Content Marketing
What Does a Marketing Agency Do?
From SEO to social media, marketing agencies can help boost marketing efforts for small businesses and global corporations. Learn more about what a marketing agency does.
Have you ever thought about hiring a marketing company and wondered, “What does a marketing agency actually do?” Every marketing agency is different, but generally they provide services that help businesses promote their own products or services.
These services could be extremely specialized (think search engine optimization) or varied, and include things like brand awareness, content marketing, and social media management.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at:
We’ll also take a look at how AI can be used in marketing agencies, and how to ensure the company is transparent and open about how they use AI with their client work.
If you’re getting started in a business or you’ve just launched a website, working with a marketing agency is the next logical step.
Some of the services you’ll want to look for include:
The point of market research is for the marketing agency to better understand your target audience. Market research helps them do this by way of surveys, studies and focus groups.
The marketing agency gathers the data, analyzes it and uses tools like Google Analytics to find out where customers are at various stages of their journey.
A customer may:
Each of these different customer segments could require different marketing approaches to target and reach them, but you can only find out what works with which group when you know who they are.
Generally, the next step in the process after figuring out who you’re marketing to, is creating a plan of action that goes into detail on how to market to them.
For example:
Oftentimes this strategy doesn’t focus on one particular area, but rather a mix of options that give you the best return on investment and the most exposure.
Some marketing agencies focus specifically on branding, which can span everything from logo design and color scheme to brand messaging and overall tone of voice.
This helps ensure that when a brand posts on social media, a website, or in print materials, it’s consistent.
Many marketing agencies specialize in rebranding to help businesses refresh for a more modern look and revitalize a stale or seemingly out-of-touch image.
Content creation is at the core of any good marketing campaign, and high-quality content is a must.
Companies that consistently produce great content tend to rank higher in search engines.
The content strategy a marketing agency may offer could include:
A marketing agency could even offer an in-depth competitor analysis to help you stay ahead and produce the best content in your industry.
Just as the name implies, SEO is all about optimizing the company’s website rank in the search engines. This is done through website optimization as well as off-site optimization.
Today, SEO is about more than just researching keywords. It’s also about optimizing for local search, building backlinks, and improving page speed.
Together with quality people-first content, consistent posting, and branding, search engine optimization is one of the main factors that impact conversions.
Companies on social media now have a two-way communication outlet for both current and prospective customers.
Social media management involves building up and managing a company’s presence on popular social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok.
Marketing agencies generally create and schedule social media posts and run targeted campaigns to achieve specific goals outlined in the marketing strategy plan.
Those goals can be anything from getting a sale to subscribing to a newsletter.
Paid advertising is a way to quickly generate targeted traffic to a company’s website or social media. Paid ads include:
Just like with other types of campaigns, paid advertising campaigns are designed around specific objectives.
The marketing agency will handle keyword research, create the ad copy, design the visuals and bid for the most lucrative spots in order to maximize the company’s ROAS or Return on Ad Spend.
Email may be the oldest form of online communication, but its effectiveness hasn’t been diminished by relative newcomers like social media and even video marketing.
With email marketing, the marketing agency will design a campaign, create the content, and automate email flows (like a welcome email series, or sending out abandoned cart notifications).
They’ll then track open and click-through rates and use that information to continually refine and improve on the campaigns.
Public relations (PR) and brand management are a fantastic service offered by marketing agencies that monitor brand image.
Working with a PR team can help reach new customer while brand management can help you rapidly identify and address any instances of brand misinformation.
Marketing agencies work with companies to help generate positive news stories, create press releases, and secure interviews.
Some marketing agencies specifically concentrate on in-person or virtual events that are designed to build brand awareness, generate leads, or increase revenues.
The agency may be involved in planning and coordinating conferences and speakers, or they may specialize in developing promotional materials and using tools like social media to increase attendance.
Marketing agencies are used by businesses large and small.
Local restaurants, retail stores and e-commerce startups, for example, use marketing agencies for online marketing skills or capabilities.
Hiring a marketing agency saves them time and money over hiring an in-house staff. If they’ve got a major event or launch coming up, a marketing agency can offer customized services to help drive traffic and interest.
Even major, well-known franchises and large companies like Apple, Microsoft and Coca-Cola use marketing agencies, even though they have the funding and ability to have in-house teams.
Working with a marketing agency can offer opportunities to tackle specialized marketing tasks, like working with influencers or rebranding.
Nearly anyone that has any type of business or organization can benefit from working with a marketing agency.
This leaves the door wide open for exploring new opportunities and growth potential while discovering insights about your target audience or potentially untapped markets or niches that are worth exploring further.
Marketing agencies wear many hats, to be sure, and with so many different areas demanding their attention, it’s entirely possible that they use AI to help save time and streamline the process.
As a business, if you’re hiring a content marketing agency, you want to be sure it follows Google’s EEAT guidelines for Expertise, Experience, Authenticity and Trust.
Google prioritizes high-quality content. Google may penalize AI content that does not provide value (is poor quality) and attempts to artificially inflate your search engine ranking using tactics like keyword stuffing. To be fair, it’s also not likely that users will stick around to read a wall of AI-generated text, either.
That’s why, if you want to opt for quality, human-crafted content, it’s worth seeing what kind of content the marketing agency creates and checking their AI policies right from the start.
Looking to verify whether content published on your website is made with AI? With the Originality.ai Site Scanner, you can scan an entire website for AI content in 1 click.
By taking steps like these, you can not only choose the right kind of marketing agency for your needs, but you can also continue to publish authentic, quality content that meets your brand standards for quality and relevance.
