Choosing the right marketing agency involves several important factors, including experience in your required services, sector expertise, strategic approach, performance and relationship. It’s important to understand which factors are a priority to you, and should always include the question, ‘would I enjoy working with these guys?’
TL;DR
- Start with your business objectives, rather than simply looking for individual marketing services.
- Look for a marketing agency with relevant experience and proven results.
- Make sure the agency has the right skills for your marketing needs.
- Ask how they measure success and how they use performance data to improve.
- Agencies that avoid a one-size-fits-all approach can adapt their strategies to support your business at every stage of growth.
Why work with a marketing agency?
Businesses often rely on marketing agencies to bring a level of experience and expertise that it would be difficult to hire inhouse. Marketing agencies are often hired to bring a specific creative, technical or strategic skillset to an organisation’s marketing capabilities.
SEO, paid media, content writing, branding and website development all require different and specialised skills. Businesses that expect one Marketing Manager to be able to cover all areas overlook that these services require ongoing training, monitoring and expertise to actually be effective.
Hiring a marketing agency gives you access to a wider team of specialists without having to recruit and manage the role internally. It brings an outside perspective to your business, helping to spot opportunities that can easily be missed when you’re so close to the day-to-day operations.
A good marketing agency should do more than just deliver marketing services; they should act as an extension of your team, understanding the business objectives and how their work contributes to key results. That is the approach we take at Trio – we work as your strategic marketing partner, building marketing activity around your goals.
What to consider when choosing a marketing agency
1. Do they understand your business goals?
Before recommending marketing services, an agency should understand what you’re trying to achieve as a business so they can connect their recommendations to your objectives, rather than just offering a list of services.
2. Do they have relevant experience they can demonstrate?
Previous work can tell you a lot about an agency’s experience, the approach they take and ability to deliver real results. Look at case studies, blogs and examples of their work from previous projects.
Relevant experience doesn’t necessarily mean the agency has worked with a business identical to yours; what’s important is whether it has experience solving similar marketing challenges.
3. Do they have the right mix of expertise?
Does the agency have specialists for each service it offers, and do those specialists work together as part of your overall strategy? At Trio, we have specialist expertise across all of our services, allowing different areas of marketing to work together under one overarching strategy.
4. How will they measure success?
One of the most important factors to consider when choosing a marketing agency is how it defines success and which metrics they will use to measure performance. The right metrics will depend on your objectives.
It’s also important to consider what happens once data is collected. A good agency should use performance data to make decisions, test different approaches and identify opportunities to improve your wider marketing strategy.
Will they work as an extension of your team?
The relationship between you and your marketing team is vital. Your internal team knows the business, and your agency should bring specialist marketing expertise and an external perspective. You should also feel like you can genuinely work well together, having honest and open communication.
At Trio, we work as an extension of your team, taking the time to understand the businesses we work with so that the marketing reflects your objectives, positioning, audience and expertise.
Your marketing agency shouldn’t just deliver a service because you’ve asked for it. They should understand what you’re trying to achieve and make sure the activity supports the wider strategy. That’s why we always ask why and what you want to achieve before recommending an approach.
6. Are they constantly looking to improve your marketing?
Ask an agency what happens after the initial strategy or campaign goes live. How will performance be reviewed? How often will campaigns be optimised? What happens if something isn’t working?
At Trio, we believe marketing should be continuously reviewed and improved. We use performance data, industry developments and changing customer behaviour to identify opportunities and adapt activity. Our strategies are based on monthly, quarterly, annual or seasonal campaign plans, ensuring that we’re always reviewing performance within a timeframe that works for our clients’ businesses.
What’s best: an agency, a freelancer or an in-house marketer?
There isn’t one right answer for every business. The best option depends on your objectives, budget, internal resources and the expertise you need.
| Marketing agency | Freelancer | In-house marketer | |
| Range of expertise | Access to multiple specialists who are constantly improving their skill set | Usually focused on one specialism | Dependent on experience, but typically a generalist |
| Scalability | Can usually scale services as needs change | Capacity islimited | Recruitment may be needed as the workload grows |
| Strategic support | Often includes senior strategic expertise | Depends on the freelancer’s strategic expertise | Strong understanding of the business but may lack marketing strategy knowledge |
| Industry knowledge | Needs to build this through research and client experience, unless previous experience exists | Similar to an agency, they would build the knowledge if no previous experience exists | Day-to-day knowledge of the business and industry will be strong |
| Recruitment required | No additional marketing hires required | No additional hire required | Requires recruitment and ongoing employment |
| Costs | Fixed fees modelled around your budget | Varying costs based on hours worked | Salary costs along with cost of recruitment, benefits, tax |
| Best suited to | Businesses needing specialist expertise across multiple areas | Businesses needing focused support or a specific skill | Businesses wanting dedicated day-to-day marketing resources |
Our approach to marketing
At Trio, the starting point is your business. Our approach begins with discovery, where the team learns about your goals, challenges, existing marketing activity, business positioning and audience.
Following this is insight, when we combine information from your business with research, analytics and data from tools such as Google Analytics and Semrush to understand your market, competitors and customers.
This information feeds into the team’s tailored strategy, which covers areas such as positioning, channels, budgets and measurement.
Then, we develop a strategy tailored to your objectives. At Trio, we’ve found that combining services can deliver particularly strong results, especially when different marketing channels work together to support wider business goals.
Our work with SE Environmental is a great example. Initially using Google Ads to generate leads, the business later introduced SEO to build sustainable, long-term organic traffic. By bringing the two channels together, we achieved an 85% increase in website conversions, a 242% increase in organic traffic and a 62% reduction in Google Ads cost per conversion.
Finally, performance is monitored and constantly improved. The aim isn’t to deliver a strategy and walk away; it’s to keep learning from the data and identify opportunities to make improvements wherever needed.
That’s what makes an agency relationship so valuable, you get a team that can bring together different areas of expertise whilst keeping them connected and aligned with one encompassing strategy.
Ready to choose your marketing partner?
If you’re looking for a marketing partner that can work as an extension of your team, let’s talk about what you want to achieve.
FAQs
Marketing agency fees vary depending on the services you need, the size and complexity of your business and the amount of strategic and ongoing support required. When comparing agencies, look beyond the monthly fee and consider what you’re actually getting for your investment. The best approach is to speak to an agency/different agencies and ask for a proposal based on your needs and budget.
You should consider hiring a marketing agency when you need specialist marketing expertise, are looking to accelerate growth or don’t have the internal resources to deliver your marketing strategy effectively.
It’s also worth considering a marketing agency when you’re launching a new product or service, entering a new market, rebranding or rebuilding your website.
Marketing agencies offer different services, but most provide support across one or more areas of marketing, strategy and creative.
At Trio, our services include marketing strategy, SEO, paid media, social media advertising, copywriting, branding and website design and development.
Yes. A digital marketing agency can improve your online presence by bringing together the different channels and activities that influence how people discover, interact with and ultimately choose your business online, such as SEO and PPC.
Before hiring a marketing agency, you need to ask questions that will help you understand their experience, approach and how they will measure success.
Questions could include:
- What experience do you have with a business in my sector?
- How would you approach my marketing strategy?
- How will you measure success?
- Who will I be working with?
- How do you improve campaigns over time?
- Can you support us in other areas if our needs change or we want to add more services in the future?
