What Is a Marketing Agency?

According to Constant Contact, 73% of small businesses lack confidence in their current marketing strategy. 

Are you looking into options to help boost your marketing efforts or on the fence about whether to hire a marketing agency?

Learn what a marketing agency is, the different types you can choose from, their services, and the advantages of hiring one.

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

• A marketing agency provides marketing services to businesses to help them make the most out of their budget.
• A marketing agency isn’t necessarily the same as a marketing firm, though the terms are often interchangeable.
• There are multiple types of marketing agencies, such as traditional, digital, and hybrid. Some may be full-service, while others are more boutique.
  • Digital marketing agencies typically offer various online services, like SEO and email marketing.
  • Traditional agencies focus on offline channels, like print and TV.
• The benefits of hiring a marketing agency include getting expert advice, saving time, access to specialized marketing tools, and improving online visibility.

What Is a Marketing Agency?

A marketing agency is a service provider that enables businesses to optimize their marketing efforts without hiring an in-house team. 

Marketing agencies can vary in size, niche, and services but often share the same goal — to help businesses market their products and services better to attract more clients and increase revenue.

A marketing agency isn’t (necessarily) the same as a marketing firm

Though the terms marketing agency and marketing firm are often used interchangeably, they aren’t quite the same.

• A marketing agency offers various services to help you develop a more comprehensive marketing strategy. 
• A marketing firm, on the other hand, focuses on specific services.

For example, a digital marketing agency may employ a team of experts with different specializations who work independently yet together to optimize your content marketing strategy. You may have a public relations (PR) expert working alongside blogging and search engine optimization (SEO) professionals to help you achieve your goals.

A marketing firm also gives you access to a team of experts, but they all tend to specialize in the same marketing techniques. A PR firm, for example, may employ a team of PR professionals who work together to optimize your — you guessed it! — PR strategy.

What Are the Different Types of Marketing Agencies?

Although they offer more variety than firms, marketing agencies don’t always cover every marketing channel. You should, therefore, consider which channels are best for your business when shopping around for an agency.

Generally, the different types of marketing agencies fall into one of a few categories:

• Traditional: Looking to advertise on offline channels? Whether it's print, TV, or radio, traditional agencies have you covered.
• Digital: With Google alone receiving nearly 84.2 billion visits a month worldwide, digital agencies leverage SEO, social media, pay-per-click (PPC), email, and other online channels to help you reach that audience.
• Hybrid: Get the best of both worlds with hybrid marketing agencies. They use both online and offline methods to help you reach your goals.

Though most marketing agencies fall within these categories, there are still variations between them. Some are full-service agencies that provide turnkey marketing solutions, while others are boutique agencies offering more customized, niche-specific services.

What Services Do Marketing Agencies Provide?

A marketing agency’s services largely depend on the type of agency. For example, a digital marketing agency typically won’t offer print advertising services.

Let’s briefly explore the types of services you may expect from a traditional vs digital marketing agency. For an in-depth look, here’s more on what marketing agencies do.

Digital marketing agency services

When you hire a digital marketing agency, you may have access to a variety of online services, including:

• SEO: Using techniques to improve a company’s content and website rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Web design and development: Creating, optimizing, and managing business websites.
• Social media management: Creating posts, engaging with followers, and leveraging user-generated content (UGC).
• Content marketing: Performing keyword research, creating content, and tracking its performance.
• Email marketing: Writing newsletters and promos to be sent via email

If you want to advertise on online channels, there should be a digital marketing agency out there that has you covered.

Traditional marketing agency

Traditional marketing agencies, on the other hand, tend to focus on offline marketing channels, such as:

• Radio: Booking and creating radio ads, whether sponsorship ads, jingles, or testimonials.
• TV: Developing and executing TV commercials and guest appearances.
• Print: Including direct mail, newspaper ads, brochures, posters, and banners.
• Trade shows: Finding venues where companies can display and demonstrate their products and services in person.

Then, hybrid agencies offer a mix of online and offline services.

What Are the Advantages of Hiring a Marketing Agency?

There are over 433,000 advertising agencies worldwide. However, considering the advantages of hiring a marketing agency, it’s no wonder they’re so in demand.

With the right marketing agency by your side, your business can benefit in the following ways:

• Get expert, up-to-date advice: In the digital world, up-to-date advice is key to staying ahead.
  • An agency may suggest performing a site scan to identify content generated by artificial intelligence (AI), as AI content could result in Google penalties.
• Save time: With marketing tasks off your plate, you can use that extra time to focus on other business operations.
• Benefit from specialized marketing tools: A marketing agency often invests in advanced analysis software to help you track metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), giving you critical insights into campaign performance.
• Improve online visibility: With hundreds of billions of web pages in Google’s Search index, standing out online can be challenging.
  • A digital marketing agency can analyze your current strategy and make suggestions for improvement based on their knowledge and experience.

Overall, a marketing agency can provide the expert perspective and resources you need to gain a competitive edge.

Optimize Marketing Efforts With a Marketing Agency

So, what is a marketing agency? A marketing agency is a team of expert marketers who specialize in marketing from SEO to social media to email marketing and work to help you optimize your marketing strategy and increase revenue.

Whether it's their knowledge of current topics like AI content detection in marketing or their ability to take time-consuming tasks off your plate, companies of all shapes and sizes can benefit from partnering with a marketing agency.

If you think it would be a good fit for your company, then be sure to do your research. With so many different types, the ideal marketing agency is out there waiting for you!

Looking to learn more about marketing agencies? Check out our guide on B2B marketing agencies to find out if a B2B marketing agency is the right fit for your business.