much they want to spend.
Where a budget isn’t determined, the solution is to start with a realistic test budget using experience and expertise to test the most appropriate channels with creative messaging. Once a client sees a return on investment, confidence grows. With a proven correlation between marketing activity and increased sales, a marketing budget can be estimated and funds made available. This approach is not attractive to all agencies, but is very familiar to us, understanding that clients often need to see proof of concept.
Another challenge with engaging an agency is that in the agency world, all clients are treated equally in terms of billing but not necessarily attention. In short, small clients pay the same hourly rates as big clients but inevitably don’t receive the same calibre of staff or level of service.
You can probably see this coming… but yes there is another option.
Waypoint is not a big agency, we are proud to be small – it’s why we are a good fit for our clients who are all small or medium-sized businesses.
We collaborate closely with all clients, getting to know their ambitions, services, competitive landscape and their target audiences. By understanding our clients’ businesses we can work as an extension of their team.
Our team covers all the key areas you would expect which keeps it simple and easy for most marketing requirements. There are still occasions when very niche skills are required. Rather than waste clients’ budgets we recognise these situations and are happy to bring very specific additional expertise on board. Our ambition is to deliver work that is as effective as possible, so rather than actively keep everything in-house, we have a little black book for such occasions. This contact list is made up of specialists we have worked with for years whose expertise and experience bring real value to give marketing the best chance of success.
Pick your perfect team
With Waypoint, you get the flexibility to adjust your marketing efforts up or down based on your current business needs. You’re in control and really do get to pick your perfect team —choose a digital expert today, bring in a designer next month, or scale up your efforts when it’s time to launch a new product. Our approach provides marketing support without the commitment or complexity of traditional agencies.
With relatively low overheads and no bureaucracy, your marketing pound goes further which means it works harder for you and is more likely to deliver success.
So why wait? Let’s have a conversation about your business goals and how we can support them with the right expertise, on your terms. Get in touch today.
