When you run a business, it’s important to always strive to be the best you can be. By being the best, you can relax in the knowledge that you are doing everything you can to ensure your business has the best chance of succeeding.
Part of being the best is knowing when to outsource your work and what to do in-house. Some areas of your business, like your sales, may be a strong point of yours, while other areas of your business, like your marketing, may not be as good. When you know an area isn’t as strong, you can either employ someone to improve this area or you could go down the route of working with an agency to help take your business to the next level.
Agencies offer advantages by providing specialised expertise, a focus on results, and quicker availability compared to hiring. Additionally, they can work on a shorter contract than most employees, such as a monthly contract or a weekly contract, if required and offered. You can find an agency to help support you in any area of your business, from a development agency like Making Sense to an accounting firm to help you with your finances.
If you’re unsure whether to outsource to an agency or not, you are not alone. To help, we have put together a guide on how an agency can help take your business to the next level.
An agency has already experienced the challenges you faced
Agencies work with many clients. By working with a lot of clients, they get to experience all scenarios and help their clients overcome these. That means there is a good chance they have faced your challenges already and can help you overcome them. Knowing what to do in advance will mean they can start making changes quickly, which will hopefully bring in results quicker for you and your business. If you employ someone to solve your issues, it can take them time to get up to speed, and they will have to learn along the way.
An agency can be cheaper than employing
This may sound strange to hear, but it can be cheaper to use an agency or employ someone to do the work for you. When you employ someone, the majority of the time, you employ them to work for you for the foreseeable future (as long as they are doing a good job). This, as you can imagine, can have a large cost to it, especially if you are after someone senior and experienced. The problems you are facing may not need a full-time employee who works on it every day, instead, you could use an agency to work on it a few days a month. The reason an agency will need less time is that they will specialise in that area, with a team behind them.
An agency can be faster than employing
Sometimes you need a job done, and for the job to be done fast. Employing someone can take time, as you will need to advertise the job, go through the interview process, hire the person then wait for them to serve their notice period before they can start working for you. Working with an agency is beneficial as they can, more often than not, start straight away. You’ll benefit from their experience, and they will start bringing in results fairly quickly after they start.
An agency has access to the best technology
Hiring an in-house team for areas that you need to develop can be expensive. Agencies provide specialists in your chosen areas (such as copywriters, designers, SEO experts, and PPC managers), without the overhead costs. They also use premium tools that most businesses can’t afford independently or don’t necessarily want to pay for. For example, an SEO agency will most likely have access to SEMrush or Ahrefs, which is over £100 a month. A design agency will have access to Adobe Creative Cloud or Canva, which is over £60 a month and so on.
If you are unsure whether to work with an agency or not, the best thing to do is try one out for a month. See what changes they make in a month and go from there. It may be the best thing you have ever done, or it might be something you think you can pass on, in future months – in most cases, we think you’ll benefit hugely from using one. You never know until you try!
Are you planning on working with an agency to help take your business to the next level? What area of expertise are you looking for support in? Is there anything missing in our guide that you think we should be adding? Let us know in the comment box below, we look forward to hearing from you.