Marketing agency for growth

Especially in the B2B sector, business and marketing are still seen in technical terms. Thinking is mostly from internal to external. The internal view is of utmost importance and what is developed is usually what the development department thinks is right.

This can be a fatal mistake. In the new millennium, which is shaped by globalisation and digitalisation, the pace of the markets and their participants has increased significantly.

Trends come and go, and those who do not keep a permanent eye on the target group lose out. This is why one of the greatest current challenges is to align all products, processes and also marketing with the market.

Only those who think in a customer-centred way will achieve higher coverage, more leads and more project enquiries – nationally, internationally and worldwide. To this end, strategy, content, creation, media, digital, CRM – in short, the whole marketing spectrum – need to be closely interlinked.

All in all, there is a growing variety of tasks to be handled, ranging from the mundane to the ambitious and highly complex. Is this possible within the company? We at the Ruess Group have been demonstrating for more than 15 years that an external marketing agency is the better choice.

Companies today are faced with major challenges. Advancing digitalisation, globalisation and the associated transformation processes are calling for a rethink in many areas.

Know-how is in demand – and especially specific and professional know-how. It makes sense to outsource business processes partially or even completely in order to benefit from the external expertise of specialised service providers.

The reason is that most of the time this expertise is not available within the companies themselves. Also, medium-sized companies in the B2B sector usually have fewer employees than large companies.

It may feel better to implement all relevant business processes in-house. But the on-site connection and the direct exchange with all departments is usually as cost-intensive as it is ineffective.

In contrast, specialised agencies have a much more targeted infrastructure that enables them to implement tasks or projects more efficiently than is the case if you don’t have employees with the right expertise.

Talking about employees with the right expertise – in view of the shortage of skilled workers and the fact that companies are rarely located in attractive city centre locations, it is also difficult to recruit them for the region or the surrounding area.

It isn’t possible to make a general statement about which areas are better handled in-house or externally, but there are some areas that lend themselves to this in today’s world. One of these is marketing.

An online presence and effective online marketing, especially in the labour-intensive social media, have become indispensable today even for companies that operate primarily in the offline sector.

Many, especially medium-sized companies, are not able to set up their own marketing department simply because of personnel costs and therefore rely on the support of external agencies to cover this important area.

An external marketing agency, after all, has all the necessary specialists to cover all the areas that need to be worked on. And there are many of them: From strategy to content, creation, media, digital and CRM.

If you also consider the effort required for implementation, from texts to film production, photos, organisation of trade fair dates, trade events and much more, you can see that investing in an external marketing agency is more than worthwhile.

Only companies that have a generous marketing budget and can afford to use their marketing department to full capacity only once in a while are in a position to consider an in-house solution.

Choosing the right marketing agency shouldn’t depend on gut feeling, but on several hard factors: Industry, target audience, size, goals and budget are just a few.

Industry knowledge is the be-all and end-all. Does the agency understand the market? Does it know what makes its clients tick? Has it already worked with a company of my size? Can they handle small budgets? Or only large ones?

Yes, the best marketing agency is both an expert and an insider in the specific market. It knows the target market as well as the behaviour and values of the target group. And for good reason: because it’s the only way to build a successful marketing strategy.

Growth needs capital and a lot of capital is in the marketing budgets. This is where a close integration of all fields can generate synergies – from strategy to implementation to media – to open up opportunities for savings.

For this purpose, a good marketing agency has data-driven processes and a connected data warehouse for all possibilities – in order to conduct sound marketing analytics.

And so that communication is targeted and dosed exactly where it is needed and effective. In this context, marketing controllers like those at the Ruess Group usually report 50% growth on certain KPIs.

This translates into more reach, more efficiency and higher turnover. Furthermore, the figures also show that even with an identical budget, the growth potential of many companies is immense.

In the past, basic knowledge of the market and the target group was enough for a marketing agency to be successful. After all, it only came down to a few professional articles or advertisements. The number of communication channels was limited and the target groups easy to reach.

Markets were relatively simple, the customers grateful and willing to adapt the purchased product to their demands and needs themselves. Those days are long gone! Markets and customers are fragmented, the world is globalised and competitors are lurking around every corner.

In this respect, corporate management and the communication of corporate services have to orientate themselves to the market. Innovations are no longer thought out from within the company, but directly from the customer.

Knowing, understanding and putting yourself in the customer’s shoes is the new king of marketing. Using the necessary tools, market research, etc. is the daily business for marketers and their marketing agencies.

And, of course, keeping an eye on costs – in an area that is teeming with communication channels. The challenge is to keep an overview and to combine the measures in such a way that synergies can be exploited.

So what’s the bottom line? We at the Ruess Group know that 50 to 100 percent more reach can be achieved from identical budgets by closely dovetailing planning and implementation – as well as 20 percent more leads and project enquiries.

A long list of well-known clients, mainly in the B2B sector, shows that this is far from being an empty promise. National and international, aspiring and existing world market leaders – and in relatively technical sectors that require explanation.