This question has stumped several businesses throughout a variety of industries. Now, many companies probably think that marketing agencies like ours charge tens of thousands of dollars a year, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And why should someone spend that money out the door when it’s possible to just hire somebody in-house?
The main answer is simply because, when hiring in-house, people are going to spend a whole lot more money for subpar results.
Everything that's involved with digital marketing doesn't happen with just one person. In fact, it takes five people at a minimum to execute our marketing services. Our marketing specialists cover everything from organic SEO to paid advertising and more.
If hiring in-house, there are really 5 positions you should be hiring. Here is what you'll need:
First, the marketing team will need a good content writer. The content writer needs to understand search engine optimization, how Google's algorithms work, and be creative enough to come up with good topics that can be written properly into long-form blogs the way it should be done.
Our company has never had one content writer, in all of the content writers we’ve worked with, that has the ability to do this out of the gate.
That basically means the content writer will have to be trained on how to properly create and write content that will rank for search engines like Google.
The next person that needs to be hired is a web developer or even a senior web developer.
Why a senior web developer? Because a junior web developer may not be capable or have enough experience to put out a website that's going to represent a lawn and landscape business accurately. A senior web developer knows how to code, create web page designs, and can put it all together to make it flow into one seamless user experience.
Asking the right questions during the interview is another aspect of the hiring process. Will the interviewer know what those questions should be? How are they going to vet them? How will they know which are the right questions to ask to gain a better understanding of their skill level?
Understanding all the various social media sites and how they can help build a business is a large part of digital marketing.
Who's going to make sure that the content being posted to the company’s social media platforms are actually going to get engagements and encourage people to click? The more online interaction there is, the more a business will get noticed! This means posts need to be interesting and unique enough to get people sharing the content and commenting on posts.
Part of the job of a social media specialist is also being able to gauge what posts are performing well, which ones aren't, and knowing how to pivot their social media strategy to get more post engagement from their audience.
Plus, how will this specialist know if they're judging the quality of the content correctly? Are they comparing everything to past results or to other companies in the green industry? Do they understand how to advertise a company's brand and services so they stand out, or will it blend in with the other hundreds of lawn and landscaping companies online?
The online ad space is a murky and difficult road to navigate if you don't know how it all works. Some people end up spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on paid advertising and end up being no closer to seeing the number of leads they wanted that year. A paid ads specialist focuses on Google and Microsoft ads specifically, and these platforms are not something that can be learned overnight.
It’s possible for someone to spend time on these platforms every day for 10+ YEARS and still not have a full understanding of how it all works.
Paid advertising specialists are also extremely expensive. Just one of these salaries is typically higher than what it costs to pay a digital marketing agency for one full year.
Again, this is only for ONE person. This is where vetting becomes incredibly important. Are all the right questions going to be prepared? Can the paid ads specialist make sure, without a doubt, that they're going to be able to take the company’s marketing budget and get the results that they’re looking for?
While content writers should have some SEO knowledge, they also have other parts of content creation that they have to focus on. An SEO specialist will already have the training and skills needed to help build inbound links the way they should. SEO ensures the right content topics are being chosen and that they're coded properly.
An SEO specialist also makes sure that everything outside and inside of the website is properly written to Google standards, in other words, the way that Google requires people to write content in order to get rankings on their search engines.
During the interview process, the interviewer will have to know what they're talking about, which means they'll need to familiarize themselves with SEO and how it works as well. This is why SEO specialists are extremely expensive.
Just like senior web developers. Just like paid advertising specialists. Just like content writers.
These are all people that need to be hired onto the in-house marketing team, which will easily exceed six figures in salaries alone.
Just like with any other full-time employee, the in-house marketing team is going to need benefits. This includes:
The company is responsible for providing them with all these benefits and more. If you want multiple high caliber employees from the marketing industry, you must keep in mind that the tech industry has tons of benefits that landscape companies typically don't have. Because of this, it's going to be harder to pluck one of these senior people out of their current position in the marketing industry and entice them enough to work for a lawn or landscaping company full-time.
These are just a couple of the issues a business is going to face when trying to run its own in-house marketing team.
Lawn and landscape companies specialize in either one or even both of these categories, but consider this; what does anybody do when they can’t perform or don’t understand a particular service very well?
The answer? They sub it out.
Most people hire somebody who is a specialist in that service because it's going to take far more effort to figure it out for themselves. It's easier to find somebody who does it, does it well, and then pay those people to get the job done.
Marketing is the same way.
It’s wise to keep these things in mind when thinking about hiring a marketing agency versus hiring someone in-house. It's also important to think about the end result. In truth, an in-house marketing team may never come near to the results that our team at Lawnline Marketing produces. Some businesses may hire people they believe to be the best marketing team in the world, and they still aren't going to get the results that we have continuously attained for our past clients.
The reason for this is simply because they don't have the proper training. They don't work with a ton of lawn and landscaping companies every day like we do. They're not going to have the same essential tools available to them as we do.
Did you know that we spend THOUSANDS of dollars a month on marketing tools alone? We use tools that allow us to post across all social media platforms and allow us to pre-schedule every single post. So, not only is the company going to need a team with the proper talent and training, but the marketing team is also going to need the right online marketing tools as well to effectively do their jobs.
The reality is that if an in-house marketing team falls short on any of these factors, they’re not going to get the results the company is expecting. Hundreds of thousands of dollars will have ended up being spent on marketing with nothing to show for it.
So when considering hiring an agency like ours, which is going to have the same financial impact on a business as that of a single in-house employee, the reality is, it's a no brainer to hire a marketing agency.
Why? Because we can do it cheaper and we can do it better. It's as simple as that.
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