Advertising Agencies, Marketing Agencies, and Marketing Consultants

When you need to find a company to help you achieve goals and start projects, understand how each of these companies are situated.  Don’t get overwhelmed, prepare instead by doing some research and talking with people in your industry.  Like any company relationship, make sure you read the details of any agreement and have a good line of communication set up.

Prepare

1)  What is your company’s goal?

Is it broad or focused? A broad is something general like “grow the company”, but a focused goal is more granlar such as “increase product A sales in a specific demographic segment in industry B”.  Some companies are better at one than the other.  Very few are good at both.

2)  What importance do you place on marketing and advertising?

How do you feel marketing impacts your current sales as well as existing customer retention?  Another measure can be your marketing budget – Is it 5% of annual sales or upwards of 30%?

3)  What’s your first impression?

Trust your impressions but don’t make immediate decisions on them.  Take the time to meet with the most qualified companies and ask yourself (or your team) did it validate or invalidate your first impression?  The way people communicate with you is important.

Advertising Agency

An Advertising Agency is a company that assists in planning and creating of advertising plans for your services, products or for brand.  These can be large international companies or industry focused or local/regional.  There are agencies that are better for video and social, where others can be focused on civic engagement, and others are better at new ideas and being creative.  Bigger agencies will have departments or individuals that can handle social interaction, content creation, marketing automation, websites, and landing pages, but their cost may be higher.

Marketing Agency

A Marketing Agency is similar to an ad agency but they differ in that marketing companies tend to look at marketing from a bigger point of view.  It is not just the new customer, but also the existing customer, and the lost/old customer.  For example, they can be focused both on new business strategy as well as remarketing, account based marketing, and client/customer brand loyalty building.  If they don’t have it already, a Marketing Agency has an advertising department or partner who does ad buying  They may also either have their own web or mobile app team if they are a larger firm or have a reliable set of contractors at their call.  The right company here should listen to your needs and have a plan on moving forward.

Marketing Consultant

Marketing Consultants are typically individuals or small groups of individuals who are very versed in specific marketing practices for your industry or a target audience (demographic).  There are many great marketing consultants that are fantastic for smaller businesses especially for creating a marketing plan . But also, don’t underestimate the power of a really good expert consultant, one who has extensive industry experience and is focused.  These people are worth their weight in gold.

Many of the same skillsets and functions are prevelant in all three types of companies.  An Ad Agency needs to have a marketing plan driving their ad buys and strategy.  They could do this for you, which many do, or they rely on what you give them.  The same applies for a Marketing Company, they can come up with the plan, but to implement an ad strategy they might do this themselvers or outsource to a partner ad agency.  Consultants on the other hand may be a jack of all trades, which is good in some instances.  You need to find what works best for your company dynamic and goals.

Finally, remember analytics

Analytics are how you see the results from the campaigns and strategies you are pursuing.  It is the study and analysis of data that is gathered from marketing and advertising campaigns.  These are essential in determining patterns in behavior, and what factors may have contributed to conversions and preferences.  Every company above utilizes these and it is to your benefit to know what some indicators are in different areas.

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