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What do marketing agencies do?

For marketing consultants and agencies, what are the most in-demand marketing services right now?

  • Many companies use marketing consultants and agencies to outsource certain areas of marketing. What are the hottest areas being outsourced right now: strategy? innovation? social media? online advertising? SEO/SEM? Email? Product development? Branding?

  • Answer:

    Above low-level and well-defined things, or things that require industrial-style scaling, marketing consulting game is trust/relationship based, not activity based. People seem to figure out who to work with first, factor out the tasks and responsibilities second. They prefer to make the partitioning subtimal, and with gaps, rather than taking on people risks, which are substantially higher. We are also in a transitional period where the old agencies have no idea how to be effective (and therefore burn money in dumb ways), but newer people who do know are generally lost in a sea of douchebags and shady characters, and haven't yet been able to stand out effectively or scale what they can do effectively. I am fairly effective as a one-person show, and could probably pull 4-5 person teams together for more complex things, but nobody seems to have their act together at larger scales. Everybody I've met who claims they can do it turns out to either be lying, or able to do it only in one extremely narrow way. In-house expertise is better than consulting expertise in about 10% of companies, and much worse in 90%. It's basically a chaotic, unreliable mess out there.

Venkatesh Rao at Quora Visit the source

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According to internet retailer magazine, the fastest growing budgets are for social media and SEO. By far the largest current percentage of budgets are PPC (40%), Affilate (20%), email (15%), and SEO (10%).

Kevin Lord Barry

One interesting development is to hire an outside IT Manager or Solution Architect to be the technical SME for preparing and reviewing website RFPs (especially if an application, database, COTS selection, hosting selection or integration is involved), and for verifying the IT plan and cost estimates...

Ted McLaughlan

The social media bandwagon is a popular one that's often viewed as a checkbox than a channel. However, with market budgets constrained, clients want hard results. We're seeing demand generation highly outsourced, but typically added on after a social outreach effort is engaged. Our social programs are heavily complemented with strong PPC and SEO efforts. These provide the tangible marketing ROI clients crave, while the social programs (and content assets they distribute) build the credibility necessary to influence conversions.

Mike Granetz

Social media is really rapidly expanding, Google+ members are shooting up and so businesses are looking to get the most out of them by marketing on them. Some digital marketing agencies offer social media services, as they are in demand and their value is expanding. Apps are getting hot in terms of demand, a lot of agencies will offer app development for smaller businesses because every company wants an app these days. For example http://www.hawkeyedesign.co.uk/web/custom-mobile-apps is typical of what's on offer. Info-graphics are in demand too, they're good for getting ideas across so they're obviously worthwhile for marketing but also branding too. I think it's hard to choose just one in demand service, because it depends on the people looking to market and what they want.

Jeffery Nevil

The answer will vary, depending upon the product/service that need marketing. But still, invariably the social media marketing is a buzz these days. Right from a commodity, consumer durable, service offering etc. be it anything, social media/digital marketing is doing wonders. Social media platforms like facebook, linkedin, twitter etc. are now reaching almost each segment of the society. This form of inbound marketing is in most demand right now.

Ritesh Garg

I am seeing a lot of companies seeking social media management and community development assistance. Often they do not have these knowledge resources in-house and are looking to either bring in "fresh blood" or hire a firm that can handle all of this for them.

Corrie Davidson

Automating high end video production, that is professionally managed for B2B consumption and that is digital ready for branded web, mobile and messaging platforms.

Atchison Frazer

As a partner in a digital agency in South East Asia I see a lot of our clients asking for more strategic services concerning digital. Not just give me an EDM or SEO or Social Media. But things like: "How does it all work together and how can I make it work with my overall strategy?"

Erik Posthuma

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