Look around your office or place of business.

Assuming you’re not a landscaping company, does your office have a set of riding and push lawnmowers? Rakes and shovels and line trimmers? Mulch? How about weed killer? Probably not.

Why, because unless you’re in that specific line of work, there’s no reason to invest the dollars into having all that stuff. It would rarely, if ever get used. It also takes up a lot of space and would be costly to purchase and maintain. Same is true in the marketing industry. You would be amazed at all the nifty whiz bang things good agencies invest in, and things that we use each day and frankly, couldn’t do our job without. Design software, business databases, and competitive audit software, tracking software, media databases, and media planning software, research tools, and video equipment and on and on it goes – tens of thousands of dollars in annual subscriptions for basic tools needed – and without which doing the job would be virtually impos- sible and most certainly incredibly tedious and ineffi- cient.

The greatest carpenter in the world, without tools or wood, won’t be able to build a simple stool. Same holds true for that poor marketing person you just hired, but now she needs the tools to do her job in house. You don’t understand what they are or why you should spend the extra money (after all, you just paid her $75K + benefits and now she needs an extra $20K in tools) so, you don’t get them.

And she languishes. Not to mention, the poor internal marketing person you hired for $75K now needs to buy advertising space, send direct mailers, purchase mailing lists, put releases on the wire, buy stock photos – so now we’re up to $150K – but we’ve discussed that already. Why not just hire a professional that already has the right tools? The good agency has made that investment to bring to bear for all of its clientele. It’s built into the fees of the agency professionals, so you don’t need to pay for them (unless the agency would need a highly specific and specialized tool just for your business, however.)

So, knowing that you need not only skills but also the tools of the trade, you have two choices: Buy the lawnmower for your office or just hire the landscaper.

With offices in Greater Cleveland and Greater Cincinnati, The Eisen Agency is among the most award winning public relations, marketing and branding firms in the region. The expert level team serves the strategic and tactical marketing communications needs of both leading and emerging businesses in the professional services, restaurant/retail, manufacturing, franchised, and travel/destination industries, helping to more effectively communicate with and relate to their varied audiences.