The Advantages of a Full-Service Marketing Agency Over Multiple Specialized Agencies

jordanfowler@moonandowl.comMarketing Agency

We recently talked with a prospective client. Currently, they have several different specialty agencies doing each aspect of their marketing.

So they have:

  • A retargeting company handling their retargeting display ads on Adroll.
  • A social media company handling their Facebook campaigns.
  • A separate retargeting agency handling Facebook retargeting.
  • An overseas SEO handling their on-page SEO efforts.
  • Finally, another agency is handling their Adwords account.

And guess what, it isn’t working well.

Here’s why…

Specialized Agency Marketing is Disjointed and Doesn’t Work Well

They initially felt that they need the special skills that each different agency brought. Now they are starting to see it doesn’t work effectively.

01. A Fragmented Marketing Strategy

Each agency is working furiously on their piece but no one is providing a clear 100,000-foot view of here is where we are going and here is how we are going to get there.

Siloing is excellent on a website, but it’s a horrible marketing strategy. A fragmented approach to marketing leads to disjointed messaging, incohesive branding, mixed signals, and, ultimately, lost opportunities.

02. Pure Budgetary Reasons

If I am the specialized agency handling Adwords and it isn’t performing as well as another channel, I have no way to know that because I am siloed off from those numbers. So I am not even going to see the whole picture to make a recommendation.

Even if I did see it, if I am the agency providing only one service for you, guess what my answer is going to be for everything?

Spend more money on my particular service.

Why a Full-Service Marketing Agency is a Better Choice for Your Business

A full-service marketing agency is just that, a single agency that handles all your marketing and advertising needs. Here how this benefits you, the business owner or business growth leader.

01. Top Level Strategy

All your marketing elements need to work together to deliver results.

We call this campaign stacking, where a unified, clear singular message is slightly contextualized and pushed out through each of your channels.

Even if the campaign itself is not stand-alone, all of your campaigns should relate to your core value proposition and work in tandem whether they are dual campaigns or sequential campaigns.

A full-service agency best provides this service. If it isn’t a full-service agency doing it, it will be you, the person-busy-running-their-business, whose lap it falls into. To quote Kimberly “Sweet Brown” Wilkins, “Aint’ nobody got time for that.”

02. Better ROI and Because of Comprehensive Analytics

A full-service agency has a full picture of all your advertising and marketing efforts.

When you have a holistic marketing perspective, a full-service agency like Moon & Owl can say, “Your organic SEO is working so well that we are advising you to move some money from Adwords back into your pocket or into other efforts, because your organic rank is accomplishing what Adwords previously was.”

You’ll never hear a one-off service agency say this because (1) they don’t have the whole picture and (2) they only make their money if you continue full-bore with their one service.

A full-service marketing agency sees the whole picture and is fluid in-terms of optimizing strategies and channels that are result-centric, not channel-centric.

Thus, you can get better ROI on your marketing budget dollars.

03. You Can Hold a Single Entity’s Feet to the Fire

Even if your full-service agency uses strategic partners or “White Label” services, at the end-of-the-day, you have one agency who is accountable to you for results.

Lots of agencies use white label services. We do a great deal for SEO white labeling for other agencies. But here’s the deal, if your results aren’t working, when you’ve engaged a full-service agency THEY are responsible for their partners, not you.

You can call a single point of contact at the full-service and say, “This isn’t working, what are we going to do?” There is no room for finger pointing by your full-service agency. They selected their strategic partners. They are accountable for them.

If you have multiple, single-service partners, each can point the finger at another and say, “If agency Z would do this, you’d get better results.”

04. Your Sanity Is Increased

When you have multiple single-service agencies, guess who becomes the marketing executive expert even if you don’t want to do that.?

You have to do all the coordination and air traffic controlling between multiple agencies. You are also responsible for campaign brainstorming and ideation. That takes time and energy that you could spend on other aspects of your business.

05. Your Costs Will Be Lower

With multiple specialized agencies, your costs will be much higher to secure the same scope of services you’d get with a full-service marketing agency.

Why? All marketing agencies roll their costs to you even if they move them under different lines items on your invoice. (This isn’t sneaky. Every business, for that matter, does this in their final pricing.)

With 5 or 6 specialty agencies, like the potential client example has above, they are paying duplicate costs.

Each is charging you for things like their invoicing software, infrastructure not to mention the six salaried account executives that are working on your account. With a full-service agency, you’d typically have one lead account exec (or a senior and junior exec if your account is a massive national or global account).

With a specialized-agency approach, you are paying for things six times instead of once.

Moon & Owl’s Unique Position

Moon & Owl is a full-service agency. You’ll have a single point of primary contact for your account. The buck stops with us.

full service marketing agency

But the difference between Moon & Owl and many full-service agencies is that we are a distributed agency. That means we have no massive overhead of a centralized office. With the tools available in 2018, our team members and specialists can actually be more productive sitting next to one another virtually than we can with all the distractions that happen in a bloated, centralized office.

This structure means you can typically hire Moon & Owl as your full-service agency and have a full team of agency experts working on your account at less cost of than typical full-service agency.

That isn’t to say we are bargain-basement-priced discount agency; we aren’t. We price by project value and not by the hour like many large agencies do. Why should you be punished if we aren’t efficient with our time?

You’ll have a clear scope and price when you start your relationship with us.

Like any reputable full-service advertising/marketing/creative agency, we have knowledgeable experts in their field be it SEO, SMM, web design, media buying, graphic design or copywriting. We’ve just chosen to structure our agency differently for your benefit and our own life enjoyment.

Stop trying to manage multiple agencies. Make the call for your free consult.