Marketing agencies are groups of marketing experts whose services are sold to businesses that have a requirement for support due to a gap in capacity or capability.
A marketing agency is a service business, whose revenue comes from the sale of time, as opposed to the sale of products.
What does a marketing agency do?
Marketing agencies operate in a variety of ways, usually at the request of a customer (often referred to as a client in the marketing agency world).
Marketing agencies are able to charge a premium for their work due to the fact that the people they employee are generally experienced and specialists in certain areas, i.e., paid media managers, brand strategists, PR executives or copywriters.
A business might appoint a marketing agency to fulfil a specific brief or project. This could be to create and distribute a press release or to deliver a project or campaign from end-to-end.
Engaging a marketing agency
Marketing agencies work in one or two ways:
- Project-based, whereby a business pays for a deliverable
- Retainer-based, whereby a business pays for a set number of hours per month
A retainer-based approach can often be more cost-effective due to the commitment of hours across a 3, 6, 12 or more month period. Retainers generally come with a fixed number o hours, and any additional work is then scoped or charged for.
A project-based approach, on the other hand, offers more predictable costs. Typically, an agency will be appointed to deliver an outcome for a set cost. If the project drags on (but the scope does not change), then the customer essentially gains, and the agency loses out on profitability as they have under-estimated the effort required.
How are marketing agencies structured?
A marketing agency may have the following teams:
- Leadership - agency directors and (sometimes) heads of department
- Client services - a team of account executives, managers and directors who are responsible for building strong client relationships, understanding requirements, scoping work (and costs!) and briefing internal teams
- Digital - a team of digital experts - strategists and digital marketers who deliver high quality work
- Content - a team of content writers - from strategy through to copywriters and social media managers
- Design - a team of creatives - from graphic designers through to artworkers