Running a small business means getting used to doing a lot with a little. Bringing in external marketing support does not have to mean building a big marketing department or signing an expensive agency retainer. Here is how to recognise when it is time to get help — and how to find the right partner.
In the early days, marketing is often one of many things handled by the founder or a small team. You update the website, write the social posts, send the emails, organise an event and perhaps have a go at some advertising. When something needs doing, someone finds the time to do it.
And for a while, that can work really well.
But as your business grows, marketing usually becomes more complicated. You might need a new website, a clearer brand, a more consistent flow of leads or a proper marketing strategy. You may be preparing to enter a new market, exhibit at an event or launch a new product or service.
At that point, the question becomes less about whether you can keep doing everything yourself and more about whether you should.
Bringing in external marketing support does not have to mean building a big marketing department or signing an expensive agency retainer. It is about recognising where additional expertise or capacity could help your business get where it wants to go.
There is no particular turnover, team size or stage at which a business suddenly needs external marketing help. However, there are some common signs that it might be worth considering.
You know you should be communicating more regularly with customers, following up leads, improving the website or building your presence on social, but there is always something more urgent to deal with.
Perhaps you are posting on social media, sending emails and spending money on advertising, but you cannot confidently connect that activity with enquiries, customers or revenue.
Sometimes the trigger is growth. What got your business to this point might not be what gets it to the next one. You may need a clearer proposition, a stronger brand, new routes to market or a more structured approach to generating demand.
There are also times when you simply need specialist expertise. A website redevelopment, brand refresh, SEO project, paid advertising campaign or major event can require skills that it would make little sense to employ permanently within a small business.
The important thing is not to wait until marketing has become a problem. External support can be particularly valuable when you know where the business is heading and can identify the gaps between the expertise you have and the expertise you need.
This is where things can get confusing, because "we need some marketing help" can mean a hundred different things.
You might need a freelance marketer for a few days each month to provide extra capacity. You might benefit from a fractional marketing director or CMO who can help set the strategy and provide senior leadership without the cost of a full-time hire.
If you have a specific challenge, you might need a specialist agency with deep expertise in areas such as branding, websites, SEO, PR, content, events or paid media. Alternatively, you may need a broader agency that can manage several areas of your marketing together.
None of these options is inherently better than another. The right choice depends on the problem you are trying to solve and what your business needs at that particular point in its growth.
Before deciding what marketing support you need, it helps to have a clear picture of what is happening in your business.
Having access to the right data and insights can help you understand where your customers are coming from, what is driving growth, where opportunities might be being missed and which areas of your marketing need more attention.
For a small business, that insight can be particularly valuable. When budgets and resources are limited, you want to make decisions based on what your business actually needs rather than simply doing more activity.
This is where technology can play an important role. Tools such as Theama can help smaller businesses make better use of the data they already have, giving them clearer insight to help shape their strategy and plans.
That insight can also help you make a better decision about when to bring in outside expertise. If the opportunity is clearer, it becomes much easier to identify the skills you need, brief the right people and give your investment the best chance of delivering results.
Once you have a clearer idea of what you are trying to achieve, it can be tempting to begin by searching for "the best marketing agency for small businesses" or asking your network for recommendations.
Recommendations can certainly be useful, but an agency that was brilliant for somebody else's business is not automatically the right agency for yours.
Before you start looking, get clear about the problem you want them to help you solve.
Are you trying to generate more qualified leads? Do you need to reposition the business? Is your website no longer doing its job? Are you struggling to explain what makes you different? Do you want to reach a new audience? Perhaps you have ambitious growth plans but no clear marketing strategy to support them.
Then think about what success would look like, the budget you have available, your timescale and what you want an external partner to take responsibility for.
You do not need a perfect agency brief at this stage. A good marketing partner should help you shape the solution. However, being clear about the business problem makes it much easier to find people with the right experience to solve it.
Once you know what you need, finding the right marketing partner is about more than comparing lists of services.
Relevant experience matters. If you are investing in a new ecommerce website, for example, you will want to know that the people you are speaking to understand ecommerce and can demonstrate what they have achieved for similar businesses.
But experience is only part of the decision.
Think about how the agency works. Will you have access to the people actually delivering the work? How will they communicate with you? Do they understand your budget and the realities of running a smaller business? Are they genuinely interested in what you are trying to achieve?
Most importantly, pay attention to the questions they ask.
A good agency should want to understand your business before telling you what the answer is. They should be interested in your customers, your commercial goals, what you have already tried and where you think the biggest opportunities lie.
They should also be prepared to challenge your thinking when necessary. You are bringing in external expertise, so the most valuable partner will not necessarily be the one that agrees with everything you say.
At MatchMade Marketing, we believe one of the most important parts of choosing an agency happens before anyone starts talking about detailed proposals.
It is the conversation you have with the people you could actually be working with.
You can compare credentials, case studies and capabilities on paper, but those things do not tell you what it will actually be like to work together.
Meeting a small number of carefully selected agencies gives you the opportunity to explore that.
Do they understand your business? Are they curious about what you are trying to achieve? Can they explain complicated ideas clearly? Do you feel comfortable asking questions? Does their way of working complement yours?
This is particularly important for small businesses because an external marketing partner can become a close extension of your team. You need confidence in their expertise, but you also need to trust them and feel that you can work well together.
That does not mean simply choosing the agency you like the most. The best chemistry combines a strong working relationship with the right expertise, experience and commercial fit.
There is, of course, another challenge.
There are thousands of marketing agencies, consultants and freelancers to choose from. Once you start researching them, comparing websites, reviewing case studies and arranging introductory calls, finding marketing support can quickly become another substantial piece of work.
This is one of the reasons we created MatchMade Marketing.
We help businesses define what they need, research the market and identify agencies that genuinely fit the brief. Rather than expecting a business owner or marketing leader to work through a long list of agencies, we bring them together with a small number of carefully selected partners for focused chemistry meetings.
The aim is not to find the biggest agency or the agency with the slickest pitch. It is to make it easier to find the right one.
Getting additional marketing support should not add unnecessary complexity to your business. It should give you access to expertise you do not have internally, add capacity where you need it and help you make better marketing decisions.
That might mean working with a freelancer for a few months, bringing in strategic support as the business grows or finding an agency with the specialist expertise to deliver a particular project.
What matters is finding the support that fits your business, your ambitions and the challenge you are trying to solve.
Growing a small business does not mean you have to become an expert in everything. Sometimes one of the most valuable decisions you can make is recognising where you need help, and finding the right people to provide it.
Alaina Roberts
CEO & Co-founder, MatchMade Marketing
Alaina Roberts is CEO and Co-founder of MatchMade Marketing. An experienced B2B marketer, she has worked both client-side and agency-side, giving her first-hand experience of what makes a successful agency partnership. She co-founded MatchMade Marketing to make it easier for marketing leaders and businesses to find the right agency for their needs, without spending hours researching and shortlisting potential partners.
MatchMade Marketing helps brands find the right marketing agency for their next project or ongoing requirement. They take the time to understand your brief, research the market and shortlist three carefully selected agencies based on their expertise, experience and fit, then bring you together for focused chemistry meetings so you can decide who feels right for your business.
Their agency search and matching service is completely free for brands, subject to a minimum project size.
This Guest Column and all of its content are entirely the work and opinions of the invited guest contributor. CloudKnots, its founders, and its partners have no contribution to, involvement in, or responsibility for the content, views, or opinions expressed in this article. Any references to third-party companies, products, or services are provided by the guest and do not constitute an endorsement by CloudKnots.
For any information regarding our blog posts, please reach out to our Chief Marketing Officer, Richard Pakenham, at richard@cloudknots.com.
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