Why Marketing Agencies Need Development Partners
In today’s digital landscape, marketing agencies can meet diverse client needs with the right technical support. Relying solely on in-house development can pose challenges; however, partnering with a strategic technology firm unlocks potential and allows you to focus on delivering excellent marketing services.
Why Handling Everything In-House Doesn’t Work for Digital Agencies
Like in any kind of business, it’s impossible to do everything yourself. When it comes to technology and development projects, it requires a number of different skills beyond being able to develop sites and write web code. Depending on the services that your agency currently offers you may be considering whether you should form a strategic partnership with a technology firm or hire additional employees to do this work.
Handling every single technical aspect of your clients’ needs in-house is often a nightmare for digital agencies. Even if you and your employees are extremely tech-savvy, things get out of hand fast and there are many reasons why it makes more sense to find development partners instead of opting for full in-house development.
Your Solution Offerings Will Be Limited Without a Development Partner
By offering technology services when you predominantly handle marketing, you may not be able to offer the level of service that the client is expecting for their technology infrastructure. Many digital agencies won’t offer more advanced technological solutions like apps and wearables, but plenty offer basic website building.
Different Projects, Platforms, and Solutions Require Different Skill Sets and Hiring Multiple People
Your in-house staff may lack the skills needed to develop each project. Because all of your clients have different needs for their marketing strategies and audiences, you can be faced with a mix of clients who need native, cross-platform, and web-based apps for various purposes. iOS is in Objective-C while Android is Java-based, which makes in-house development costly and difficult for native apps.
You’ll Often Find Yourself Struggling to Meet Deadlines
Without a full support development staff, the costs and timelines for your clients’ projects can wind up being a lot higher than expected, because of the massive time constraints involved in developing and testing new technology. These problems are exacerbated by the skill set issues when working in-house. Each client has different needs that your developers may not be able to meet, and you will need to hire external contractors for each project, which can significantly drive up both the cost and timeline.
Maintenance Will Eat Up More of Your Time Than You Think
Maintenance, testing, constant updates, and other aspects of technology can overwhelm your staff and take away time needed for more lucrative projects. Focusing on work that generates higher profits is what will improve your bottom line. Even though your clients are paying for back-end maintenance and other services, it isn’t likely to generate as much profit as landing a new account or offering high-value services that you can deliver with greater speed and efficiency. This is especially true when a new device or OS update comes out and you unexpectedly have to drop everything you’re doing to make sure that every client’s app is functioning correctly.
Even if you and your employees can do some basic development work in-house, it doesn’t make sense in the long term to keep doing it if your chief product is marketing services. By taking the burden off of your in-house staff to focus on the work that your clients are primarily hiring you for, it gives you more freedom to focus on those skills.
