Does Your Small Business Really Need a Digital Agency?

 There are countless businesses offering services that will, or at least promise to, take your company to the next level. Approximately, 71% of all small businesses have a website now. So, not surprisingly, many growth services being offered today are aimed at online businesses.

The total spent on digital advertising is around $468 billion a year. This is one of the biggest industries surrounding ecommerce but it is not the only one by far. A digital agency may offer services linked to SEO, web development, and audience growth.

Around 8.5% of marketing budgets are allocated for SEO, and around $72 billion was spent in 2018 on this area. Typically, a firm may take around 6% of revenue and channel this into marketing (mostly digital). And out of this budget, 25% will be spent on content marketing.

With all these different aspects it can become confusing for small business owners. Do SMEs need a digital agency, and are there genuine benefits to using one?

What are digital agencies?

It can get confusing with the numerous different services available today. Some agencies may specialize more in data collection and analysis, while others may offer a blended approach involving SEO through lead generation and a marketing strategy. 

Typically, a digital agency will look at how to help take your company to the next level through a marketing strategy that involves improving all aspects of your web presence.

What do digital agencies do?

A creative agency may concentrate more on advertising campaigns while a digital agency may look more at analyzing the market, building a strategy, and execution. However, some areas can crossover. For instance, a digital agency may be involved in creating content as well as SEO work.

Looking at Blend Mode Digital Agency as an example, you can see that they offer assistance to operations that wish to move to the next level. They don’t help businesses to get off the ground, but rather increase leads, traffic, and revenue. A digital agency could be involved in any or all of the following areas. 

Marketing campaigns

A digital agency may come up with an overall strategy for your digital marketing campaign. But, this will be made up of many factors including those below.

Audience growth

Some digital agencies will look at where improvements can be made in social media. This means providing custom content to increase engagement, organic audience growth, and widening a business’s social media presence in general.

Increase leads

The one thing that everyone wants from SEO is to get more traffic. Increased traffic can mean more leads and more conversions. A digital agency can boost your SEO strategy and define it to suit your business. For example, if your business operates in a small area then local SEO improvements would help to bring in more leads.

SEO strategy

Continual improvement on SEO is vital to any website. Metrics for search engines change. Plus your competitors will be looking for ways to appear higher in search results.

A digital agency could help a small business appear higher in SERPs, and generate more traffic. To explain the importance of rankings through SEO statistics, the 3rd site on search results will only generate 11% of clicks, while the 10th will get just 2.5%. It is crucial to be at the top of the SERPs.

Not only this, but 65% of ecommerce sessions come from searches online, and 33% come from organic searches. Good SEO will increase a website’s visibility on searches.

Website development and redesign

A digital agency will also help a business to develop its website. This involves creating a site that is responsive, mobile-friendly, and compatible with all devices and browsers.

Does your small business need a digital agency?

Understanding what a digital agency does is one thing, knowing whether you should hire one is another. Not all small businesses would benefit from a digital agency, and some that operate in a very local area may not need any help at all. 

However, many small business owners have neither the time nor the resources to carry out SEO improvements, nor website maintenance. Investing time in digital marketing can mean other areas of a business get neglected.

Content sharing and social media scheduling take time. It can take months to learn SEO, and even then there is a continual change in this area. Growing an audience is also extremely time-consuming, and a lot of work needs to be put into engagement and content creation.

For small businesses that want to see their revenue grow but don’t have the knowledge or the time to oversee the improvements needed, then a digital agency can come into its own.

Summary

Whether your small business requires a digital agency would depend on certain factors. What are your goals, are they achievable with the help of a digital agency, and what sort of return would you see on your investment?

What isn’t in doubt though is that any business with a web presence will need to monitor its performance, work on SEO, and interact with its consumers just to stay competitive.