Why the Marketing Agency Model Is Costing Your Business Big Bucks

If you don’t have a full team of graphic designers, copywriters, web developers, UI/UX pros, ad savants, and content creators in-house at your company, you’ve likely considered working with a marketing agency to get it all done.

Yet, new marketing agencies are popping up around every corner and it can be exceedingly difficult to know who’s actually going to take the best care of your brand.

Add to that the extra cost you as a client have to cover when working with an agency — like managerial costs, project management, and miscellaneous overheads — and you can wind up paying thousands of dollars more than if you built your own team.

But who has time to search for talented digital marketers, vet them, onboard them, and establish a healthy internal culture with remote workers to ensure all the work you’ve put in to hire a team doesn’t go to waste?

Don’t worry. There’s a solution.

Before we dive in to the new way of working that’s going to make the marketing agency model completely obsolete, let’s look at what’s really at stake when you work with a marketing agency.

Your Brand Is a Unicorn, Not a Mule

Every business and every brand is completely unique. From the colors that make up your logo, to the tone of voice your brand carries, to the products and services you offer, and the people you offer them to — every single facet of your business comes together to create a particular presence in the market.

Such diversity demands careful thought, deliberate strategy, and a customized marketing plan.

However, many businesses find that when working with a marketing agency, they often receive cookie cutter marketing “strategies” that are easy for the agency to “rinse and repeat” within their own teams.

To reach your ideal customer and build a lasting, positive reputation for your brand in your niche marketplace, you need a completely tailor-made marketing plan. That requires time and dedication from people who are committed to the success of your company.

Killing Productivity With the Telephone Game

Sure, working with a marketing agency may seem appealing when you get one person as your main point of contact and you envision a simplified marketing operation. Yet, unless that one person is a master message conveyor, there’s likely going to be a great deal that gets lost in translation as information is passed to the designers, developers, and writers doing the actual work.

Marketing experts specialize in specific areas because their brains think a certain way that makes them good at teasing out tiny grains of valuable information and using those bits to create a beautiful brand. When you don’t speak directly to the designer creating your brand identity or the copywriter crafting your product descriptions, valuable kernels of information are lost.

Short-Term Relationships Yield Short-Term Results

By nature, marketing agencies typically see a revolving door of clients, many of whom need short-term work done to finally get a website pulled together or create print materials for an upcoming event.

On the flip side, when you work with a team of marketing professionals who aren’t just working on a short-term gig, they’re invested in the success of your business long-term.

In marketing, every campaign, event, product launch, and sales funnel initiative must be tied together cohesively under a united brand voice and style. If you have too many groups popping in to do short-term projects here and there, your brand starts to look more like a Jackson Pollock and less like a Rembrandt.

Rethinking the Marketing Agency Model

At TAP.Inc., we don’t subscribe to the agency model. Rather than hiring an agency and wondering who’s doing the actual design, web development, content creation, and social media ad work behind the scenes, we believe you should know exactly who you’re working with.

TAP.Inc. connects you with teams of professionals — not individuals — who become your new remote marketing department, complete with project management. Our teams of freelancers have experience working together and know how to get organized, delegate, and communicate to create massive impact for your business at max efficiency.

Plus, they are dedicated to your business, product, and brand because they work directly with you, rather than receiving pass-through work via an agency — and you save money since there’s no agency overhead fee attached.

Are you ready to see what’s possible with a dedicated, passionate team of marketing experts at the ready? Post your project on TAP.inc and get your marketing “to do” list checked off by a team of professionals in harmony.