I had an interesting meeting with a prospect last week and they were describing to me they used to deal with a full service advertising agency but they felt that it was difficult for this agency to satisfy all their needs. The company was going through a re-branding, wanted to move more from traditional advertising to online but understood they still needed to advertise in traditional media and could not abandon this area. It was refreshing to hear an executive from the company mention that he thought it was hard for an advertising firm to be able to offer strategic branding, advertising and online marketing services. Mentioning that he wanted to deal with a local company he certainly hit the mark with that comment. Companies have to understand that the days of being able to offer these 3 expertises is over. I mentioned the only perceived negative is that you have to deal with 3 different contacts and he replied actually in most cases these companies are outsourcing their branding and online marketing implementation so he would rather deal direct with all three companies and have control of the process. I mentioned that the most important factor was for the three companies to work together towards the common marketing goal. I said that we work with branding companies and we work with traditional advertising agencies and I feel the end product is far superior than an agency trying to do all the work themselves.
Working with branding strategy and advertising companies I have respect for their expertise and their process. To me it is a totally different expertise than we offer as an online marketing company. In this day and age you have to specialize if you want to be successful. I know the expertise we employ in:
- web graphic design
- web programming
- conversion consulting (lead generation)
- search engine optimization
- pay per click advertising
- social media
- email communication
I also know how hard it is to find staff that are true experts in these fields, so I completely agree with this prospect it is very difficult to do all these services above in an optimal level. Message to companies out there, ensure you are receiving all expertise when you are implementing your marketing plan. Advertising and marketing is changing fast and you need to ensure that you are working with companies that are up on all the new elements of the new age of marketing.
