The marketing services market is more like a grand bazaar than a modern supermarket: a jumble of diverse offerings that differ in literally every way. So how do you choose what you need from among them?
To answer this question, we have written an article that examines the four most common specialisations of marketing agencies: performance agencies, creative agencies, SMM agencies, and outsourced marketing departments.
The idea to write this article came to me during a meeting with a client after the following dialogue:
Client: How do you differ from [name of the most well-known creative agency in Ukraine]?
Our team: But we do something completely different! — they replied and began to explain…
The first thing to start with: marketing agencies offer various services, but their range is not chaotic or random. The difference lies in the formats and specialisation of these services. Knowing the difference between them makes it much easier to understand what your business needs.
Episode 1. Marketing agency formats
Marketing agencies usually work in several typical formats of cooperation. Understanding these formats helps you choose the right partner and not expect the agency to do what it does not do.
The most common formats:
1. Project format
The agency undertakes clearly defined tasks with a fixed deadline: website development, rebranding, marketing strategy, and so on. Once the project has been delivered, the collaboration may come to an end or transition to a different format.
✔️ Suitable when you need to implement a one-off initiative or test a partner in action.
2. Outsourcing format or support
This is a long-term collaboration, where the agency is responsible for regular marketing activities: content, advertising, analytics, and communications support.
✔️ Suitable if you do not have a full-fledged internal marketing department or need specific expertise in working with specific tools.
3.Consulting
The agency does not perform tasks independently, but assists you or your team by conducting audits, developing strategies, advising on current issues, and training your specialists.
✔️ Suitable for companies with their own team that needs mentoring.
Episode 2. Marketing agency specialisations
The format of cooperation refers to the duration of the relationship and the involvement of the agency in ongoing cooperation. Specialisation, on the other hand, refers to what exactly it works on. Each agency has its own areas of expertise, and these determine its strengths and weaknesses. Here we will look at the four main specialisations of marketing agencies:
Performance agency: traffic here and now
Performance agencies are highly specialised companies that focus on specific advertising channels: SEO, PPC, targeted advertising, email marketing, etc. Their main goal is to generate conversions and traffic.
Traffic generation tools work great when you already have a powerful product, a well-developed sales platform, a profitable offer, customer trust, and other marketing aspects in place.
Issues that performance agencies are asked to address:
- Unable to obtain the planned number of leads.
- The actual cost of lead acquisition (CPL) needs to be reduced.
- The internal team lacks the expertise to professionally engage in SEO, PPC, and other performance marketing tools.
| + | − |
| Deep expertise in lead generation tools the agency specializes in. | No marketer is involved in the project, so most performance agencies either do not develop a marketing strategy before launching campaigns or do it superficially. |
| Established automation practices for key tools, which improve execution speed. | A performance agency offers only what is on its “menu.” In other words, if a company specializes in SEO and PPC, it will promote these services regardless of whether they are actually needed in a specific case. |
| Expertise in web analytics and internal tools for measuring advertising performance. | Simply launching ads is often not enough to generate consistent sales. |
💡 You need to come to a performance agency with a powerful product and well-established operational processes in your marketing department. That is, for example, if you have SaaS, someone has to think through customer acquisition funnels, trigger notifications, price offers, referral programmes, and many other things that make up the lion’s share of operational marketing for this type of business. If you have an internal marketing department, this is not a disadvantage at all. But if you only have a team of developers, performance tools will not be enough.
Cost of work:
Performance specialisation is the most common format for marketing agencies. That is why there is a significant difference in prices. For example, you can get professional SEO management for your local business from $500 to $3000 and above, depending on the specifics of your business, the region of promotion, the agency’s reputation, and the number and quality of projects in its portfolio. The cost of the agency’s services is supplemented by an advertising budget (for PPC and targeting) or a budget for link placement (for SEO services).
✅ Ideally, if:
You already have a marketing specialist or an in-house marketing team, and you understand your product, your audience, your sales funnels and your positioning. Your sales channels are well established, and work is underway on brand promotion. All that remains is to launch your advertising campaign to generate sales.
SMM agency: about content, presence and «let’s make it beautiful»
SMM agencies specialise in social media management: creating content, stories, graphics, posting, communicating with subscribers, and sometimes launching targeted advertising. They often work on visual style and tone of voice, shaping brand presence in the digital environment.
Issues that SMM agencies are approached about:
- It is not possible to reach the desired number of subscribers on your own, and content reach is low.
- Lack of self-discipline to regularly create and post content on social media.
- Maintaining social media accounts takes a lot of time, which is already lacking within the business.
| + | − |
| Visually appealing content. Teams in such agencies are usually formed based on a shared sense of style and trends. | Do not develop a comprehensive marketing strategy. |
| Often specialize in managing specific business niches. If you want your Instagram “to look like this salon from your portfolio,” that’s exactly what you’ll get. |
Like other single-channel agencies, they often operate without strategic integration with other marketing tools. |
| SMM agencies live and breathe social media, understand all the nuances of promoting different content formats, and can make your Reel go viral with millions of views. | Not always focused on business metrics (leads, sales). Clients often come to SMM agencies aiming for maximum reach, views, and followers, but this approach does not suit every type of business, as a million views rarely translates into “a million dollars” in revenue. |
Cost of work:
SMM agencies are the second most common type of agency. Just as with SEO, professional social media management is available for between $500 and $3,000 and upwards. The cost depends on many factors: who will be responsible for content creation, how many company accounts there are and on how many social media platforms they need to be managed, the proportion of video content, budgets for engaging influencers, and much more.
✅ Ideally, if:
- You are a self-employed expert (e.g., tattoo artist, psychologist, massage therapist), and most of your clients come to you from Instagram. Therefore, all you need to do is continue managing your social media accounts to attract more clients. You can delegate this work to an SMM agency and focus on other things.
- If you already have a general strategic vision for business development, a marketer on staff, and a performance marketing agency involved in launching advertising, then an SMM agency simply complements the list of contractors who cover specific areas and tasks related to social media content for you.
Creative agency: when you need that wow factor
| + | − |
| Creation and implementation of creative ideas that help a brand become nationally or even globally recognized. | The results are difficult to measure in leads or sales. |
| Experience working with multi-million-dollar budgets for attracting celebrities, purchasing media airtime, and creating large-scale projects for a wide audience. | Advertising campaigns can be both successful and unsuccessful. Sometimes even such large-scale work goes unnoticed or does not resonate with the audience. |
| They can create and bring to life something truly memorable, and even win awards like Cannes Lions or Effie, so that your advertising is seen by several million more people. | They do not handle operational marketing. For example: funnel design, platform development, materials for clients and partners, ad launches, social media, referral programs, promotions, and customer offers — these and other tasks form the basis of daily operational marketing. |
Cost of work:
According to a survey by the All-Ukrainian Advertising Coalition, developing just the idea for an advertising campaign will cost the client between $20,000 and $45,000. That’s why agencies like this are the record holders when it comes to project costs. In addition to developing ideas and advertising campaigns at the national level, such agencies can offer to develop new positioning or corporate identity. Such projects can cost from $10,000 to $100,000. It is also important to add that the implementation of national advertising campaigns has a corresponding rider: the involvement of celebrities, the cost of filming, and the advertising budget can range from hundreds of thousands to several million dollars.
✅ Ideally, if:
You have a team of marketers working on marketing operations: strategy, social media management, and active advertising. Now you want to significantly increase brand awareness and reach the national level. You have the budget for this, and you won’t be disappointed if you don’t see significant sales growth after the advertising campaign.
An outsourced marketing department: development and support
This is a format of cooperation in which you receive a comprehensive marketing department without the need to hire people. Such a team develops marketing strategy and ensures the daily operation of the marketing function. The marketing function is described in detail in this article.
Usually, cooperation begins with the development of a marketing strategy. The workflow is built around a specific business, so the list of marketing tools is determined during the strategy development process. This format is most similar to creating an internal marketing department, where the team and development vector are formed based on the needs of a specific project, rather than the agency’s existing “menu” of services.
Issues addressed to the outsourced marketing department:
- The company does not have a marketing specialist, so marketing processes are chaotic.
- There is no marketing development plan, and there is a lack of consistency.
- Tired of building the internal department, the marketing manager has resigned, and it is difficult to find a new one.
- Tired of managing different contractors, each of whom works in their own way without considering the overall goal of the company.
| + | − |
| Works with the project comprehensively: positioning, pricing, website, presentation materials, social media, advertising tools, analytics. | In most cases, a marketing department does not meet the needs of microbusinesses and self-employed experts. |
| Fully takes over the marketing function in the company “turnkey,” meaning full responsibility for the entire direction. | Unlike a performance agency, where there are ready-made solutions for every service, a remote marketing department first develops a strategy and then builds a team configuration specifically for the business. This requires more time to launch advertising campaigns compared to a performance agency. |
| In a marketing department, the project is managed by a marketer. Therefore, clients receive deep expertise in strategic marketing. The developed marketing strategy takes into account the connection between all necessary tools and promotion channels. | Does not work without the owner’s involvement at the beginning of cooperation. A marketing department is an opportunity to delegate the marketing function, but effective delegation does not happen by itself. So if you plan to pay and not dedicate time — it won’t work. |
Cost of the work:
Depending on the experience of the agency working as an outsourced marketing department, the cost of developing a marketing strategy may vary from $3,000 to $20,000 and above. The cost of monthly maintenance depends on the scope of services and other business parameters. In terms of average cheques, marketing departments work with budgets ranging from $2,000 to $15,000 per month.
✅ Ideally, if:
- When launching a start-up, it is important to plan everything carefully so that you don’t have to learn the hard way at the expense of your advertising budget. Developing a marketing strategy for a start-up will help you save time and money, which are better invested in development.
- You do not have an internal marketing team, or it is already overloaded with other products and areas.
- You have long-term plans to become a leader in your market. Therefore, your marketing plans include working with the product, positioning, pricing, developing and improving your corporate website, SaaS or application, creating expert content, strategic tasks for developing your brand, and much more. You do not expect that simply launching an ad campaign will be enough to achieve significant results.
Таблиця порівняння форматів агенцій
Ми розповіли лише про найбільш загальні спеціалізації маркетинг-агенцій. Тож підсумуймо все, про що розповіли вище:
| Criterion | Performance Agency | Creative Agency | SMM Agency | Remote Marketing Department |
| Goal | Leads, traffic | Brand, attention | Communication / sales in social media | System, business growth |
| What they do | SEO, PPC, email marketing, targeting | Creative campaigns, video | Content, posting, stories, targeting | Strategy, advertising, content |
| Need for an internal team | Yes | Yes | Not required | No |
| Cooperation format | Project-based or outsourced | Project-based | Monthly management or projects | Part of your company |
| Ideal when | There is a strategy, traffic is needed | There is a brand, buzz is needed | The business lives in social media | A “turnkey” team is needed |
How to make the right choice?
Now that we have covered the main formats and specialisations, it will be easier for you to determine which agency specialisation is closest to the realities of your business:
- We have a strategy; now we need to put it into practice? → Choose a performance agency.
- We have a brand; we need a high-profile campaign? → You’re looking for a creative agency.
- Your business thrives on Instagram? → You need an SMM agency.
- Do we need to start from scratch, or is it time to move towards systematic development?? → You need a remote marketing team.
Conclusion
Solve Marketing — outsourced marketing department, where we help companies build their marketing function every day, which always involves long-term cooperation and partnerships lasting for years.
If, after reading the article, you realise that you need a different specialisation, we will be happy to recommend trusted partners in each of these categories. And if you say, “We need an outsourced marketing department,” then the article has helped you make an informed choice. And your informed choice is the main goal of this article.
A selection of case studies on marketing strategy development:
- Marketing strategy for accounting and tax accounting in the USA.
- Marketing strategy for a nutricosmetics brand.
- Marketing strategy for a property agency in Spain.
- A comprehensive strategy for entering the Australian market.
- Marketing strategy for the production of peanut butter.
A selection of case studies from the remote marketing department:
- Marketing department for a CRM integrator.
- Marketing Department for IPTel.
- Marketing department for a SaaS project.
🎯 Would you like to meet up and discuss your business?
We look forward to hearing from you!
