It isn’t a coincidence that thousands of businesses outsource to digital agencies.

You can benefit from extra talent without hiring more staff, increase the output of your work and spend more time on the core of your business. Better yet, you can save as many as 37.5 hours every single week.

But, what sort of tasks can agencies actually take care of?

Here are 6 key areas that you can outsource to an agency – with links to the best ones for the job waiting to help your business today.

1. IT Support

Outsourcing IT support is common because it isn’t a task people necessarily want to spend time on. It’s obviously essential but not something people want to do – they just want their tech to work so they can focus on their actual jobs.

The main benefit of an IT agency is that they will be there whenever you need them, ensuring you only pay for what you need. This saves you the time and cost of hiring and training IT staff whose expertise you might not use every single day and allows you to future-proof all areas of your business.

For instance, if your server crashes or you fall victim to a cyberattack, you will have experts on hand ready to fix things straight away. They will also have experience resolving complex issues that you might lack in-house.

Moreover, you can rest assured that your IT systems are 100% secure, leaving you to focus on crucial areas such as strategy. All thanks to the excellent agencies ready to help your business.

Agencies that provide excellent IT support include:

• Stratosphere Networks, who recently helped a client whose IT environment was infected by ransomware that had encrypted their servers. The agency completely restored the client’s business operations in just two and a half days.
• TechValidate, who solved New Future IT’s challenges around reply and resolution time by deploying an updated feature set in less than one day. The client reported a 10-24% uplift in customer satisfaction after upgrading their support plan.

2. Design

One of the main tasks presented to design agencies is creating a unique and memorable brand identity. They’re experts at bringing people’s vision to life and have the knowledge and expertise to turn vague thoughts into something profitable.

They often offer both digital and print services, including website production, logo creation, graphics, business cards and leaflets, which is one of the reasons they are so popular. However, another reason is because a lot of businesses will want an agency to take the lead on what their branding should look like.

In these cases, particularly if you are just starting out or have fewer employees, it wouldn’t make sense to hire an entire design team. It’d be better to just find the right agency.

Another reason design agencies are so worthwhile is that once you find one that understands your outlook, you can use them time and time again as your business operations expand.

Here are some excellent case studies to highlight their success:

• Basic Agency for Silver Oak – Through creating a new design system, content strategy and technology framework, along with many other complex elements, the agency completely transformed Silver Oak’s digital brand. So much so that the company saw an incredible 300% uplift in online revenue.
• Creative Brief for Micro Focus – Following a two-year decline in sales, the sales pipeline for Micro Focus mainframe products grew 500% during the first six months of Creative Briefs ‘Elephant in the Room’ campaign launch. It won two awards thereafter, with a design that truly spoke to their customers.

3. Content

Common areas managed by content marketing agencies include elements such as content creation, audience expansion, data capture and strategy. For a lot of businesses, these core elements will revolve around optimising a company blog, improving PPC campaigns or driving more traffic through email marketing.

The problem isn’t always how to write, but how to differentiate content from other articles online. For example, if you’re a digital marketing business wanting to write a guide on content marketing – which as you can see, we were in the same boat – you can’t just jot down a few paragraphs and expect to get customers flooding in.

You need a strategy and a clear idea of who you want to target beforehand. Both of these can be solved by outsourcing work to a content marketing agency, allowing you to focus on other areas of your business.

However, one of the reasons these agencies are so popular, including these, is because they are experts at a number of projects. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with one if you just want a hand on a small creative piece – it’s quick and easy using the Adzooma Marketplace.

Read about 10 of the best content agencies in 2020 if you’re looking to use one.

4. Web Development

The best websites are created by two groups of people: the company itself, usually large enough to house a development team, or a digital agency who have taken on the work. As you can probably imagine, the latter is much more common.

The reason for this is that web development requires a lot of knowledge, experience and resources to complete to a high standard. It isn’t something that can be learnt and completed in a matter of hours, and unless you build and deliver projects on a regular basis, isn’t something you need to recruit for either.

Web development agencies are perfect for circumstances like these.

Even Whatsapp’s development is led by a team in Russia, and Google teamed up with technology services provider Globant to deliver Project Ara.

Plus:

• Daxx became an offshore mobile developer for Pricena, leading their Android app to a total of 4.3 stars and over 50,000 downloads on Google Play.
• Infinite Peripherals used the modern advanced digital meter Square Reader SDK to deliver a digital metering solution for 8,000 Washington D.C. taxis.
• At Adzooma, we developed our company blog by integrating offshore Developers into our team. This worked much more effectively than the traditional outsourcing method, saving us both time and resource at the same time as building an admirable blog.

5. SEO

A lot of businesses look to outsource their SEO because it’s pretty much the icing on top of the cake. Things like keyword research and SERP visibility are what really makes a difference – not using buzzwords or copying your competitors.

An SEO agency will also optimise your internal and external content, check for backlink opportunities, focus on organic traffic and carry out more complex jobs such as technical audits. If you want to develop a tailored SEO strategy, they can help with that too.

Here are 8 of the best SEO agencies in Nottingham, or success stories from additional agencies to demonstrate their importance:

• Exposure Ninja worked with a client on a shoestring budget to help optimise their website and increase his number of visitors from 2,894 per month. The results showed an excellent new record of 7,429 visitors, a 293% uplift in the number of website visitors from Google, and a 31% increase in consultation requests.
• Click Consult for Victoria Plum: Through implementing new SEO techniques, Click helped to achieve a 300% increase in organic traffic, a 238% increase in mobile revenue, a 41.67% increase in page one keywords and a massive 214.29% increase in organic revenue.

If you’re looking to hit similar results, there are endless SEO agencies that offer a full suite of services to help optimise your website traffic.

Find one today on the Adzooma Marketplace.

6. PR

An unbelievable amount of work goes into receiving excellent PR, hence it being an ideal area of your business to outsource. Agencies often have so much expertise that firms employing less than ten people make up approximately 91.6% of the number of PR companies.

So, why wouldn’t you manage your own PR?

The answer is simple: PR agencies already have the relationships you need to achieve your goals.

With one on your side, you not only reap the benefits of gaining coverage in the regional press, but you save a whole load of time and resource building up your contacts in the first place. In fact, it’s estimated that businesses can save over 35 hours trying to grow their PR campaigns.

Here’s an insight into the success you could achieve using a PR agency:

• Absolute PR & Marketing for Steam Dreams 2018: With a strategy centred around anticipation and excitement, Absolute secured 11 broadcast media interviews, over 85 pieces of online coverage and 21 pieces of coverage in print both on a regional and national scale – delivering a ROI of around 1,000%.
• Kelso PR for Capacitas: To name a couple of their achievements, the agency’s campaign generated over 370 items of coverage in newspapers and business magazines, including News at Ten and Sky, and high-value business leads from household name companies.
• Green House PR for Crowther Lab: Launching a global campaign, the agency saw over 700 articles published in more than 100 countries with 134 million coverage views, was featured on the front page of The Guardian and achieved a global reach of 4.8 million on the campaign’s #TreePotential hashtag.

If that doesn’t solve problems regarding brand awareness, not much else will.

Other areas where digital agencies can assist

If you have ever thought about sharing responsibility for parts of your business, there is likely an agency that specialises in that area.

This includes:

• Customer support. During seasonal periods especially, there’s often periods of time where the level of customer support that’s required is too much to handle in-house. Not only that, but if you’re just starting out or expanding your contact hours, an experienced and knowledgeable customer support agency can communicate with your customers and help to streamline your processes.
• Research and development. Outsourcing research and development can put you in touch with more advanced technology, pushing your projects further and enabling you to achieve better results. A lot of companies also lack the time and resource to carry out such research themselves, particularly while focusing on other business activities.
• Event management. Networking, building strong relationships and getting your name out there is key for a successful business, but preparing for events is no easy task. An events management agency can help you organise everything in advance, provide support at each stage of the process and approach customer service.

Find an agency that’s right for you

Want to find an agency that can take care of your business’ extra work?

We’ve built the perfect solution: Adzooma Marketplace. It’s an innovative platform designed to help businesses like you find your ideal agency, specialising in everything from video production to A/B testing, data analytics and software development.

Browse the most top-rated agencies today to help grow your business, bring in more customers, and see similar results to those mentioned above.