Regardless of what industry your business is in, you probably already understand that advertising and marketing are crucial aspects of the growth and success of your company. Dealerships are no different. Without advertising and marketing, many prospective consumers might not even know about you.
Though advertising agencies are not always the method that businesses go with, solely due to the cost, they can be a valuable investment for dealerships. Many dealership owners hesitate to make the plunge due to the various unknown factors, such as ‘how can they help you?’. ‘do you know where to actually start?’, or the most common, ‘what if they are not creative?’. The best advertising agencies work as a facilitator for your brands with a common goal of helping your business.
Who Are Advertising Agencies?
Before we can get into why they are worthwhile, it’s important to go through who they actually are. Advertising agencies are created to render campaigns which are well-thought, cohesive, and exhilarating to help you reach your potential consumers. You can imagine them as a sort of tailor, who draw up creations and then handcraft them for their clients.
They are the forces behind the campaigns who do all the efforts to sell their clients products and/or services. These group of experts works together with one common goal to get you your advertising while making it as easy as possible for their clients.
Full serve advertising agencies put all their energy in building a brand and creating demand for the products and/or services offered by their client. They do all this with unique marketing strategies and creative art to make the end result exciting.
Some goals include:
- Perform in-depth research about the clients products and/or service along with reaction from their customers.
- Plan for promotions to be done via social media.
- Create advertisements based on the information they collect.
Why Should Your Dealership Invest In Advertising Agencies?
All businesses have the capability of advertising, printing, and promoting their own products and/or services to any and all platforms. But, advertising agencies just make it that little bit easier for dealerships to focus on their operations rather than worrying about advertising and marketing. Here are a few of the major reasons why you should invest in them.
- Cost Effective: If the agency compiles digital media advertising solutions in addition to their regular offerings, then it becomes cost-effective for businesses. This way, they are able to ensure a holistic advertising and marketing solution. You’ll also then gain access to top-level industry experts. They are also there whenever you need them to create or adjust anything.
- Unique and Fresh Perspective: Knowing everything about your company is a great thing, but it’s not enough to get your business to grow. It’s actually easier to miss out on opportunities if you’re in charge of managing your dealership and creating marketing strategies. With the help of advertising agencies, you are able to fully focus on everyday operations and employee relations, rather than having to worry about creating and implementing marketing solutions.
- Value of Time: It’s more time efficient to hire advertising agencies as that leaves you free to other tasks. You’ll also be able to approve (or deny) any of their ideas. It also allows you to be ensured that everything is being done by experts who know a lot about marketing and advertising.
- In-House Expertise: Advertising agencies generally have individuals who specialize in different advertising and marketing techniques and mediums who are dedicated to their careers. This allows them to know how to tackle different types of campaigns and clients.
- Creative Art: It’s not easy to develop a brand, which is where many businesses and dealerships struggle. Advertising agencies have expertise in creating campaigns and advertisements, which helps them create brand awareness while they develop brand names, brand identity, logos, or even rebranding strategies. These agencies also offer their client a real-time analysis of their target audience and market. They also help with social media advertisement campaigns.
- New Set of Connections: Advertising agencies allow your dealership to gain access to a new set of connections, that have worked with them before. It always you to see different strategies to explore in the industry.
- Core Competence: Advertising agencies are packed team of professional experts, who know what they are doing. By trusting in them and their experience, you can concentrate on your own operations.
- Financial Management: Every dealership has their own idea and technique of financial management. However, these agencies work slightly differently to allow something for all sorts of businesses with different financial limitations.
It’s not to say that advertising agencies don’t have any cons. They actually have three main downsides, which include:
- Finding the RIGHT Agency: One of the biggest things to pay attention to is to look for a marketing agency. The agency and your company need to connect and work well together in order to create a synergistic relationship. The goals of your dealership and that of the agency needs to be aligned for them to be able to achieve the results that you want. There needs to be transparency and control in the relationship.
- Lack of Industry Knowledge: As stated before, agencies are full of marketing experts. They know all the ins and out of digital platforms. Some of them might not fully understand the automotive industry or the competitive environment that your dealership is in. This might be a potential drawback, so you should remember to look at their portfolios before hiring them.
- Business Orientation Period: The last, and possibly, one of the biggest, is that when you bring on an agency, you go through an orientation phase. During this time, the agency is still getting familiar with your dealership and everything surrounding it. Though the phase might be short, if you bring a new agency on at a wrong time, then your digital traffic might take a hit from it.
Even with those cons, advertising agencies are still a great investment. The main reason for this includes:
- Collaborative Flow: One of the biggest parts of making clients happy is to ensure that every aspect of their campaign is executed exactly how the client expects it to. At agencies, experts are dedicated to specific fields to ensure the best service and campaign possible.
- Success Driven and Goal Oriented: Agencies don’t succeed unless you do as well. This can be a great motivation factor for both your dealership and the agency you choose. Though agencies won’t have the same attachment as you, they will be able to offer the best solutions from a third party point of view.
- Digital Experts: When you hire an advertising agency, you’ll get a team that is well-versed in everything marketing. Experts keeping your brand identity strong will do all tasks such as social media marketing and paid search advertising.
Hiring an advertising agency is not for everyone. However, those you can afford to invest in an agency should do so. You’ll be able to achieve more by hiring an outside agency, as it’ll afford you the time to take care of normal everyday operations and more.
References:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pros-cons-advertising-marketing-agencies-ashish-kumar
https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-a-full-service-advertising-agency-4043811
