How to Provide Your Clients With A to Z Digital Media Capabilities

Marketing agencies looking to build in-house digital media capabilities face a nationwide shortage of technical experts and steep investments in software and technology. Today, agencies realize it’s more efficient, less expensive and strategically smarter to “buy” the capabilities from established digital media firms.

If you’ve ever built a custom home, you know it’s most efficient to hire a general contractor to manage your project. But the contractor, of course, needs a large team of specialists to do the job: architects, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, cabinet makers and others.

Even if you had the financial resources to create your own general contractor capabilities and find and hire every specialist you could, it would take months, if not years, to scale and fine-tune the business to deliver consistent results.

Yet that’s what many marketing agencies attempted to do a decade ago when their B2B or B2C clients wanted to add digital media to their traditional marketing mixes. Companies were experimenting with a broad range of advertising, including:

• Programmatic and native
• Banner
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Connected TV
• Digital radio
• Podcasts

Eager to monetize digital advertising services, agencies began recruiting and hiring specialists to scale their digital media capabilities quickly. Strategists, analysts, media buyers and others were added to payrolls, and steep investments in software and technology went into capital budgets. Some agencies chose to work with multiple external vendors, each offering a single service, such as paid search, social media, and video production. Managing multiple vendors makes it challenging to communicate across numerous silos and integrate the services over time.

Most Everything Was Working Until COVID Struck

When Covid hit hard in 2020, it wasn’t long before agency clients began experiencing the effects of the pandemic in the form of shrinking revenue and profits. The trickle-down implications for agencies were immediate. As billings shrank, agencies scrambled to cut costs by laying off some of those newly-hired digital experts and curbing technology investments.

At the same time, employees fed up with the stress of working from home while balancing work and family began leaving jobs in such vast numbers it became known as the Great Resignation or the Big Quit. In a 2021 survey of over 25,000 marketing professionals, 75% agreed that massive marketing resignations were coming, said Forbes. Moreover, 48% of respondents shared they were personally planning on leaving their jobs.

These Covid-triggered shifts have transformed the staffing models marketing agencies have operated by for years.

Prioritizing Digital Marketing Strategies

For 2022 and beyond, agencies and companies are prioritizing digital marketing strategies. But the challenge has become how can you attract the top digital media talent you need to deliver a strong ROI consistently?

Further, with continued shortages of digital media professionals and the increasing importance of data and technology, more and more of our agency partners are turning to companies like Digital Mouth to meet their requirements for turnkey digital media/advertising and data-related services. According to Campaign US, “Agencies are increasingly looking for seasoned talent in niche roles that are difficult to fill, such as programmatic, data or analytics.”

Digital Mouth, however, employs specialized knowledge workers such as data scientists, analysts, platform experts and partner managers to provide you with a tailored blend of services prioritized for your agency and clients.

Should You Build or Buy?

There was a time when agencies felt the right approach to providing digital media services was to build in-house capabilities. But several factors have recently conspired to alter that calculus. Today it’s more efficient, less expensive and strategically smarter to “buy” what you need instead of creating the capability in-house.

Because of the increasing complexity in digital media, data science and analysis, it’s also wiser to find a firm that can provide you with complementary services under one roof.

Moreover, like the custom home general contractor comparison, it’s more efficient and effective to work with a single point of contact as an ongoing partner instead of six to seven independent vendors.

To help you find a firm that would be the ideal strategic fit for your needs, first list and prioritize the talent you need most:

Secondly, list the technology platforms, software or other tools you would want to manage campaigns or individual programs.

From there, start the conversation. Our team is willing to discuss your agency’s needs for these digital marketing disciplines and technologies. You can contact us or simply schedule a meeting.

We look forward to hearing from you and exploring new opportunities.