Why You Should NOT Hire a Local Digital Marketing Agency
There are many reasons that your organization, company or firm would need to hire a marketing agency. Even when getting more specific and looking for a digital marketing agency there are still a good number of reasons why you’d need one. But finding an agency that will meet your needs and deliver on your goals can be difficult, and one of the decisions you’ll have to make is whether or not you should use a local digital marketing agency or an agency based somewhere else in the US or even an international option.
In this article we are going to share with you why it is a BAD IDEA to hire a local digital marketing agency in most cases.
And we realize that your gut reaction may be to think the opposite, but after reading through why this is a bad idea, we’re confident that you’ll be in full agreement with us.
So read on to see exactly Why You Should Not Hire a Local Digital Marketing Agency.
Local Agency vs National Agency
This subhead is a little misleading because when we talk about a local digital marketing agency vs a national digital marketing agency we aren’t classifying the national agency as some giant behemoth of a company. We simply mean an agency that is not in your local market, but serves clients nationally.
Why is this Topic Even Worth Writing About?
The thing is when companies start looking for digital marketing agency options they go to the search engines and start searching in a macro way to find their options. And when you search for something like… “digital marketing agency”, the results are going to be filled with local digital marketing agencies. And while, yes, they may be able to do digital marketing there are reasons why most of them are not going to be a good fit.
And we also realize there are many factors that will determine fit, we’re going to focus on the local vs national agency component solely, because we feel it’s a fairly common and hard to break problem.
Still with us?
Let’s keep going!
Benefits of a Local Digital Marketing Agency
While we are sharing why it’s not a good idea to go with a local marketing agency there are still benefits of working with them which we’ll list here.
Cheaper
What you’ll find is that many of the agencies who solely focus on serving their own market have lower pricing. This is great if you have a small budget and is less of a risk financially if you want to try them out.
But remember you get what you pay for in most cases
Local Pride
Many companies want to support their local community and love to work with other companies in their community. Agencies that are local only typically have this characteristic and really have a deep pride in working with local businesses.
Trustworthy References
When looking for a local digital marketing agency you can easily find and talk to their current and past customers to get a good understanding of if you should work with them as well. In many cases you’ll find that they have worked with people you know and trust who will give you an accurate representation of the local agency.
Benefits of a National Digital Marketing Agency
Alternatively there are a number of benefits that come when working with a national digital marketing agency that also need to be pointed out in order to balance to pros of both local vs national. Below we’ve listed a few of those benefits.
Nationally operating digital marketing agencies don’t have the luxury of the local bias that can draw an emotional connection for them so they rely more on the work and the service.
Focused on Results
National digital agencies are more focused on getting results for their clients & customers because they don’t have personal ties to the relationship in most cases. They have to prove themselves by delivering on what they claim they can do.
Typically Specialized
You will also find that these agencies specialize by focusing on an industry, a digital marketing channel or a set of specific tactics that they have a high level of expertise in or have created through research, practice and integration.
Better at the Work
Again since these agencies don’t have local clout, they rely more on their own work to prove they are a good fit and to get found nationally, such as doing digital marketing for themselves in the way they do it for their customers. They have to be good to be picked.
Why Most Companies Go With Local Digital Marketing Agencies
The truth is that a large majority of companies will choose to use a local digital marketing agency for a number of reasons that we are sharing below. But be warned, in most cases this is likely not the best move for your company.
Proximal Relationships
The thing is we have a cognitive bias when it comes to how close someone or something is to us and that includes businesses. We have this innate belief that someone who is close in proximity (distance) to us, is a safer option because we can “see them”, “touch them”, show up if we feel we need to, that they somehow “get us” better, and other similar reasoning.
It’s essentially an irrational trust and belief that you are in more control over your situation.
Local Pride
This is a big factor in many cases, where a business simply wants to keep the money in their community. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this at all. But it can be very limiting depending on what your goals are.
Price
Lastly, most local agencies are cheaper than national agencies, because they in many cases aren’t as skilled so they charge less, or they are simply less complex as an organization with lower overhead and ask for less money.
Why You Shouldn’t Go With the Local Agency
The biggest reason to not use a local digital marketing agency is due to the cognitive bias tied to the proximal relationship. We fool ourselves into thinking that we’ve made a better choice, but in reality we are settling and letting our emotions make the decisions. Your bias is a self sabotaging effort.
The fact that most choose to go with a local agency because of this false sense of control is the root of the problem itself. Much of the control you want to have is detrimental to getting the results you want. If the goal is to get more traffic, leads and sales, but you want to control every aspect of that process then the results will suffer, because you are not the expert at getting more traffic, leads and sales.
This may come off as harsh, but it’s the harsh reality. Personal taste, overinflated sense of technical ability and the need for control by the person working directly with the agency, makes it 10x more difficult for a digital marketing agency to do their job well due to the intrusion on their strategy.
If you find a specialized agency in your local market that can meet your needs then you are lucky and this rule may not apply, but this is rare, so be careful out there when deciding on a digital marketing agency that can actually do what you need them to do and that your pick will be one that allows you to let the agency do their job well.
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