Reasons to outsource your digital communications management

You've certainly heard it said that "if it's not online, it doesn't exist". And indeed, having a website isn't enough if it gets no visits and generates no leads, nor is being on the various social networks if you have no audience and (more importantly still) you don't encourage interaction with it.

For many companies, managing digital communications still isn't something they give much weight to. Because it involves specific tasks, a command of the platforms, commitment and time. And even when they have all of that, the external, critical eye of a specialist company always brings inputs the company or brand wouldn't otherwise have. One solution, then, is to outsource digital communications management to an agency.

Here are the main reasons to do it:

Available time

Digital communications — which covers building and managing websites, running social networks and their communities, email marketing, advertising on Google and Facebook, and creating content for the various channels — takes time. Half an hour in the morning and another in the afternoon won't get the job done with the commitment digital demands. Bear in mind that in this world the platforms are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are no opening or closing hours. At any hour of the day a follower may ask you a question, your website may throw up a bug, and your company will want to be there to sort it out. Some platforms — Facebook, for instance — even show how long a given page takes to reply to its followers. What's more, by being on social media (where your target audience is too), you're showing users you're available for quicker interaction. That, at least, is what they expect from your brand's page. 59% of social media users in the US say customer service is more effective through social networks, since they get their questions answered and their problems solved. The secret to satisfaction usually lies in how fast you reply.

At a digital marketing agency, all of this is covered. There are specialists on hand to represent your company and respond promptly to your followers.

Resources and organisation

Picture this: in a quieter month you manage to give more time to digital communications, send out a weekly newsletter and post daily across the various social networks. The following month you no longer have the same availability and there's no sign of your company online at all. Sound familiar? It's not good practice. Although digital marketing trends point increasingly towards content quality rather than quantity, you should aim to keep up a regular frequency of activity. Almost like a commitment to your followers, who are looking for relevant, consistent information. In digital too, communications must follow the visual identity guidelines and tone of voice your brand has defined.

An agency's job is to put a digital communications plan in front of you, setting out a given frequency of online activity for the agreed period. That plan is thought through and designed with logic and clear objectives. Sticking to the guidelines on design and copy, both in content creation and community management, is a given.

Who wins from this way of organising the work? Your company and your customers.

Training

Keeping up with updates to digital platforms is a real challenge these days. Algorithms change practically every month, settings are refined and new optimisation options are rolled out. Staying on top of every change takes commitment and a genuine interest in how the platforms work. If you don't do it daily, you lose the thread — and by the time you notice, everything has changed.

The best place to find specialists who are fully dedicated and alert to the latest changes on digital platforms is a digital marketing agency. Working with these tools directly, day in day out, gives them an exemplary command of them. Your brand or company's communications can therefore benefit from being continually up to date in terms of the formats it uses.

Analytical ability

And the ability to act on it. More than creating and managing, the secret to successful digital campaigns lies in optimisation. Monitoring how the data evolves and implementing improvements means objectives are reached faster. That, of course, requires the time and the training we covered in the previous points. Conclusions only emerge from daily, attentive monitoring of the data. That's the work you should expect from the company you outsource your digital marketing and communications to. The team will have all the tools and skills needed to describe the ground covered and help you map out the next steps for your business's digital strategy.

When outsourcing your company's digital marketing to an agency, make sure that:

• The agency has a multidisciplinary team capable of delivering on everything described above;
• The agency understands both the company's overall objectives and the specific objectives of the communications department;
• The team you'll be working with has all the relevant information needed to carry out its role.

This could be the key to your brand's digital strategy succeeding. Find out more — get in touch!