Finding a Marketing Agency in Cleveland That is Right for You

Locating the Type of Agency that Fits Your Business

You are looking for a company for your Cleveland business. You realized it was the right time in your journey to hire an agency to handle your social media, website, video production, and public relations. The only downside to finding a marketing agency in Cleveland will be the sheer number of them, and how each one can be slightly different. Today we are going to look at how a small or medium sized business can find a marketing agency right here in Cleveland.

There are different facets to marketing that could be obvious or not. A public relations agency might not offer video production, and a digital marketing agency might not offer print services. Before we go any further, we recommend taking a minute and writing down the three main things you want to get out of a marketing agency. Here are some topics to help get started:

There are many more things we could add, but this is to get you started on ideas you may want to get out of hiring an agency.

After you decided on three things you want to accomplish with your marketing agency, we then want you to write down, just below it, your audience, timeline, and budget. This will come in handy before you start reaching out and inquiring about different marketing agencies around Cleveland. Last, we want to decide if you want full-service or part-service. This one takes some thought. Do you want to rely on your marketing agency to be ready to handle any facet of your marketing needs, or do you want them specialized and to seek help from other organizations if there is something they cannot provide.

Digital Marketing Agencies

This type of agency will focus on the channels of your agency that can be done online. This type of remote work is possible for almost any agency around the world, but we do recommend choosing a local firm first. There are plenty of local marketing agencies, and having a reliable contact close by can be invaluable. Imagine a time zone difference with an emergency or a language barrier from an agency out of another country.

This type of marketing agency will focus on updating your website, search engine optimization, and email marketing automation. These things can be done remotely if they have the login information. This is not a full-service marketing agency and will most likely be unable to have a printing service or video production service available to you if you are very far from their agency. Even a local agency may have the resources to do those things, but you signed a contract that will result in a much higher bill for the month if you utilize other services. Make sure to understand what a marketing agency offers.

Making it to the front page of Google for your business here in Cleveland is important, just like any business anywhere would want, but Cleveland has such a unique name and culture that adding it to any search will immediately localize it. No one searching “Restaurant in Cleveland” is thinking about the town of Cleveland in Tennessee. Increasing your online presence will increase your traffic, which will increase your sales.

These digital marketing agencies can provide a wealth of information and provide in-depth return on investment for their activities. If your goal is to get more Clevelanders to find your website, you can measure your web traffic. If you want more like on Facebook, you can measure it. Campaigns like Google Ads and Meta Ads also offer a very flexible model as you can change the parameters of a campaign at will.

Digital marketing agencies are highly competitive, and things like search engine optimization require a constant level of upkeep and change of strategy to stay relevant. Also, the professionals who design and update websites are doing such complex actions that involve tons of code, they might not be able to communicate what’s happening to your website over an email or Zoom call.

A digital marketing agency running website traffic reports.

Print Marketing Agencies

Cleveland has a lot of real estate to post flyers, pass out brochures, or even obtain a billboard position by I-71. Agencies that offer print marketing can be incredibly helpful, but the practice of print media has steadily been declining over the years with the rise of internet usage and social media. This rarity can be used to your advantage though, because it is rare it might not be overlooked so easily. Getting a letter prepared by hand is neat and enticing.

There are usually two key points for print marketing: design, and quality. Depending on how nice you want the product to be the price could be vastly different. A laminated flyer on gloss paper will cost more than a sheet of paper with plain text on it. Hiring a graphic designer might be within your budget, but many marketing agencies have a designer in-house to work with you on creating a logo or design for a piece of print media.

If you are looking to start a local or regional campaign, a print marketing agency will be the way to go. Having them local means they can meet with you, show you tangible copies of their work, and their designers will be familiar with the culture of Cleveland. You need a designer who is familiar with the styles of our sports teams, our love for rock and roll, and our pierogi obsession.

The upfront cost of the materials is much higher than most marketing tactics, but the cost is usually transparent and can be accounted for. It is also hard to gauge the return on investment, as sometimes people might lose a business card, or accidentally throw away a letter. If digital marketing is the cheapest to start utilizing, print marketing would be much more middle-of-the-road.

Many marketing agencies in Cleveland will have a portfolio for you to see, and if their work is not on their website, they should be able to provide some tangible examples or show you the designs they have done in the past. This is where you might have trouble picking wat you want. Our eyes are often bigger than our wallets.

Marketing Agencies Offering Video Production

You want to see your business on television, right before Jeopardy at 6pm. You want to see Ethan Hawke on set with your brand on his shirt talking to you in a cinematic masterpiece. Odds are this won’t happen, if we had to guess Ethan Hawke’s minimum bid is around $100,000 for an appearance, so let’s bring our imagination back down to earth.

You want YouTube videos, podcasts, social media videos, and videos on your website showcasing what your business does, and who it serves. Granted, we made fun of a television commercial right there, but Cleveland has a long history of local businesses sporting commercials on Fox 19 in the evening, do not count that avenue out just yet. Video is king. Every major platform on the internet not only has the capability for videos but recommends and rewards those who post video content.

Videos are extremely engaging. Video is the new standard business card for anyone looking to advertise. It’s almost weird to look up a business and see absolutely no videos of what they do. Brand storytelling can not be done in a better way. Showing Cleveland your customers, your employees, your atmosphere, and your products is the most effective way to market ourselves and your business.

Video can also be repurposed anywhere and everywhere. Individual content pieces can be split up into more platforms. If we film a 13-minute showcase video with common questions from our customers, we can slice that up and make short-form videos for each individual question. Now you have 14 videos and can schedule them out to be posted. When you see companies around Cleveland posting short videos that all look like they were filmed on the same day, well they were.

Video production does cost quite a bit more money for your business. We will not sugar coat this, finding affordable video production can be a challenge, but if you want the absolute best bang for your buck why not check out our video production page here at Acclaim. Imagine the day you film making sure your business has been cleaned, people briefed, forms passed out and signed, lights and camera set up, interviews held, then breaking down the equipment, and then the editing process starts. That is a sizable chunk of your day and the longest part, the editing, hasn’t even gotten into full swing.

Also, not every agency offers video production because it requires a huge investment into gear, and a huge investment into skills like editing, special effects, 3D graphic design, and audio engineering. To begin your search for a video marketing agency here in Cleveland, make sure to check out the portfolio page first and just see what their video looks like. If you like the general aesthetic jot their name and number down and give them a call. Make sure to explain what you are looking for and get a quote from them.

A video marketing agency filming a keynote speech.

Full-Service Versus Not Full-Service

Full-service marketing agencies in Cleveland usually offer a full range of different disciplines. Generally, these include:

And sometimes:

The reason we separated those last three is the level of difficulty involved in video production, audio production, and collaboration efforts with local influencers. These require a huge amount of time and labor invested into building a relationship or building a skill set.

A full-service marketing agency will offer most of those services. This is ideal for a business that is trying to unify their marketing effort across multiple channels all at once. They may want an email campaign, new website, an overview video, and a rebranding of the logo all within a month. A full-service marketing agency can handle it and can coordinate more effectively than multiple agencies all specializing in one area.

Unless the agency is Acclaim, the cost for a full-service marketing firm is more than the specialized marketing firms because of the breadth of services. Many full-service marketing agencies will charge different rates for different kinds of products or fluctuating retainers based on the services you request. We here at Acclaim offer one low monthly retainer, and then only bill you for the hours worked after that retainer has been fulfilled. Every hour costs the same and we are flexible with where we use them.

A semi-full-service marketing agency will offer some of those points listed above but can also have massive price fluctuations based on what services you want to use. Semi-full-service agencies also rely heavily on outsourced help from other organizations, so their timelines are heavily dependent on other companies. A full-service agency might not have the same level of skill for certain things. A semi-full-service agency that only does graphic design will be more specialized and skilled than a full-service agency offering multiple skill sets.

Consider whether you want a marketing agency to lead the charge on all your marketing efforts all at once, or if you want a semi-full-service agency that specializes in the places you need to supplement your marketing efforts.

Posters advertising markets and businesses.

Finding the Right Agency in Cleveland

One of the first routes we recommend taking is searching for the marketing agencies that represent your competition. Start googling who you think of when you say your industry out loud and try to locate who does their marketing efforts. You may not find that information, but it is a great place to start. If you are scrolling through a list of agencies, make sure to check their work page and see if their clients fall in similar industries.

You can also attend local marketing events around Cleveland. Job expos tend to draw in crowds of marketers looking to represent businesses around Cleveland. This will land you a few business cards, brochures, and QR codes to guide you towards more marketing agencies you might not have discovered yet.

Once you have tested the waters and shopped around it is time to make the leap and call some marketing agencies. If you have any questions about services or the complexities therein, you can always give us a call here at Acclaim.