Why Hire an Ecommerce Customer Acquisition Agency (Instead of a Full-Time Employee)

Loyal, repeat customers are the backbone of your ecommerce business, but customer retention alone won’t drive growth. When sales start to flatten, you need to bring new customers through the door.

Most ecommerce founders handle marketing themselves until they hit a breaking point. If you’re out of time for marketing, your efforts aren’t working, or you’re ready to scale customer acquisition, it’s time to bring in outside help.

Should you hire a full-time employee, work with contractors, or partner with an ecommerce customer acquisition agency?

Here’s how to decide.

Signs It’s Time to Hire Outside Marketing Help

For most startups, hiring outside marketing experts isn’t an option. Too many decision makers do it on their own until it’s no longer sustainable. It’s when those businesses start bringing in $500,000 to $1 million in annual revenue that running customer acquisition campaigns requires outside help.

If you’re still not sure if you’re ready for outside marketers, here are the red flags that signal it’s time:

• Your current team is struggling to juggle all the marketing initiatives you want to implement: You have great ideas and customer acquisition strategies, but limited time means those initiatives are ending up half-baked or aren’t happening at all.
• Your company is profitable, but sales are flat: You want to grow your customer base and increase revenue, but sales aren’t increasing. You can’t take your business to the next level, and you’re not sure why.
• Your customer acquisition efforts aren’t bringing new customers to the business: You’re running paid search ads, but after a 90-day investment, you’re not finding enough qualified leads to justify the costs.
• Retention marketing is working, but you’re not capturing potential customers: Your loyal customers continue to make purchases because your SMS and email marketing are driving repeat sales, but the conversion rate is nil because you’re struggling to capture and nurture leads. Your retargeting campaigns aren’t converting, either.
• You can comfortably justify the cost to hire marketing help: This might be because you lack time, you’re out of content ideas, your marketing strategy isn’t getting results, or you are generating revenue and have the budget to expand.
• You’re heavily reliant on Amazon or similar online marketplaces: You’re nervous about the long-term implications of what a change in the marketplace could mean for your business and sales process.

If that last point about Amazon resonates, you’re not alone. The Amazon uncertainty is a serious pain point for many ecommerce businesses whose DTC site doesn’t drive enough traffic to create sustainable growth.

The Amazon Threat

Amazon and similar marketplaces can be valuable for small businesses trying to reach their target audience. But ecommerce companies that depend on them face a real risk, which is that platform changes could devastate their sales overnight.

When you work with Amazon and similar online marketplaces, you’re not in a legal partnership that protects your business. Many ecommerce brands like yours may be feeling nervous about:

• Margins getting squeezed: From management fees to shipping fees, increased Amazon costs are bringing your margins down.
• Amazon producing their own version of your product: Amazon knows your product and has your sales data, so it’s not uncommon for Amazon to steal your sales and hijack potential new customers by releasing an “Amazon Basics” version of your product at a lower price.
• Cheaper competitors emerging: Like Amazon itself, other marketplace competitors can develop their own version of your product, market it better (or differently), and steal your sales.

When Does it Make Sense to Hire a Full-Time Marketing Employee or Contractors?

For some ecommerce businesses, the red flags above indicate it’s time to hire a full-time marketing employee or contractor(s) to create new marketing campaigns or marketing strategies.

But that’s not necessarily the right strategy for every business.

Read Also: Case Study: How We Helped One Ecommerce Client Grow Revenue by 431.9%

It makes sense to hire a full-time marketer or freelance marketing contractor(s) if:

• You have the budget to hire a full-time employee or multiple contractors.
• You have the software capabilities to obtain data-driven insights that will fuel your marketing efforts.
• You have deep marketing expertise and can lead the strategy or implementation of a team of contractors yourself.

For example, you could hire contractors with expertise in paid advertising, creating landing pages to target your ideal customers, or strengthening the customer journey at different touchpoints in the sales funnel.

You could even hire a content marketing contractor who excels at email campaigns or offers fresh and interesting strategies to get you in front of the right audiences.

Check out our Customer Growth Sessions podcast with Davina Kaohani from Element Apothetic for expert insights into how you can get more done without spending a ton of money.[/su_note]

Downsides to Hiring a Full-Time Marketer

The biggest downside of hiring a full-time marketer is that they’re only one person.

Here are the pros and cons of bringing different types of marketing professionals onto your team.

The Pitfalls of Hiring a Marketer in a Senior Role

If you hire a senior marketer who is in a head, VP, or chief marketing officer (CMO) role, they can probably offer high-level strategies — but their personal expertise may be limited to one or two areas of marketing.

They may know how to create performance marketing strategies, oversee a team of writers, or align your ad campaign spend with your customer acquisition costs. Unfortunately, they will still need a team of specialists to bring those ideas to fruition.

A CMO isn’t going to write blog articles or tweak your Google Ads campaigns as you scale. They’ll expect that you have the budget to hire a team of writers, editors, and other content marketers to carry out the strategy.

You’ll Need More Resources If You Hire an Entry or Mid-Level Marketer

If you hire a less-experienced marketer for a full-time role, they may be enthusiastic to learn the job but still lack the experience to drive results.

Entry and mid-level marketers often know how to run pay-per-click (PPC), social media marketing, or influencer marketing campaigns. That doesn’t mean they’re experienced in market research or understand how to create paid media ads that boost lead generation.

And while they might seem like the most cost-effective option, you’ll need to pull more resources to cover the ongoing training and oversight they require. That means it will still be on you to define the overall marketing strategy and choose which initiatives they should focus on.

A Full-Time Employee Won’t Devote 160 Hours a Month to Marketing

An employee working 40 hours per week will devote more time to your brand and messaging than the digital marketing agency you hire.

But the reality is that those 40 hours won’t only be spent on marketing. They have meetings to attend, emails to reply to, and vacation hours they’ll use.

They’re likely to spend only 25 hours per week on actual marketing, rather than the 40 hours you hired them for. Consider the time and cost it takes to get a new full-timer set up:

• Managing healthcare and other benefits
• Arranging state-specific unemployment insurance (if you hire a remote employee)
• Providing on-the-job training
• Conducting regular performance reviews
• Paying for the employee to attend conferences

Hiring a dedicated marketing employee can benefit your company. But given the potential return on investment, it makes more sense to work with a customer acquisition agency instead.

When Should You Hire a Customer Acquisition Marketing Agency?

Hiring a customer acquisition marketing agency won’t be the right choice for every business, but it’s a logical and cost-effective option for many ecommerce companies.

The right time to hire an ecommerce customer acquisition agency is when you:

• Have a senior employee to oversee agency relationships.
• Need specialized expertise in strategy creation and implementation.
• Don’t have the time or energy to deal with new hires.

Let’s break down when agencies make the most sense.

You Have a Senior Employee to Oversee Agency Relationships

Marketing agencies provide incredible value to businesses looking to scale and reach the next level. A full-time senior marketer on your payroll can oversee agency relationships and employ a team of experts to handle everything from search engine optimization to customer retention strategies.

You Need Subject Matter Experts to Oversee Every Part of the Client Acquisition Process

Working with an agency like Intergrowth® gives you access to a team of customer acquisition experts with diverse expertise.

Intergrowth® clients benefit from a dedicated team of eight to 12 specialists working for their brand every day. On every client account, we assign a dedicated:

• Marketing strategist who uses advanced analytics to study your metrics and understand what types of content are performing best.
• Content writing team that focuses on high-quality content creation intended to drive growth.
• Content editor to ensure that all content is error-free, search optimized, and ready for publishing.
• Content publisher to make your content visible and accessible on your website.
• Technical SEO specialist to manage on-page search engine optimization.
• Outreach specialist for link building.
• Meta Ads expert to strategize social ads.
• Project manager to oversee all aspects of your digital marketing strategy.

You Don’t Want to Deal with New Hires

Hiring a digital marketing agency saves you from the entire hiring process. No interviewing candidates, no vetting resumes, no onboarding, no training, and no ongoing management or performance reviews.

You also won’t need high-level marketing experts to oversee them, processes to maintain marketing quality, or the HR headaches that come with managing additional employees.

If you want to focus on running your business instead of managing marketers, hiring a customer acquisition agency eliminates the overhead.

Ready to partner with an ecommerce customer acquisition agency to take your business to the next level?

Intergrowth® helps B2C businesses that see their brand as an asset get more customers through SEO, content marketing, and Meta Ads.

Contact Intergrowth® now to learn more about our team, our services, and how we can help your business scale.

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