You want to improve your marketing campaign, but your team has reached the end of their digital expertise or the time they can spend managing digital ads. There are many reasons to hire a marketing agency to manage your digital ads, and chief among them is time-savings, specialized expertise, and optimized performance. Digital advertising is one of the fastest moving pieces in the digital marketing machine, and getting bogged down in slow learning curve can quickly put your business behind. By working with experts in digital advertising, your staff can focus their strengths while still sharpening digital ad performance.
7 Reasons to Hire a Marketing Agency to Manage Your Digital Ads
1. Production: Ads Made For The Internet
Source: Facebook ads manager
When it comes to digital advertising, one size does not fit all. Each digital advertising platform provides its own content guidelines, ad sizes, image types, positions and other specifics. One of the reasons to hire a marketing agency to manage your digital ads is to produce ads made specifically for your position online. Your team can focus on your brand and overall creative strategy, while taking the guesswork out of digital ad implementation.
For example, 85% of Facebook video ads are watched without sound, but 96% of YouTube users do use sound. An effective Google Adwords ad requires concise copy and accurate keywords, but that copy in an Instagram ad would be ignored. These are just two of many examples where slight changes in user experiences dramatically impact digital ad performance. Knowledge of these differences and the time-savings your team will enjoy are both good reasons to hire a digital marketing agency to manage your ads.
All of the following will change the way users see and interact with your ads online;
- Most popular content types
- Time spent on the platform
- Average user demographics
- Desktop vs mobile use
- Ad space or time available
- File types and sizes
- Keyword targeting and content relevancy
- User targeting and content relevancy
- Time spent on page
- Scrolling activity
- Peak hours of use
2. Testing: Building Ads That Perform
Source: Google Analytics Dashboard
Creating digital ads for each platform is time-consuming enough, especially if your team is newly learning the specifics of each platform. Proper testing requires even more attention, and neglecting testing causes ads to stagnate. Digital marketing agencies have the resources and expertise to test ads for pivotal performance, giving you another important reason to hire a marketing agency to manage your ads.
A/B testing and split testing drive continuous improvement. This helps you not only find the ads that perform, but also the specific elements that make the ads perform better, so you can incorporate these features into your next campaign.
You can A/B test or split test almost any ad and any part of it. Changes to some of these seemingly minor elements can drastically improve ad performance;
- Keyword targeting
- PPC ad copy
- Color scheme
- Font size
- Bidding
- Landing page
- Form fields
The importance of continuous testing is often overlooked, and the benefits of optimization through testing is one important reason to hire a marketing agency to manage your ads. It’s important to know what to test, when, and how much. Performing the right tests will help to optimize lead conversion, so you don’t waste budget on impressions or clicks with little chance of conversion.
See what an agency can offer you:
In-House Marketing vs. Marketing Agency Decision Guide.
3. Tracking: Acquiring Actionable Data
Source: Google Analytics Home
Without the right tracking tools, you can’t know how your ads affect your brand, leads, sales, or any other KPI. This makes continuous, accurate tracking a powerful reason to hire a marketing agency to manage your online ads. An experienced digital marketing agency will automatically gather data on impressions, clicks, conversions, ad spending and other important metrics to track efficacy.
Accurate tracking requires proper implementation from the start. If you aren’t tracking actions directly related to your selected KPIs, your data won’t be accurate and you won’t be able to conduct testing or optimization.
Any holes in your tracking system—such as which ad a customer clicked, how they used a landing page, where they went next, or whether or not they bought a product or used a form—leaves mysteries in your campaign performance. Eliminating ambiguity in your ad performance is one reason to hire a marketing agency that will drive continuous improvement.
4. Bidding: Winning Placement And Customers
Source: Google Adwords Dashboard
Digital ad space auctions occur millions of times every instant. While a higher bid will win the space, that doesn’t mean it will win the most customers. This makes accurate bidding an essential reason to hire a marketing agency to manage your online ads. If you’re not bidding accurately, you’re either throwing money away or leaving it on the table.
Ad groups that use up their allotted budgets on high bids will show up often at the start of the month, then disappear when the budget runs out. Your individual bids for clicks, impressions or conversions should be strategically aligned with your overall budget and campaign.
5. Keeping Current: Using New Trends Fast
Digital advertising changes as fast as the internet, and marketers that don’t keep up get left behind. As new platforms and technologies emerge, digital marketing experts know how to use them most effectively. Freeing your staff from this constant development process is a reason to hire a marketing agency that will save time and energy, and keep your ad campaigns ahead of your competition.
Working with specialized experts, you can take advantage of new ad targeting options to reach your customers better. A successful agency will also monitor changes to Google algorithms and tools like Google My Business to make sure you’re at the top of the search. As mobile indexing and mobile marketing change, your marketing agency will allow your customers to find you across any device.
6. Reporting: Staying On Track
Even effective ads can go wrong without the right reports. To know if a campaign is successful, it’s important to test and track data, but you also have to know what the numbers mean. Digital marketing agencies track ad campaign performance with automated tools and generate the reports you need to make decisions. The extra accuracy, speed and information generated through automated reporting are compelling reasons to hire a marketing agency to manage your digital ads.
A campaign focused on brand awareness, for example, should prioritize impressions over conversions. When comparing costs, it’s important to consider total costs, costs per click, click rates, and conversion rates. The right agency will provide these reports and give insightful analysis about campaign performance overall.
7. Full-Scale Expertise: Aligning The Marketing Strategy
Creating and implementing a digital ad campaign means utilizing many different skills. For any ad to be effective, the graphic design, copywriting, and consumer analysis must be aligned.
For example, to convert a lead, the landing page and website must be properly designed and optimized for search engines and user experience. To maintain and assess ROI, the tracking, automation, and reporting must be implemented correctly. All of these aspects must also align with your complete marketing strategy, both online and offline. If any of these aspects are missing, your campaign will not be as effective. Having all of these skills at your disposal is perhaps the best reason to hire a marketing agency to manage your ads.
When you work with the right agency, you no longer have to ask your staff to keep up with this rapidly changing industry, or continue to learn new platforms that don’t otherwise affect their job. Finding the right marketing agency means working with specialized experts that will grow with you, and optimize your ad budget without trial and error. If your team is struggling to stay current or get ahead of competitors online, it’s time to work with experts.