For some businesses, using lots of different marketing agencies seems the easiest way to go. One for email marketing, one for social media, one for PR…etc. However, we don’t think this is the easiest – or necessarily the best – choice for many businesses.

Why shouldn’t you use marketing agencies, we hear you ask? Good question.

First of all, it’s not cost effective. In general, you’ll find yourself paying more for multiple agencies than you would for one, manageable, in-house system. Even if it is cheaper, what are you really paying for? The hassle? You might be saving money, but trying to keep on top of all those different records and piles of data will take just as much effort as managing it yourself in one marketing platform.

What’s the alternative?

An automated marketing suite makes it much easier to keep a close eye on your leads. If it’s learning the system itself that puts you off, that’s not a problem either. Marketing automation platforms are now built with so much product support that learning the systems and managing your own marketing is a step by step process. That way, you get the leads you want, at a lower price, all on your own terms.

Research shows the likelihood of calling to qualify a lead decreases 6 times after the first hour of discovery. If you’re waiting to hear from agencies in this time, you might be missing out on vital sales. In fact, the same research shows that after 20 hours, calls made to these leads will actually damage your chances of qualifying them – not something you want to hear if your agency reports are delayed for any reason.

Why not manage your marketing in one place, and make sure that you’re getting the results you want when you want them? All your data can become manageable, easily accessible and simplified so that your time is spent on moving prospects through your pipeline and improving your marketing results.