Shopping for a new marketing team? Doing your due diligence on how you'll delegate to your new marketing agency is as important as getting the right fit.
As a business owner, you're in the business of making money. You understand the sales process takes a lot of moving parts and usually a lot of people, from reception through customer service, sales, accounting, and more.
When you hired each person for their role in the company, you hired on the basis of their experience and strengths, knowing that this frees you up to focus on what you do best. This process is time- and cost-efficient and puts your assets in the right place for the best results.
It's no different when you hire a marketing team. Like your employees, your marketing team will strongly influence the way your business is perceived, which is crucial to every sale and to enjoying the benefits of repeat business.
And while hiring a marketing company is a considered decision, the hand-off to your new team of experts doesn't have to be daunting.
Here are 3 simple steps to help you prepare your marketing for the transition:
Step 1: List Your Marketing Projects
This is obvious if you're planning to hand these projects to an external marketing agency, but even if you're keeping some in-house, your new agency will want to be aware of them. It's important for the agency's creatives to understand the bigger picture around all your marketing initiatives, and combining your efforts with theirs ensures everything flows smoothly.
Step 2: Create Buyer Personas
You know your customers, but now your marketing team needs to know them too, since this is foundational for every campaign and initiative. The easiest way to transfer that knowledge is by creating buyer personas.
Developing buyer personas goes beyond the typical demographics of age, income, and education. You need to know your target market's biggest challenges and pain points, but you should also dig into areas like what kind of job they have, how they learn about their work, what industry they're in, who they report to, and how they use the internet to research products and services.
This is the most efficient way to transfer your company's customer knowledge and let the marketing team focus their efforts on the things most likely to influence your customers.
Step 3: Don't Set a Marketing Budget
Wait, what? That's right. While it may seem prudent to set an overall marketing budget, a fixed number isn't necessarily profitable. What you really want to focus on is the value your marketing creates, and you measure that with a few key numbers:
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): the revenue you earn for every dollar you spend. If a campaign returns $3 for every $1 invested, that's a 3:1 ROAS, and you should be just as happy with a $1,000 campaign that returns $3,000 as a $100,000 campaign that returns $300,000.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): what it costs, on average, to win a new customer, calculated as your marketing spend divided by the number of new customers it brings in.
- Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): how much a customer is worth over the entire relationship, not just their first purchase.
The real insight is in the relationship between the last two. If a new customer is worth $1,000 over their lifetime (LTV) and costs $200 to acquire (CAC), that's a healthy 5:1 ratio, and a single first sale of, say, $80 might look like a loss while actually being very profitable. Many businesses aim for an LTV-to-CAC ratio of at least 3:1. The lesson: judge your marketing against lifetime value, not just the first transaction.
In reality, you may have to "prime the pump" and focus on longer-term growth rather than immediate gains. Either way, thinking in terms of ROAS, CAC, and LTV helps you decide how much to invest each month, and it keeps an arbitrary budget cap from causing your marketing company to skip high-value opportunities. Set a number based on value, and you'll likely see far better returns.
After following these three practical steps, you'll be in great shape to delegate your marketing to an expert team. When you're ready to choose one, our companion guide covers the 7 things to look for when hiring a digital marketing agency. And if you'd like to find out how we can help, simply contact us today for a no-cost, no-pressure consultation.
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