How do you become less dependent on a marketing agency?

The DIY result is a half-baked expression that you are not satisfied with. It also doesn't quite match your corporate identity (because you don't have Indesign or Photoshop and thus work with RGB instead of a CMYK color palette), but it's the best you can do with the tools you have.

Recognizable? This blog is about how to become less dependent on the whims and whims and planning of a marketing agency without losing quality.

If you have a business, of course it is very tempting to outsource everything to a marketing agency. They're the experts, right? But if you depend on a marketing agency for all your marketing, the consequences can be huge. What if they are full? What if they raise their prices? Or what if they don't deliver what they promised?

After touring the SMEs in our network, we come up with the following main problems:

1. High costs: marketing agencies can be very expensive, while the returns are not always commensurate. You do have to pay them for their time and services. And also for the accountant, the premises. On average, a marketing agency charges 150 euros per hour.
2. Unclear communication: sometimes it is difficult to communicate with a marketing agency about exactly what you want to achieve. They may not always understand your intent. Or they have their own stubborn idea of how things should be done, when you know that's what turns your clients off.
3. Lack of flexibility and speed: it may take a while before a marketing agency can do anything for you because they have other clients. This is very annoying if you need a few expressions or a small campaign quickly.




Obvious problems, but how do you solve them?

When you consider that a marketing agency charges an average of €150 per hour, you can save a lot of money by getting started with online marketing yourself. Provided the quality and output are at least as good.

Below we provide 3 tips that will help you become less dependent on an (external) marketing party:




1. Make sure you have a clear goal.

What do you want to achieve with your content or campaign and how do you work toward it? Do research and get to know your market. Stay up-to-date with the latest trends and developments in online marketing. The clearer your picture of what you want and for whom, the faster the agency will be ready with the right content for you.




2. Look carefully at what expertise you have in-house.

What things do you do yourself within your company and what things are more convenient to leave with the marketing agency? That way you save on costs and keep control and knowledge a little more in-house.




3. Use smart tools.

Use online tools to create professional and quality content yourself. Smart Content Creator is one of the tools that allow you to easily and quickly create professional visuals while maintaining quality and being fully brand-proof.




Designer quality with the speed of a startup

Smart tools are plentiful, but where do you start? The free versions all have their limitations and you want quality and stability. You don't want stock photos but your own. You want to cleverly reuse previously used images, but only if it is possible within the purchased licenses.

These complex and relevant issues are all covered by Smart Content Creator. With the speed of a startup that switches on every week, you work with quality that would take a designer a few days to produce.

The quality of your expressions in this tool are comparable to that of a marketing or advertising agency, because it is designed by designers and an advertising agency itself. You simply upload your (freelance) designer's designs into the tool and then create all your desired expressions based on them.

This way you have a custom-made template with which you launch the brilliant idea that suddenly emerges at any moment. Without extra costs, without waiting for others without loss of quality, without searching for color codes and corporate identity agreements (because they are all already in there), without worrying about licensing photos and images (because that too is all in there).






Stop splits

Many SMEs are familiar with these splits:

1. 1. Quality and timeliness versus depending on a marketing agency
2. 2. Speed and timeliness versus consistently sharing creative content
3. 3. Cost versus generating more visibility and awareness
4. 4. Quickly creating some yourself with a free tool versus creating consistent, quality content in consistently applied house style
5. 5. Reuse images that are still findable versus a solid media library so you never lose or misuse material.

With Smart Content Creator, you can do it all at once, with no splits, no concessions. Schedule a call to determine if this is a solution for your business as well: you do that by clicking this link.