You have a dentist for teeth. A doctor for what ails you. And a vet for furry friends. Different specialists to cover different needs. So, wouldn’t breaking up tasks amongst several specialists make just as much sense for your marketing? Surprisingly, no.

Over nearly five decades at MDR, we’ve seen time and time again that more vendors doesn’t equal more value. To help you get a sense of how to approach your marketing partnership the right way, let’s dive into a few reasons why divvying tasks up to different vendors often goes wrong.

They Have No Incentive to Collaborate or Share Data

Competition is a great thing when it propels your business. But it can also stop progress in its tracks. When you hire several smaller agencies or specialists, they’re going to be competing against each other for a bigger contract or larger share of your budget. Essentially, they have no incentive to cooperate with one another or share marketing data. And where does that leave you? Missing out on insights that could help grow your business.

Example: Your paid search team identifies a group of low-cost, high-converting keywords to get better leads. Because you hired a separate company for organic SEO, the PPC team doesn’t share this info with the SEO team. The result? No blog articles are created on this topic, and you miss out on that additional traffic.

You’ll Spend Less Time Running Your Business and More Time Managing Your Team

No one starts a business with a dream of managing marketers all day. You’d rather be doing the work that brings in your bread and butter, with the focus on your next move. Unfortunately, with a team of disparate specialists instead of one full-service agency, you’ll be spending a huge chunk of your day in meetings as you respond to requests from your contractors. And instead of having a single partner to bring the marketing puzzle together, you’ll be in charge of making sure all the pieces fit. It’s a full-time job on top of a full-time job.

You Won’t Have a Strategy

You can’t have a unified strategy for growing your brand without a unified team. If you hire a bunch of specialists, it’s a lot harder to get everyone on the same page. Your web guy could have a vision for your website that conflicts with the vision your SEO person has and vice versa. This could lead to conflicts between teams, and in the end, it’s your business that suffers.

Example: Today, you might hear from your social expert why YouTube is the best place to invest your marketing dollars. Tomorrow, your SEO expert will tell you they need more budget to expand the number of pages on your site and add better content. But neither idea is a complete approach—it’s only one piece of the pie. With a single marketing partner, you go from one-off schemes to a coherent, long-term strategy.

Your Marketing Costs Will Soar

If you hire contractors to handle your marketing, expect your costs to balloon. Your web specialist may want $20,000 for your website, while your SEO person may expect a retainer of $2,000 a month. Meanwhile, your PPC contact has a monthly fee, too. You won’t be saving money by going this route. In fact, you’ll be paying more and getting far less for your dollars since you’ll be missing out on the single biggest value powerhouse every marketer needs: a cohesive strategy.

There’s a better way. Go with a full-service marketing agency.

So why should you hire a full-service marketing agency?

Now that we’ve gone through the bad, let’s dive into the good. Hiring a full-service marketing agency has massive benefits that offset costs. Here’s a taste of what you can expect from a trusted partnership with a full-service marketing agency.

Better Collaboration Between Teams

Regardless of the type of marketing help you need, full-service marketing agencies are first and foremost problem solvers. These agencies have the benefit of bringing together a task force of specialists to provide solutions to the most important marketing problem: yours.

Full-service marketing agencies typically consist of teams that handle web, social, video, print, billboards, TV and radio spots—the works! Each person in the agency is intimately familiar with each other’s work, and if they need to talk to other departments, they’re just down the hall or a quick message away. This fosters a more consistent message for your brand.

Your Data Will Tell the Full Picture

Your analytics are only as strong as the person interpreting them—and the strategy they’re able to influence. By having one company handle all your marketing, you’ll be assured that your analytics tell the big picture and help drive smarter decisions. You’ll know the outcome of every campaign while staying on top of your web, social, SEO and PPC numbers in a way that’s just not possible with independent contractors. This allows you to leverage analytics knowledge to actually help your business grow.

You’ll Negotiate One Contract That Fits Your Budget

A universal truth: nobody likes surprises when it comes to budgets. And that’s exactly what you get when working with separate vendors—different payment structures, different bill rates, different expectations that all pull on your marketing purse strings. When you hire a full-service agency, you’ll negotiate a contract at a price that fits your budget. From there, the math is simple. You pay less money overall, and you pay less in time costs because the partnership is just plain easier to manage.

You’ll Benefit from Continuity and Reliability

You know the saying, “When it rains, it pours”? We think it must have been inspired by marketing life. From the client side, it’s often when you need a vendor the most that things can go wrong. Independent contractors are businesses like yours, and they’re also more likely to move on abruptly if it serves them, not you.

On the contrary, when you hire a full-service marketing agency, you’re dealing with a professional organization that’s more stable, more reliable and has built its reputation on acting in the client’s best interest.

It’s time to make the switch.

Committing to a new way of working can be a little scary. Not sure if you’re ready to take the plunge? Our quick checklist was designed to help you identify the ways a full-service marketing agency can help you right now.

“As someone responsible for marketing performance, I want:”

• A comprehensive marketing strategy instead of one-off ideas.
• A complete, dependable partner who proactively works toward my marketing goals.
• A quick way to access a range of specialists who collaborate to make killer work.
• A more balanced workday so I can focus on decisions that will drive my business.
• A more predictable marketing cost every month.

Reach out today, and start a conversation about how you can simplify and improve your marketing strategy.