What is a Marketing Agency?
A marketing agency is a service company that partially or completely takes over the marketing for another company. Marketing agencies can set up strategies for the client, implement measures and ultimately evaluate them. Agencies can focus on different sub-areas of marketing.
What types of marketing agencies are there?
Marketing agencies are numerous and varied, in Switzerland alone there are hundreds of agencies to choose from . In the following, a distinction will therefore be made between the different types of marketing companies in order to show the Swiss agency landscape in a more understandable way. Marketing.ch also provides a service provider directory in which Swiss agencies can be found for any purpose.
These are the most common marketing agencies:
- Digital Marketing Agency
- Social Media
- Marketing Agency
- Communication agency
- SEO agency
- Web agency
What is a digital marketing agency?
According to Digopaul, the digital marketing agency is probably the most broadly based type of marketing agency. These agencies take on various online tasks for their clients. More precisely, this means that digital marketing companies deal with SEO and SEA , with social media or content marketing , with strategy development and implementation, with campaigns and evaluation – there are a number of combinations and focuses. The only common denominator is that all sub-areas are online.
Digital marketing agencies are employed by start-ups as well as established companies to improve their online presence and increase their presence on the Internet. The agency brings new ideas and many years of experience with it, which the company itself may be missing.
What is a social media marketing agency?
The social media marketing agency is a kind of sub-category to the digital marketing agency. As the name suggests, social media agencies concentrate on the client’s social media channels. They create content strategies, publish posts and run campaigns. You can set up and implement organic as well as paid measures . This promotes and improves the online community , visibility and conversions of the company.
Social media marketing agencies are used by various companies when they lack the know-how or simply the capacity to manage their channels independently. Agencies can also bring a different perspective into the company and thus deliver new ideas and measures.
What is an influencer marketing agency?
With the integration of social media into our everyday life, a new phenomenon emerged: influencers. These opinion leaders present themselves from their best side on Instagram, YouTube and Co. and convince at best with authenticity and aesthetics. Not surprisingly, various companies are now counting on influencers in their marketing. The internet personalities market the company’s products or services in a personable and credible manner.
However, the search for the perfect influencer is anything but easy – that’s why there are influencer marketing agencies. These agencies specialize in referring the best influencers to companies. The agency then takes over the communication with the influencers, the organizational aspects and also the tracking of the influencer posts.
In order to recommend the ideal influencer to the client, the agency needs information about the company’s goals: Does the influencer have to have a lot of followers and reach in order to increase brand awareness or should the engagement be as high as possible so that conversions can be achieved? The type of posts expected – Instagram stories or feed posts, TikToks or entire YouTube videos – is also a relevant factor when looking for the right influencers.
There are various influencers who have a contract with influencer agencies and can therefore hardly be employed by companies on their own. Even if agencies like Kingfluencers do not have exclusive rights to influencers, many influencers make sure that they get orders primarily through the agency. Working with an influencer marketing agency therefore often forms the bridge between companies and influencers and makes communication much easier .
What is an SEO / SEA agency?
Without SEO – Search Engine Optimization – hardly anyone can put a successful website on the Internet today . The basic goal of SEO is to make the website appear as high as possible in search engine results. This so-called search engine optimization is a free measure to gain more visibility on the internet. Search engines like Google or Bing automatically rate a website based on its content. This includes the texts on the website, of course, but also how many internal and external links there are or how user-friendly the page is.
Under SEA ( Search Engine Advertising ), however, refers to paid advertisements which are turned to search engines like Google or Yahoo. This means that the desired search result will, in the best case, appear at the top of the Google search. The only difference to the regular search results is that they are marked as “Advertisement” next to the result.
It can be difficult for businesses to keep track of all of the keywords, which is essential for SEO. The structure of the website must also be right so that Google and Co. classifies it as relevant for users . This is where the SEO agency comes in. The employees of this agency have the necessary know-how to bring your company to the top of the search results. They analyze which keywords are relevant for searches, how the website is best structured and often implement an SEA strategy at the same time .
The combination of SEO and SEA covers Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in order to achieve optimized results. With the use of SEA, the company quickly achieves noticeable results in the search processes. These can then be supplemented or replaced with SEO, the longer the longer, as soon as the measures also take effect there.
What is a web agency?
A company without a website is unthinkable. The website is the collection center for all information on the product or service and can be interpreted as a business card for the company. This makes it all the more important to have an appealing and, above all, user-friendly design of the website. While there are various content management systems that make it easier for you to create a website , such as WordPress or Typo3, you cannot simply shake a good website out of your sleeve. It is precisely because the website is such a central element of the company’s appearance that a web agency can make all the difference.
A web agency creates websites for the client. It is also taken into account that the page looks good and can be used on different devices (laptop, tablet, smartphone) – and SEO must not be forgotten either. Because the understandable structure of the website and its content has a great influence on the ranking in the search engines. The web agency has an overview of all these factors and works out the ideal website with the client.
What is an advertising and communication agency?
In contrast to all the agencies listed so far, advertising and communication agencies do not necessarily only create online content, but also support companies in the print sector.
Communication and advertising agencies help companies to advertise themselves and to communicate ideas and values to the outside world. Here, too, there are various areas of activity in which the agency can work if it does not create a complete communication concept with analysis, measures and evaluation for the client anyway . For the online area, web agencies can also take care of SEO and SEA, social media and websites, while offline they can score points for the company with posters, brochures or TV spots.
Advertising and communication agencies can set up entire image or branding campaigns or even promote individual products from the client. All online campaigns can and should also be adapted for the various devices – laptop, tablet and mobile – in order to meet all customers equally. The advertising or communication agencies help the company to make an optimal appearance on the Internet as well as in the real world.
How much does an advertising campaign cost at an advertising agency?
The costs of an advertising campaign vary greatly depending on the company. While a small, simple company may only spend 700 francs a month on a few paid social media campaigns, large companies can put on donation pants. For comparison: Coca Cola spent well over 330 million francs on its marketing in 2019 . Of course, this also includes the company’s extensive TV campaigns.
Swiss SMEs are rare at this level. Some guideline to the expected spending on marketing measures provides admin.ch . It is estimated that small to medium-sized companies should spend at least CHF 20 per day on their social media campaigns. In order to be able to hang up posters in a good location , CHF 1,000 per week can quickly be incurred, and anyone who wants to be shown with a spot on digital displays, for example at train stations, pays another CHF 6,000 for a week. With just these three measures, the company pays CHF 28,600 for one month – plus the expenses of the advertising agency, of course even who charge around CHF 180 per hour.
The cost of advertising can vary extremely widely and the upper limit does not exist. Before implementing a campaign, the company must therefore be clear about which channels are to be used with which content and how much budget can be invested.
What is the difference between an advertising agency and a PR agency?
Advertising agencies primarily take over the marketing of success-oriented companies. PR deals with the appearance of a company, whether profit-oriented or non-profit, towards all relevant stakeholders. Public relations , also known as public relations , also includes classic marketing measures such as online marketing or social media strategy .
However, PR often means reputation work, change and crisis management. This means that PR agencies also help their clients to appear strong, uniform and clear to the outside world, for example by means of organized press conferences and media releases, which are part of classic PR work.
A PR agency is also engaged in times of major changes within a company or even during crises. The agency can specialize in crisis communication, which provides internal and external measures, or in issues management.
What is a full service agency?
If you combine the various agencies – digital marketing agencies, web and advertising agencies, PR agencies, content agencies and SEO / SEA agencies – you get roughly the full-service agency.
As the name suggests, full-service agencies offer everything to do with marketing. This means that they analyze and design, and implement and evaluate online and offline measures . What sets them apart from an advertising and communication agency is that, in addition to the advertising measures, they also take public relations into account and thus offer a 360 degree view.
This is a clear advantage of the full-service agencies: They take into account all stakeholders – not just target groups relevant to success – and can thus ideally coordinate the entire concept for the client. What speaks against a full-service agency, however, is that they may be less specialized in individual areas than, for example, an SEO agency in search engine optimization .
