Growing a business through digital marketing requires expertise and keeping up with the latest trends and technology. To do that kind of work in-house takes a full team of professionals who know the business inside out and know digital marketing as well. Using a digital marketing agency for lead generation is one option many B2B companies choose.
45% of B2B marketers expect to see increases in content marketing budgets compared to previous years.
marketingprofs
With companies spending more on digital marketing, a concrete strategy becomes table stakes. A digital marketing agency gives businesses access to experts who know the latest trends and have the skills to re-tool what in-house subject matter experts know for any audience.
In the long run, that creates a business that uses a digital marketing agency to generate more leads at a fraction of the cost it would take to do it all in-house.
What can a digital marketing agency do for a business?
A digital marketing agency helps businesses generate qualified sales leads, plain and simple. There are various methods and strategies used by digital marketing agencies that can help businesses with several goals. Whether a business wants to increase awareness of a product or brand, beef up its advertising services, or connect with a new audience, a digital marketing agency can help.
Generate qualified sales leads
No matter what services an agency offers, the end goal is to generate sales-qualified leads. No amount of well-written content or incredible websites will be worth the time and effort they take to put together if they fail to bring in new prospects. However, generating those leads takes more than just a website and some eBooks.
61% of marketers consider generating traffic and leads to be their biggest challenge.
HubSpot
These in-house marketing leads find it difficult to differentiate themselves in a sea of sameness where every company offers similar services. Couple that with the fact that buyers are younger and think differently than what outdated “best practices” suggest, and there’s a recipe for a marketing disaster.
Great digital marketing agencies specialize in understanding the challenges their customers face and how best to communicate to those prospects. They understand that it takes more than great content and consistency. The right message needs to be spread through the most useful channels for that specific business’s audience.
For example, LinkedIn is consistently seen as the most effective social media channel for B2B lead generation, and yet it is used by only 47% of marketers. Without knowing what channels to use and how best to connect to audiences, companies could be leaving money on the table.
Top of mind awareness
When every business has a website and content, standing out becomes a critical piece of the puzzle. But how does a business stand out from a business that’s just like them? Flashy content and websites may help, but so can talking to the right audience at the right time.
Gen Z and Millennial buyers are 2X more likely than older generations to discover a product by searching online.
trustradius
Younger buyers aren’t just searching online to solve their problems; they’re being drawn to the businesses that speak to them in a way that resonates. Combine that with the fact that 60% of all B2B tech buyers are millennials (age 25 – 39), and there are likely many businesses who aren’t speaking to the right buyer.
Optimizing websites to rank higher on search engines is crucial to reaching these audiences. Where email marketing and ads may fall flat on them, search provides another avenue. This kind of adaptive strategy is something a digital marketing agency can assist businesses with, ultimately generating sales qualified leads.
Why hire a digital marketing agency
Hire Experts and See Measurable Results
There is a laundry list of acronyms and ideas that can give anyone outside the field of digital marketing a headache. While SEO is fairly common, there’s also PPC, CTR, CPC, CPM, etc. This is obviously about more than acronyms; it’s about results. Each of those acronyms represents a tactic in a vast playbook of strategies. A digital marketing agency knows when to use which tactic for which customer at which moment to generate the maximum results possible.
Companies without digital marketing experts don’t need to fret about whether the agency is working or not either. Working with a digital marketing agency includes determining relevant metrics like sales-qualified leads or social media engagement and measuring those indicators every step of the way. When an agency runs a campaign for a business, these pieces of data are collected and reported back on an agreed-upon basis. That becomes a value-add for the business as insights about the business, audiences, and performance become clear.
More Channels Means More Prospects
That’s right, 25% of B2B companies allocate just 5% of their budget to marketing. This seems counterintuitive as marketing is typically ranked as a high-importance issue in polls. Just like with B2C businesses, a successful marketing strategy can get brands in front of more people and ultimately drive more sales.
Despite that fact, marketing budgets don’t seem to reflect that understanding. Just 8% of businesses allocate more than 15% of their funds to marketing despite the consistent stream of leads it can generate. With younger buyers doing more research before making purchases, businesses will need to invest more in marketing strategies to reach their target audiences successfully.
Focus on the Business and Save
One of the biggest benefits of a digital marketing agency is focusing on the big picture. Campaigns and the resources needed to keep them running take time and energy to run effectively. Doing that in-house has its advantages, but it also takes skilled employees away from the core business.
The time and effort saved by a digital marketing agency enable businesses to focus on improvising additional performance factors without needing to onboard, train, and manage new employees. Similarly, the cost benefits of a digital marketing agency can’t be overstated. Most agencies work in scalable formats that grow with the business, meaning they can have as many or as few resources as the company needs at any given time. This kind of flexibility and cost-effectiveness leads to fewer headaches and more savings.
Get Out of a Creative Rut and Compete
Creativity can get stifled without fresh eyes on a project or idea. If the adage of “two heads are better than one” is true, what happens when those two become an entire team? A talented digital marketing agency can bring in the right people from its staff to tackle specific business challenges in out-of-the-box ways.
Perhaps they’ve worked with legal software companies before and know of a unique strategy that could work to increase leads because it worked for a similar company. Or maybe the strategy they implemented for an application developer would actually be perfect for a retail customer as well. These wide-ranging experiences come as part of using a digital marketing agency as a thought partner when addressing business challenges.
Agencies also do all the research necessary to understand a specific business, its challenges, and the new trends that the industry sees. This can lead to new information about unknown competitors or entirely new strategies to capture new markets. Knowing the competitive environment is part of an agency’s job as it leads to a more effective strategy in the end. Let someone else do all that research and check-in on the key insights it brings you in the end.
Time. Money. Effort. Those are all things a digital marketing agency can save a business while generating sales-qualified leads. Companies hire these agencies to work with industry professionals who keep up with the latest trends both in the customer’s industry and digital marketing. The new ideas and strategies that can come from working with a digital marketing agency can lead to impressive results that are certainly worth looking into.
Sources
MarketingProfs, B2B Content Marketing 2020 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends - North America, March, 2020.
Statista, Share of budgets allocated to marketing according to B2B companies in the United States in 2019, October 2019.
