When trying to set sail on the online frontier, you’ll come across a TON of marketing companies, agencies, firms, and groups that offer every online service imaginable from web design & development to graphics to SEO work. After speaking with a few prospects about pricing, previous experiences, and their own skills, here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t hire a marketing company.
Marketing Agency Graphic Designers Are Too Expensive
Most reputable agencies charge between $50 and $500 per hour! Why in the world wide web would I pay someone that much when I can easily create my own material? Listen, I’ve never specialized in graphics, but why would I pay HUNDREDS for a graphic designer when I have access to my own graphic programs? Below, I’ve vividly shown how much money I can save when using such:
Now of course I only have a .jpg and it isn’t vectorized, but it’s a graphic, right??
Why Marketing Agency Graphic Designers Are Expensive
A reputable graphic designer will usually give an estimate and then charge per revision. These designs are “expensive” because they’re not only charging for their time but their years and years of experience and excellent skillset. The designer will also send over a ton of editable files that each have a purpose instead of just a simple un-scalable .jpg.
Marketing Is Easy
Agencies offer services that are either easily learned or can be automated, right? For example, digital ads are easily learned once you spend a dozen hours creating the graphics, copy, formatting, conversion metrics, PPC, and choosing the platform. Of course, you’ll have to check in on your ads and fine-tune or A/B test them if they’re underperforming, but everyone has time for that after working on their own business for 16 hours straight, right?? Oh, wait, your ads were mistakenly flagged as a violation of ToS? Maybe marketing isn’t that easy…
Anyone Can Create A Website
When it comes to creating a website, it’s honestly pretty easy:
- Just choose a website template that’ll look subpar and simple
- Decide on a hosting platform with auto-caching, global CDN, DDoS protection, and a CMS like WordPress with a supported PHP version
- Buy a domain name with an SSL
- Set up any DNS MX (DKIM, SPF, PTR), TXT, or CNAME records
- Choose a design framework
- Plan any SEO metadata for SERPs
- Understand how GSC, GTM, and GA4 work, then copy it over to Bing
- Finally learn light HTML, CSS, PHP, and JS for safe measures.
- Be sure to also keep plugins, PHP, MySQL, and themes up to date.
- Keep clean data tables, and have your FTP creds handy for any emergencies.
- Lastly, don’t forget to create backups because sometimes components randomly break even after follow steps 1-10.
A Quality Marketing Firm
Okay, let’s get serious. Choosing a quality marketing firm is the first step in the right direction. A quality firm charges a bit more but you’re paying for what you get: quality services, strong communication, and a group that over-delivers. Yes, you can always find someone to do the job cheaper – but we’ve constantly taken on clients that have been damaged by these “affordable marketing companies”.
You shouldn’t hire a marketing firm if you’re on a shoestring budget and hoping an agency can save your business that’s filled with internal problems, or suffering from an “I could do it better” mindset.
If you’re ready to work with a team of professionals that have a proven track record, value communication as a top priority, and are realistic with expectations – contact Quillen Marketing today.