Marketing is an integral part of creating and maintaining a business, however, it is incredibly easy to get wrong.

Being a business owner you are masters at your own craft and tend to struggle with developing other areas of your business that you aren’t quite sure about.

Poorly written business strategies or marketing campaigns will be detrimental to your growth as a business, and this is where local marketing agencies come in!

In this guide I will be revealing the secrets on how to hire the right local marketing agency for you, that will give you the push you need to develop your growth and traffic to your business.

Why Should you Hire a Local Marketing Agency?

Having marketing in your business isn’t optional, it’s necessary.

With the marketing world being ever-changing, you need to be effective with your marketing to keep ahead of your competitors.

All great ideas that you can have to sell your product or service can fail if not marketed correctly. And, while you are amazing at your own business and know your service/product, a skilled marketing team can take your ideas and translate them to suit the marketing industry, helping develop your consumer reach and overall conversions.

How to Find a Local Based Marketing Agency

In this digital age finding Marketing Agencies is reasonably simple, However, finding the right agency is a little trickier. There are a couple of reasonable ways to search for these marketing agencies:

1. Word of Mouth

When looking for a local marketing agency it’s worth asking your staff, friends and family if they know of any local marketing agencies they have worked with previously. You can even ask any other business that isn’t competing in your area that you are in contact with, for instance, your vendors!

The best kind of review is a review from someone you trust, a positive word of mouth review ensures you that the company they have had an experience with is reliable and effective.

2. A Good Ol’ Fashion Google

Using a search engine to look for a local marketing agency is relatively easy, it’s what to look out for that is a little tricky.

When searching for local marketing agencies it’s key to look out for the customer’s reviews and testimonials online, to check if they left the customer satisfied with the work.

Red flags to look out for when reading through these reviews are negative reviews, lack of knowledge and lack of a portfolio (this can either be a new company that has started OR a company that a former client has had a bad experience, both are a risk to work with!)

What Factors Should you Consider when Hiring a Local Marketing Agency?

Before hiring a marketing agency it’s key to understand the needs of your company and some questions to ask the agency. This will provide you with a clear goal and understanding of what needs to be achieved when working together on your business.

Here are a couple of questions and suggestions to consider:

• Understand your company’s needs from the marketing agency
• Does the agency have a planning process on who they’ll achieve the work set?
• Does the agency have any experience with your business?
• Have you thought about your spending budget?
• What are your competitors doing better in your business?

The more clarity you can provide the easier it will be for you and the marketing agency to communicate, but remember this works both ways. The right local marketing agency will be clear with how they can help and not try to bombard you with jargon.

What Services do Local Marketing Agencies Provide?

Not every marketing agency is the same with the services they provide, as they might be less knowledgeable in services that they don’t offer. However, the typical list of services agencies provide are:

• Web design and development – In the digital age that we live in, a website is requisite for success. Marketing agencies can either re-design your website if you feel it’s outdated or they can optimise your current site.
• Branding and design – if you feel your business needs a complete rebranding, from company values to how you come across to your customers. Marketers can give you the design you need to give you the edge on your competitors and appearance to impress your customers.
• Local SEO – Search engine optimisation. Local marketing agencies can use SEO to improve how your content and website appear in search engines, the better the SEO the higher organic success you’ll have!
• Content marketing – Wording your content right is important for your appearance, and to attract your target audience, so having an agency expertly write your words for you will attract, engage and retain your customers.
• Social media management – Your social channels are a good way for customers to understand your company’s personality and identity, while also being a portal to reach a wider audience and lead generation.
• Email marketing –  Email marketing is one of the most effective ways of boosting your conversion rates. With a successful Email campaign, you can set up recurring emails to notify the receiver about your business sales, special deals and triggerable actions.
• PPC – Pay per click advertising. Local marketing agencies can help you with advertising through PPC, you will need a separate budget to put towards your pay per click advertising, however, these advertisements can come through various platforms such as Google or Bing and will only charge you if a user has clicked on your advertisement.

The Potential Challenges of Hiring a Local Marketing Agency

When hiring a local marketing agency, there may be some challenges that come forward.

Marketers will always look to get results for their clients however you need to keep a check on if they are kept aligned with your company values.

Most businesses will look for qualifications when hiring anybody to their business, however, you should be considering the local marketing agency’s experience when hiring.

Some marketing teams will try to offer you every service that they offer. Make sure that when you discuss what they can offer you, they’re honest and only sell you what you need.

Communication is essential when working with anyone, hence why the marketing agency will need to be crystal clear with their work so that you can understand what they’re doing for your business.

However. This communication is a two-way street so when they ask something of you, you need to be ready to respond in a reasonable time frame.

The Cost of a Local Marketing Agency

The cost of a marketing agency can vary from aspects such as experience, services that they provide and quality of their work. Most Local marketing agencies base their costs on one of two types of work:

1- Monthly retainer cost – monthly retainer clients hire the agency for certain agreed-upon lengths based on the services they require, such as reviewing analytics, social media management email campaigns etc. Monthly retainers can be more predictable with working times and priority of work as you’re paying for their services for the length of the campaign.

2. Project cost – this is where the client agrees on the costing for a project within a normally smaller timeframe. While being a great way to test the waters with a local marketing agency, there might be interference to the work as they need to fit in your project around their retainer clients.

The Benefits of Hiring a Local Marketing Agency

There are so many benefits to working with a local marketing agency, Here are a few benefits that we think are key for a business whose marketing needs some care!

• Hiring a marketing team for the areas that you find difficult will save you time on training in those areas while having a more experienced team to do it for you.
• Having a marketing team frees up a lot of time for you to focus on what you do best, running your business!
• According to payscale.com, the average annual salary of a marketing assistant is £19,483 – and that doesn’t include training or other company benefits! So it’s cheaper to outsource your work to a local marketing agency.
• An out of the box take – working with a local marketing agency that works with other types of business, can provide an out of the box view and solution on a challenge that occurs, due to their experience in dealing with other business challenges.
• When you hire a local marketing agency you’ll be paying for their team in most cases, so that means more hands-on-deck on your marketing material. More marketing material means more engagement!

Results of Hiring the Right Local Marketing Agency (Us!)

What you want to see from a local marketing agency is results, the proof is in the pudding after all.

So, we thought we would share an example of finding the right agency for you! Here is our case study for “The Little Box of Hygge”, a family run business based in Lincolnshire.

The Challenge

Little Box of Hygge first came to us for business coaching with her store on Etsy, looking for improvement on their growth and management of their orders. After seeing major improvements to their customer traffic, they required more assistance to move their business forward.

The Solution

After the coaching sessions provided to drive traffic to her store and the business plan in place, started seeing quick results. To help with higher traffic of customers and the need to have more control of their sales, we developed a bespoke eCommerce website for The Little Box of Hygge to display their products, custom orders, and corporate gifts and put in place a new business plan to accommodate for the increase in traffic with future goals in place to develop towards.

The Results

The Little Box of Hygge continues to work with us as a retainer client, working with each other to improve the growth of their business and developing new ways to keep their content above the competition. 

They have also seen an amazing 1,368% rise in sales, a 23% rise in returning customers, an order rate increase by 733% and their typical order value rise to 79% on average in their quarter 4, compared to quarter 3.

In Conclusion

Having a Local Marketing Agency assist you with your marketing is an effective way of growing your business as a whole, hopefully, this guide has given you topics to consider and helped narrow down the right local marketing agency for you.

Are you curious if drumbeat might be the Local marketing agency for you? Why not book a call with us to see how we can help your business!