What a Marketing Agency Actually Does — And What You Can Automate Yourself

Key takeaways

• Understand the key roles and tasks that marketing agencies handle.
• Compare agency costs to automated solutions for small businesses.
• Learn which marketing tasks can be automated effectively without an agency.
• See a cost-effective strategy for automating ad campaigns with specific tools and settings.

What roles do marketing agencies fill for businesses?

Understanding the roles within a marketing agency can clarify how they bring value to businesses. In my experience, most agencies have a typical structure comprising three core teams:

• Strategists: These are the brains behind the campaigns, responsible for overall strategy and planning. They're the ones who develop targeted campaign plans based on your business goals.
• Creatives: They include designers and copywriters who craft the visual and narrative elements of your campaigns. Their work covers everything from ad graphics to catchy headlines.
• Analysts: Analysts dissect the data coming in from campaigns. They focus on ROI, conversion rates, and audience engagement metrics to optimize future efforts.

When it comes to key tasks, agencies handle crucial components like campaign strategy, media buying, and creatives. Here's what each entails:

1. Campaign Strategy: Establishing who your audience is and how to best engage them through tailored messaging.
2. Media Buying: Negotiating and purchasing advertising space on platforms like Google and Facebook, ensuring you get the most out of your ad spend.
3. Creatives: Designing eye-catching visuals and compelling copy that resonate with your target audience, maximizing engagement and conversion potential.

Agencies bring value beyond mere execution through insights and staying abreast of industry trends. They often have access to benchmarking data you might not, which helps in predicting market shifts. This industry knowledge is something that often lacks when you're running the show solo.

If you're weighing the cost-effectiveness of agencies compared to other options, have a look at The True Cost of Hiring a Marketer vs Doing Marketing Yourself, which breaks down when agencies might be worth the investment.

How much do marketing agencies cost compared to automation?

When you're running a small business, the costs of hiring a marketing agency can add up quickly. On average, marketing agencies charge anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 per month for their services, depending on various factors such as the scope of work and business size. Let's break those numbers down.

Agencies typically operate under two main pricing models:

• Retainers: A fixed monthly fee that covers a range of services. The typical retainer starts at around $3,000 per month for small businesses. This might include ongoing services like social media management, SEO, and content creation.
• Project-based pricing: Here, costs vary depending on the specific project—a one-time campaign or a website redesign might run from $5,000 to $20,000 or more, based on complexity and deliverables.

With automated marketing solutions, the costs are generally much less prohibitive, especially for small businesses. For instance, software options might charge $50 to $500 per month depending on the features and the scale of your campaigns.

The essential benefit of automation is getting access to tools that streamline processes—like email marketing, customer segmentation, and reporting—without the overhead of full-time marketers or expensive agency fees. To illustrate, if you're spending $200 per month on a tool that automates your ads across Google, Meta, and LinkedIn, you're potentially saving thousands compared to agency prices.

Insight: Automation can significantly reduce costs while maintaining campaign effectiveness, but it's crucial to ensure your team understands how to leverage these tools effectively to avoid wasted spend.

For more detailed insights on choosing between hiring an agency or using software, you might want to check out my thoughts on When to Hire an Agency vs Use Marketing Software for Your Small Business.

What marketing tasks can small businesses automate on their own?

Many small business owners underestimate just how much of their marketing can be automated. Automation isn't just about saving time; it’s about ensuring consistency and allowing you to scale your efforts efficiently. The key is knowing which tasks are ripe for automation and which might still need a human touch.

Here are some common marketing tasks you can automate:

• Social Media Scheduling: Tools like Buffer or Hootsuite allow you to plan and schedule your posts weeks in advance. This ensures your social media presence is continuous and saves you from daily manual posting.
• Ad Placement: Platforms like Google and Meta have come a long way in automating ad placements. Services such as Flowou can help optimize your campaigns without needing detailed manual input on every bid or placement choice.
• Email Marketing: Use services like Mailchimp or Sendinblue to automate your email sequences, nurture leads, and ensure that new customers receive the right information at the right time.
• Lead Scoring: Tools like HubSpot can automatically assign scores to leads based on their behavior, helping you prioritize your sales approach.

Each of these tasks can be handled by software with varying degrees of success, but let's face it, software isn’t a panacea.

Pros of DIY Automation:

• Cost-Effective: Monthly subscriptions to automation tools usually cost far less than professional management per hour.
• Speed and Flexibility: You can act quickly on changes without having to go through an intermediary.
• Consistent Output: Automation ensures that your marketing efforts remain steady without falling through the cracks.

Cons of DIY Automation:

• Learning Curve: Initial setup can be complex and time-consuming.
• Lack of Personalization: Automated responses can sometimes lack the human touch that might be needed in certain scenarios.

Ultimately, for small businesses, it's about finding the right balance. If you’re pondering whether to handle tasks yourself or call in the pros, the true cost of hiring versus doing it yourself might be a guiding factor.

How do you automate a Google Ads campaign yourself?

Automating a Google Ads campaign can save you time and help optimize your ad performance — and it’s easier than you might think. Here's how to get started:

Step-by-Step Guide: Setting up a Campaign

1. Access Google Ads Account: Sign in to your Google Ads account. If you don’t have one, you’ll need to create it.
2. Create a New Campaign: Click on the + New Campaign button. Decide on your campaign objective — typically "Sales" or "Leads" for small businesses.
3. Choose Campaign Type: Opt for "Search Network" to capture users actively looking for your services or products.
4. Set Campaign Details:

- Location: Target specific regions. - Language: Choose languages relevant to your audience. - Budget: Allocate a daily budget. For a small business, start with $20/day.

1. Bidding: Choose a bidding strategy. I recommend starting with Maximize Conversions for smart bidding, letting Google optimize for the best results.
2. Create Ad Groups: Under each campaign, set up themed ad groups focusing on specific products or services.
3. Design Responsive Search Ads: As Google encourages automation, use Responsive Search Ads:

- Enter up to 15 headlines (up to 30 characters each). - Add 4 descriptions (up to 90 characters each). - Google will mix and match to find the best performers.

1. AddKeywords: Carefully research and add keywords using Google’s Keyword Planner to ensure relevance.

Manually Optimized Campaign Example

Say you own a pet grooming service in Boston. Your starting headlines might include:

• "Affordable Pet Grooming Near You"
• "Boston's Best Pet Spa Services"

Budget setup:

• Daily Budget: $20
• Maximize Conversions: Automated bidding for efficient spending.

Responsive Ads and Smart Bidding reduce manual work while increasing campaign effectiveness. If managing everything solo is taxing, check out When to Hire an Agency vs Use Marketing Software for Your Small Business for other options.

What about Meta and LinkedIn Ad campaigns without an agency?

Running Meta and LinkedIn ad campaigns can seem like a mammoth task if you're not familiar with the platforms, but both have developed features that allow for significant automation, making them far more approachable for small business owners.

Meta Ads offers Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) and Advantage+ as powerful tools for automating your ad spend and ensuring your campaign goals are met efficiently. With CBO, your budget is automatically allocated across ad sets to get the best results. The key here is to set a daily budget that aligns with your overall campaign goals. For example:

• Daily Budget: $50
• Objective: Lead generation
• Key Metric: Cost per lead (target $5 or less)

Advantage+ goes a step further by automating asset customization across placements and leveraging machine learning to identify the best performing ads and audiences. It’s hands-off — once you set your objectives and budget, Meta’s AI optimizes the ad delivery.

LinkedIn Campaign Manager has its own set of automated tools for targeting and placement. With LinkedIn's Matched Audiences, you can upload your customer data to hit the right people at the right time. For example:

• Budget: $300 monthly
• Audience: 500-1000 members of target industries
• Ad Type: Sponsored Content

The Automated Bidding feature does the heavy lifting to ensure you’re competitive in the bid landscape without needing constant adjustments.

When comparing these platforms, keep in mind your audience and budget. Meta might suit brands aiming for wide reach, given its user base, while LinkedIn is better for B2B niches. Curious about the real costs of hiring an agency versus managing ads yourself? Check out When to Hire an Agency vs Use Marketing Software for Your Small Business for a detailed look.

Is it better to use a software tool than do everything manually?

When it comes to ad campaigns, the sheer volume of details is daunting — creating ad sets, split testing, setting budgets, monitoring performance, and optimizing for results. Manual handling of these tasks is possible, but it often results in overwhelm or oversight, especially if marketing isn’t your primary job. Here’s where marketing automation software, like Flowou, shines.

Manual Work:

• Time-Intensive: Crafting multiple ad variations for A/B testing can take hours. Manually monitoring campaigns and making optimizations adds to the workload.
• Human Error: Forgetting to pause underperforming ads or set correct audience criteria impacts results.
• Expertise Barrier: Understanding platform-specific nuances for Google, Meta, and LinkedIn requires continuous learning.

Automation Platform:

• Efficiency: Platforms like Flowou streamline ad creation, allowing you to quickly generate and test unlimited Google Ads responsive search ads without manual input.
• Reduced Error: Automation reduces the chances of errors by handling repetitive tasks and alerts you to anomalies.
• Simplified Optimization: For example, Flowou can automatically reallocate your budget to the best-performing ad sets, saving you from constant manual intervention.

Decision Criteria:

1. Volume of Campaigns: If you're running more than a few campaigns, automation becomes substantially more efficient.
2. In-House Expertise: Without deep platform knowledge, automation tools can manage complexities.
3. ROI Focused: Time savings often translate directly into better campaign management and return on investment.

The dilemma of manual work versus automation comes down to time and expertise. If managing ad campaigns is stretching your resources and skills thin, then software platforms like Flowou offer the strategic support to handle it efficiently and effectively. If you'd rather not juggle tasks manually, Flowou can take this weight off your shoulders.

Frequently asked questions

What if I don't have time to manage campaigns myself?

Consider using an automation tool like Flowou to handle ad campaigns efficiently.

Is hiring a marketing agency worth the cost for a small business?

Depends on your budget and needs. Agencies offer expertise but come at a higher cost.

Can I switch to automation after starting with an agency?

Yes, you can evaluate and transition some tasks to automation based on performance and budget.