Part of what makes businesses successful is having the right people in the right positions. Sometimes that means outsourcing activities that you don’t have the expertise on. That’s where agencies come in. Our passion is to help businesses reach their objectives by planning and executing strategic communications campaigns.
Depending on your business strategy and goals, hiring an agency can be a great way to handle your communications. There are many benefits to hiring an agency and we have highlighted a few below.
Expertise.
No one person can be an expert on all facets of business. Naturally, everyone has different skill sets. Hiring a communications agency is beneficial because they are experts in their field. It takes years of experience to understand business communications, and when you hire an agency you are taking that responsibility off of yourself.
Agencies specialize in communications and understand the strategies and tactics that will get you closer to your business goals. Unless you hire an in-house team, the expertise that comes with hiring an agency saves you time and money in trying to execute on communications yourself. Agencies can also help your in-house communications department – whether you need more hands to share the workload, or need to supplement your current activities with targeted campaigns.
Saving time.
Your time is valuable. No matter what level you are at within the company, it is best spent on the role you were hired for using your specific skills. By hiring a communications agency, you free up your own time by trusting communication with the people who know what they are doing. Instead of you having to research and learn about communications, you are able to focus on the duties of your position.
Business owners have so many responsibilities and are often caught in the do-it-yourself mentality, which can be a good thing sometimes, such as when you are bootstrapping. In organizations with small teams, communications tend to be shared among different people and they do it alongside their primary role, such as sales, or product development. However, when it comes to communications, businesses do not necessarily have the time to figure it all out for themselves. Hiring a communications agency frees up time to actually run the business. At The Agency, part of our goal is to take communications work off of you. We do our best so that you can do what you do best.
Sharing perspectives.
Everyone can become hyper-focused on certain projects or goals from time to time that other priorities fall by the wayside. We often think of whatever project we are working on as the most important or most exciting thing going on in the world. Because communications agencies are external to the organization, they can be more objective. They are able to visualize the bigger picture and make recommendations on how to communicate in a way that will land well while considering other factors like the current news environment and audience expectations.
Having an objective perspective on communications materials will help the organization get the message across to the right people at the right time.
Results.
In communications, results are never guaranteed and are often subjective. But, an agency has certain advantages when it comes to getting results. The years of experience present at an agency means that they know what works and what doesn’t.
That being said, if an agency is guaranteeing you specific results – RUN! We can research, and plan, and strategize until the cows come home but we cannot say with certainty that a certain marketing campaign will have a specific ROI or that a media relations campaign will ensure coverage all of the time. There are always other factors in play that may affect how your campaigns perform.
Cons.
We would be remiss not to mention that there are certain cons that can come with hiring an agency over hiring an in-house employee. For some organizations, it may be better for them to hire for an in-house position due to a number of factors such as cost – a salary may be a better investment as opposed to an agency retainer. When you hire an in-house communications professional, they can fully focus on the business, and a full-time employee will have more time to dedicate to the business compared to an agency working on a project or retainer basis. That said, agencies can also provide great support to in-house teams.
Bottom line.
As with most decisions, there are pros and cons to hiring an agency to handle your communications. In this case, in our slightly-biased opinion the benefits of hiring an agency outweigh the cons. But that is a decision that needs to be made within the organization after weighing all of the options.
Have you been thinking about hiring a communications agency? Reach out to us to see if we can help.
