Why is it that more and more middle-market companies are seeking integrated firms versus hiring multiple agencies? We call out 6, yes 6, leading factors.
Of course, size does matter when it comes to bringing on multiple agencies, but it’s good to acknowledge the vulnerabilities of having too many cooks in the kitchen.
Why Middle Market Loves Integrated
The internal marketing department of a middle market company loves the idea of having multiple agencies. It’s exciting having all of those experts – branding, paid, reputation, content, SEO, research, analytics – originating from different agencies with varying points of reference, philosophy, experience, expectation, budget and responsibility. The marketing head has the responsibility to manage both the internal team and leads at each agency, their time zones, budgets, proposals, egos, politics, disfunction and bias, all with the goal of pulling together a symbiotic, collaborative, efficient, best-in-class strategy that is then executed with precision by that same collection of agencies that are likely to see each more often in a competitive pitch than they would in those quarterly client planning meetings.
If your organization is north of $500 million in revenue and spending a minimum of 5% on marketing, then a marketing department can make the argument for multiple agencies because it’s likely the in-house team is large enough to manage all of the moving parts and put in place the necessary disciplines to ensure collaboration on a monthly, not quarterly, basis. Now, whether you have a single, integrated agency or multiple firms, there are best practices to serve middle market companies. Here’s our take on what our middle market clients would say works for them:
Holistic Approach
- Integrated agencies provide a comprehensive view of brand communication across advertising, PR, digital marketing and content creation minimally with a foundation of consistent messaging aligned by channel.
Efficiency and Cost-Effectiveness
- Whether it’s a single integrated agency or multiple partners, project management is paramount to streamline the ecosystem between client and agency. Trello or Asana should be part of the engagement.
Stronger Collaboration
- Integrated teams simply foster better collaboration among specialists in different areas because they work across the aisle from each other, report up to the same day-to-day lead and are ultimately accountable to two people – the team lead and the client lead. It’s synergy 24/7.
Data-Driven Strategies
- The integrated agency has everything on the line, so they need to ensure data analytics run across all marketing channels, each feeding one discipline and then the other to ensure no one discipline – paid social, reputation or content marketing is getting left behind.
Increased Focus on Digital
- The pure digital agency, no doubt, is well-versed in digital and a great choice for one’s digital needs. But the integrated agency with strong digital understands how to share the spend with traditional without bias, to give way to fees for more content marketing or reputation when domain authority is suffering.
Greater Innovation
- Integrated agencies are often at the forefront of industry trends and technologies because they have no silos. Every development opportunity that comes through is socialized across practice or cohort in real time because there is strength in cross-fertilizing something like AI Search across all disciplines, as one of many examples to come.
In the end, or maybe in the beginning of your search for an agency or agencies, get a good sense of your bandwidth, budget and charge. An integrated agency can be the foundation from which to scale.
