If you’re part of the whopping 92% of brands that use at least one marketing agency, then you already understand the value of having an agency partner. But if you’re part of the other 8%, then this blog is for you!
Simply put, having a digital advertising agency on your side means you can breathe easily the next time TikTok goes down or when you're investigating why your traffic in GA4 is lower than expected. With professionals who have experience across various platforms and industries, you can focus on the big picture and elevate your marketing strategy.
If it’s your first time prioritizing your budget for a digital marketing campaign, you might be wondering whether to hire an agency or take the project in-house. It’s been our clients’ experience that working with an agency that has a deep understanding of social media marketing and digital ad platforms created efficiencies. We know what works well and what’s not worth your time.
Need more convincing? Let’s explore five reasons why working with an agency can help boost your campaign!
1. Decrease Your Junk Traffic
We know exactly which settings will drive your campaign toward qualified leads, and which will result in junk traffic.
What many ad platforms won’t tell you is that when you give it control over where your ad is shown, it optimizes for the lowest cost to achieve results like clicks or likes on your ads.
The most common example of this is the "audience network,” a placement on some social platforms where ads are shown across a wide variety of sites and apps. While it may look like the cheapest option and your KPIs might look great, you might notice inflated bounce rates on your website. More importantly, you won’t be seeing the conversions and results you’re aiming for.
Have you ever accidentally clicked on an ad while playing a game like Candy Crush? I sure have! That’s the audience network placement at work, and it’s why you’re likely seeing those high bounce rates and low conversions.
The best way to ensure your ads don’t fall into the audience network black hole is to use the placements across the actual platforms. Users are most engaged as they are scrolling on social media, so making sure your ads are meeting them there is key!
2. Spend Your Money Most Efficiently
We know how to best optimize your ad spending to make sure your money is working for you.
Running a paid media campaign can feel overwhelming due to the multitude of settings and options. Understanding when to pull which levers to meet your campaign goals is critical to your success. Campaign setup isn’t “one size fits all.” We can advise you on a plan and campaign setup that considers factors like:
- Seasonality: For instance, if you're an HVAC company advertising refrigerants, investing heavily in the winter might not yield the best results. We can collaborate on the right time to allocate budget based on your industry’s seasonal trends.
- Bidding: As digital ad experts, we know when you’re overpaying to reach or engage your audience. By manually adjusting settings throughout your campaign, we ensure you’re spending as little as possible for the best reach and clicks.
- Location Targeting: We’ve worked on campaigns spanning across locations like the Lehigh Valley, the United States, Europe, and beyond! We know how to allocate your budget to effectively reach your targeted geographical locations.
- Demographic and Psychographic Targeting: We work closely with the targeting capabilities across all your favorite social media channels, so we know how to translate your target audience to these channels through inclusions and exclusions. For instance, when running LinkedIn campaigns in the B2B space, we’re constantly looking at audience demographics to ensure we’re reaching the right people and adjusting as we go so, you’re not paying for impressions or clicks that aren’t relevant.
- Scalability: Because we treat your ad spend like our own, you'll often hear us recommend we start small and scale once we see performance. We can help you plan for minimum viable budgets as well as how to increase those over time once you're seeing success.
- Testing: We can help you craft and set up testing plans so that you can confidently test certain headlines, images, ad types, and more against each other and know what's winning out.
3. Stay Ahead of the Curve
We stay on top of digital advertising trends and can adapt quickly, advising you on new placements, ad types, sizes, and more.
When Instagram changes its default aspect ratio from 1:1 to 4:5, or LinkedIn introduces CTV placements, we’re the first to let you know. Not only will you hear it from us, but we’ll provide recommendations and be able to take advantage of anything new quickly.
Our team is constantly watching, reading, and listening to find the most recent updates so you don’t have to. This means that before your competitors can take advantage of the latest ad types and channels, we’ve already researched and recommended how your organization can use them.
4. Ignore Ad Settings in Setup That Will Waste Your Time
As digital ad platforms evolve, so do their capabilities. AI is everywhere — including within the setup of your campaigns. Determining which AI-driven settings are useful and which are not can be tricky. As experts working within these platforms daily, we streamline the ad setup process and focus on the options that truly matter.
You might be thinking, should I let Meta write my ad copy? The short answer, in our opinion, is no!
At Liquid, we’ve been embracing AI to help support our work, not do it for us. That being said, AI often lacks the context of your visual branding and messaging, making it an unreliable source for design or copywriting.
On platforms like Meta, some AI settings might even mean the creative you worked hard on looks completely different than what was originally built. Settings like adding music, manipulation of your graphics, adding extra links you haven’t added UTM parameters to, and more can make the ad experience for your target audience confusing and misleading!
5. Instantly Gain Diverse Experience
We have our finger on the pulse of what’s working for clients across various industries. We understand not only your business but also a wide range of other industries. This diversity means that when you ask if your campaign’s performance is “average,” we can provide a more informed answer. With our knowledge from across campaigns, we can benchmark performance, identify trends, and recommend the best approach.
Just some of the industries we have experience in are higher education, HVAC, telecommunications, sports medicine, healthcare, and CPG! From B2B to B2C, we can back up our recommendations. Whether it’s a campaign promoting your brand-new software, a brand or product acquisition, enrollment for the upcoming semester or an important seasonal time for your candy brand, there’s a good chance we’ve done it before.
Plus, when you hire an agency, you’re not just hiring one employee, but a team of experts across marketing, technology, and creative. So not only do we bring diverse experience but diverse skills and backgrounds as well!
Give Your Next Campaign the Boost It Needs
Working with a digital agency is about more than just handing over your ad account. It’s about ensuring that every dollar is spent wisely, that your campaigns are aligned with the latest trends, and that you have the expertise needed to scale effectively. If you’re ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level, an experienced agency partner can help guide the way. If you're a motivated brand looking for smart, helpful, and honest stuff that's crafted with care and makes people move: try us on for size.