Day 29: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Day 29 of 30. Let’s talk about hiring an agency versus hiring a marketing director.

Hopefully, your business has grown to a point that you actually are taking marketing seriously. You’ve seen some of the beautiful, amazing customers that come in just because you have installed good marketing practices and accountability and all of those good things. You’re at the point where you now can make a decision.

Do I hire a marketing director or can I hire an agency for something a little bit bigger and more robust?

First, let me say this to all the marketing directors out there who might be watching or reading this series – we love you! We work with so many marketing directors and we love the point of contact. We love the ability to have a discussion about our practices and have somebody who is on the inside and can help direct what we’re doing. That is totally a great relationship and I never want to violate any of that. 

Now- to the business owner who is facing the hard decision of hiring a marketing director or an agency, the answer is: it depends on your size. If you are truly big enough to hire a full-time marketing director, I would not call them a marketing director. I would call that person a CMO and just give them the respect that they deserve. Your chief marketing officer really is a marketing director who should have your best interest at heart, who should know the ins and outs. They should not be an overtaxed catch-all person, but somebody who is truly focused on your marketing and your brand. A lot of times I see marketing directors who are called marketing directors, but really they’re CMOs. That kind of person is amazing, and unless you can afford to hire a CMO, maybe look into hiring an agency instead. An agency can set up regularly scheduled structured meetings, it can set up KPIs, it can help you understand your model and your customer, and it can also install some of the structures that your business needs. In addition to that, it can go about helping order the operations to execute on those marketing and advertising structures. A good agency, hopefully an agency like Fidelis, will also help you understand your own brand. It’ll help you understand what it is that you’re building into for generations to come.

I hope that helps you understand the relationship between a marketing director/CMO and an agency, and can propel you to make informed decisions about your own marketing budgets in the future.