Thought Leadership
February 2025
Choosing the right marketing agency to partner with can be overwhelming. Deciding whether a full-service marketing agency, a specialist agency, or multiple specialist agencies, is right for you involves a lot of research. Trying to ascertain the differences between their services and how they relate to your business’ needs equally creates plenty of admin. This guide clarifies the difference between full-service marketing agencies and specialist agencies plus gives you guidance as to which option best suits your business’ needs.
A full-service marketing agency incorporates a range of marketing disciplines under one umbrella, offering an integrated and cohesive marketing service that is completely managed in-house. A full-service agency comprises a team of experts from different marketing disciplines, each offering a wealth of knowledge and experience, collaborating to create a one-stop-shop for the marketing needs of your business. For example, at Transform Comms we offer web design and development, content marketing, videography, public relations and digital marketing (to name a few). With a unified and holistic approach, we can support you at every stage of the marketing process, from beginning to end.
The benefit is that a full-service marketing agency understands the vision, objectives and strategy of your business, and seamlessly communicates this among their team. This saves the time and money involved in briefing a myriad of different specialist agencies. An additional benefit is that your marketing plan will be integrated – if you’re creating a video, this can be used on social media, incorporated in paid advertising, utilised in blogs on your website and on YouTube. At Transform Comms, our mantra is to create something once and utilise it multiple times.
While full-service agencies provide a holistic approach to marketing, specialist agencies take a singular approach, focusing on one marketing discipline only – for example, web design, digital marketing or PR. Specialist agencies offer expertise in that one discipline and often have a range of experts in their specific area working together to find focused and specialised solutions to business needs.
Specialist agencies are great if you have a specific business requirement that you want addressed in a particular way. However, approaching a full-service marketing agency with the same problem can be advantageous, as they can work with their diverse team, look at the broader picture and provide a well-rounded solution that you may not have considered. Make sure you look for a full-service agency that has a range of disciplines and great people with the required specialist knowledge.
There are a multitude of benefits of using a full-service agency for your business’ needs.
Full-service agencies have knowledge of, and experience in, a broad range of marketing channels, meaning they provide unified strategies with consistent messaging and can reach large and diverse audiences.
A full-service marketing agency makes for an excellent long-term business partner, growing with your business and your requirements. A marketing programme might start small, but you have the ability to scale up activity as your business grows. Full-service agencies offer valuable, long term-support – the longer you work together, the better they understand your business objectives, meaning you can trust them to care about your business’ growth as much as you do. Over time, they reach a deeper understanding of your workflow and communication preferences, allowing for a proactive approach and greater collaboration.
A full-service marketing agency has complete visibility over the marketing programme, and budget, which offers two benefits. Firstly, they provide detailed reporting and analytics giving you greater insight into your campaign’s performance and your return on investment. This type of detailed reporting also allows the campaign to be flexed in real time, responding to changes in the market and business requirements. Secondly, if one particular element of a campaign is performing extremely well, budget can be easily diverted from one activity to another – rather than having to switch off activity with one specialist agency and increase work with another.
Full-service agencies also allow for a simplified and efficient invoicing process. Rather than receiving multiple invoices, each due at different times, with different payment terms, a full-service agency provides you with one bill at a time, whether the work has been completed across multiple channels, or one.
Using a full-service marketing agency means you have a single point of contact. With a specialist agency, where you may need to engage multiple agencies to get the solution you’re looking for, you will likely have to manage multiple points of contact, each having different communication styles and reporting preferences. Full-service agencies streamline communication efficiently through one account manager, who manages the communication between you and the wider creative team. At Transform Comms, you also have access to our specialists – if you need to speak with our graphics team, just drop them a line. Equally, your web designer will be on call to answer any questions in real time, as will your content writer or PPC expert.
Full-service agencies are naturally agile and responsive. If something doesn’t go to plan, they have a wide range of experience and resources that they can draw on for a solution. If something goes wrong, full-service agencies are accountable. They can identify exactly what has happened and take action to rectify the problem. Avoiding the blame game that can otherwise occur between specialist agencies. We’ve seen this where SEO agencies blame website designers for a drop in traffic, or PPC agencies blame content writers. Specialist agencies may not have the same level of accountability, particularly if factors outside of their expertise create problems and they don’t have the resources to rectify them.
While there can be challenges using a full-service agency, by selecting the right one to partner with, these challenges can be easily managed and overcome.
One potential challenge is the perception that a full-service agency is a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. At Transform Comms, we’ve curated a diverse team of award-winning experts, each a ‘master’ in their respective field. Our team work together seamlessly as an extension of your business, meaning we are always delivering quality, valuable work.
Another challenge is the risk that your message will be diluted as it is passed down the line from your main point of contact to the creatives working behind the scenes on your account. As mentioned earlier, our creatives and specialists do not work behind the scenes at Transform Comms. They are involved in conversations with you from the beginning. While you’ll have a main point of contact, our specialists are highly engaged and accessible throughout the process, so you know exactly who you’re working with. Having the wider team involved from the beginning allows for different ideas, valuable insights and greater collaboration, enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of our work.
Choosing the right marketing agency is an important decision, as it has a tangible impact on your business. To choose the right agency, you should think about the outcome you want to achieve. We’d encourage you to consider:
While choosing the right type of marketing agency for your business can seem overwhelming, once you understand the differences, you can start to understand which agency is best positioned to help you grow your brand and your business. Ultimately, working with an agency is about finding a team that you can trust and rely on.
Full-service marketing agencies are able to utilise a wealth of knowledge. Bringing together a varied team of experts who offer a range of experiences and perspectives, so you achieve new insights, creative approaches to problem solving and greater versatility in marketing strategies. With a full-service marketing agency, you get a well-rounded approach to your business’ marketing needs.
If you’re interested in finding out more about Transform Comms, our specialists, or want to transform together, get in touch – we are always up for a chat! Fill in the contact form here, drop us a line at info@transformcomms.co.uk, or call us on 01225 863846.
We're always up for a coffee and conversation.
Fill in the form, drop us a line at info@transformcomms.co.uk, or call us on 01225 863846. Better yet, drop in to our converted barn and film studio near Bath and Bristol.
Let’s transform.
Together.
