To hire or not to hire.
This short article is meant to help a small business (or any business for that matter), who is looking to hire an agency to ‘handle their Marketing’.
The first question that the business owners need to ask themselves –
“Why am I hiring the agency?”
If the answer is “I don’t know, everyone else seems to be hiring an agency’
Stop right there! This is not really a valid reason to hire!
If the answer is something more concrete like –
“We just don’t have the bandwidth to handle our social media pages and email marketing campaigns.”
“We do not have enough expertise.”
… then yes, we can take this discussion ahead.
But then my question would be –
Have you done your homework first?
The agency doesn’t know why you started the business in the first place. It might help you with your Marketing story, it might help you with the positioning, but have you done some groundwork before?
If you are expecting the agency to answer these difficult base level questions for you, you might just be disappointed. The relationship just won’t work bro.
Only you know why you started the business… only you know the emotion behind it… only you know the problem that you intend to solve… and thus only you know your Marketing story!
The agency can polish the story, or even extract the story from you… but do not expect the agency to come up with your story and positioning, because they can’t!
Do your homework first and then tell that story to the agency. The relationship will be much more fruitful.