What is a CMA?
Creative marketing agencies (CMA) are your go to “all-in-one” marketing and creative sources that manage everything from setting up your brand to providing guidance, recommendations, creativity and marketing activities that will grow your business. Depending on the structure and size of the Creative Marketing Agency, they may charge by the project, piece, hourly or based on a retainer. A marketing agency is there to help you create grow and maintain your brand.
Your Goals
Hiring a creative marketing agency is entirely dependent on aligning your goals with your needs. A creative marketing agency is like a 3-row Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV). The SUV can get more people to their location when compared to a standard 2-row model. The standard model may only provide creative services or only marketing services. Finally, there is the pickup truck which is set to take on one specific task. The pickup would be comparable to a designer or a marketer of a certain discipline. Ultimately, the creative and marketing vehicle you are shopping for should resonate well with your business goals.
Your Time Is An Investment
If you are looking to establish yourself in the marketplace, the CMA is your best choice. Splitting your marketing and creative agencies is great for the business that wants to manage each area independently. You will have to work a lot harder to manage the agencies in this manner since they do not work with one another and you will be the middleman. Finally, you have the independent contractors: graphic designers, web designers, digital marketers, social media marketers. These people are great for accomplishing a specific task but do not have the expertise to build your business. If you just need a logo, hire a designer. If you need a complete solution hire a creative marketing agency.
Partners Encourage Growth
A creative marketing agency like Stand Alone Design insures building a cohesiveness between your brand identity, online presence and marketing efforts. A great CMA will ultimately become your partner for all your creative and marketing services. The CMA should provide a clear channel of communication to increase efficiency and project completion rates that translate into real world results.
The Costly Truth
Finally, there is the cost factor. It may look like you are getting more bang for your buck when hiring a designer since the initial cost is usually low. For example, you can get a custom logo designed from $199 and up or purchase a premade logo for next to nothing. This type of purchase is nonconductive to your brand. There was no research done, no industry analysis or comparison, and there is no brand or cohesiveness between this logo and future materials since you will more than likely be hiring a different designer to do another project. This way of managing projects will end up costing you more in the long run because different designers have different stylistic approaches and design workflows.
Our experience has been that you should hire one agency to manage all your creative and marketing efforts. You will keep your costs low, get your projects complete in a timely fashion, keep your brand connected and overall have less to manage.
