When To Hire an Organic Growth Agency

Finding the right agency — the one that will actually drive your business forward — is critical, especially if you’re an early-stage company. 

Choose the wrong one, and you’ll miss a crucial window of opportunity that could stunt your company’s growth (which some businesses never recover from). 

Here, we’re digging into:

• The best time to start working with an agency
• What agencies do best 
• Common mistakes companies make when looking for an organic growth agency to partner with
• Why agencies are more cost-efficient than bringing on full-time employees

B2B SaaS and organic growth

B2B SaaS businesses, this one’s for you. If you’re a B2C ecommerce company hoping to find an agency partner to run PPC campaigns, this advice might not directly apply. B2B SaaS is a different game with different rules. 

Established brands with a product, a general understanding of customer pain points, and an ability to tap into an existing demand are likely ready to work with an agency specializing in paid media. 

But if you’re starting fresh or branching into a new market, organic growth is the way to go. At this stage, paying for ads won’t capture demand because there isn’t any yet. Organic growth agencies like Ten Speed generate demand and capture it. Sure, it may take a little longer to get the ball rolling, but once things are in motion, you can see some serious results. 

Three prerequisites for hiring an organic growth agency

You need a brand, you need a product, and you need a team. Before then, hiring an organic growth agency probably won’t help you achieve the results you want. Here’s why: 

You need a brand

Having a business =/= having a brand. 

If your business is fresh and you aren’t sure what direction you want to head in terms of voice, messaging, and mission, you’re not quite ready to benefit from a growth agency. But if you’ve massaged your messaging and have started generating some content, you’re getting closer. 

But branding isn’t just for established businesses, and it’s never too early to start sharing your “why”: 

• Why your company needs to exist in a saturated landscape
• Why you’re an expert in your space
• Why someone should choose you over the next guy

Getting heavy-handed with SEO-focused content will come later once you establish some brand authority. (We’ll get there, I promise!)

You need a product

Without a product to share with potential customers, an agency won’t make any progress. Organic marketing techniques will power your go-to-market plan, but it can’t produce something out of nothing. Wait until your GTM engine is in motion. Then, let the agency create content that will drive organic growth. 

You need a team

I know what you’re thinking: “Why would I need a team if I’m hiring an agency?” 

Consider everything that’s on your plate. Strategy meetings, managing sales, meeting with clients. The reason you want to hire an agency is because you don’t have time to manage it all yourself. 

Still, someone needs to be responsible for partnering with the agency on specific tasks. Good agencies will want you to review their strategy, provide subject matter expertise on the content they create, and stay in the know about internal developments, and they’ll need your help with that. It could be one person. It could be a small team of in-house brand experts. But it typically shouldn’t be the CEO, the head of sales, or the head of product. 

For the agency to successfully step in, they’ll need at least one point of contact at your company who knows marketing. 

The sweet spot

We’ve covered when you aren’t ready for an agency. But what about when you are? Here are the two main indicators that you’ll benefit from partnering with an agency. 

Essentials

Hiring an agency helps you most once you’ve got marketers on your team eager to boost your organic growth. Maybe it’s a one-person operation, or maybe it’s a handful of enthusiastic content creators who have taken the first swings at helping the product gain traction. 

Once you determine there’s a product-market fit, bringing on an agency takes that initial traction and accelerates growth. It’s like germinating seeds indoors before sticking them in the dirt outside and watching them take root. 

Existing strategies

The other thing you’ll want to have in place before starting a relationship with an agency is some semblance of a marketing strategy — one that has, ideally, generated some traction. If you’ve gotten some traffic to your blog or driven engagement through your social media platforms, you’re off to a great start. 

Usually, an agency won’t hand you your first wins on a silver platter. Think of it like a relay: You run the first leg and then hand it off to the agency to take it over the finish line. 

Then, your full-time employees can handle other tasks that require richer brand knowledge and in-house expertise while the agency uses its marketing chops to grow your organic traffic. 

You’ve proven what you’re doing can work. Let the agency scale that success exponentially. 

Why agencies scale faster than FTEs

Scaling your growth is faster with agencies than with a team of in-house full-time employees (FTEs) for a few key reasons. 

• Breadth and depth of marketing knowledge: Your budget may only have enough room for one content expert in-house, but an agency has access to a larger team with expertise in many different arenas — technical SEO, social media strategy, conversion rate optimization, editorial, you name it. Adding an agency to your roster is more cost-efficient than trying to scale an in-house team to get the same expertise.
• Use your T-shaped in-house marketer to your advantage: If you’ve got a generalist on your team, a marketing agency can alleviate some or all of that team member’s responsibilities so that they can focus more heavily on internal operations and initiatives.
• Utilize immediate resources rather than draining your company’s: Hiring FTEs takes time and money that your business could spend elsewhere. Instead of sinking your budget into a bloated marketing team, partnering your smaller in-house team with a SaaS content agency outsources that responsibility and allows other teams to make more impactful hires. 

4 mistakes companies make when deciding to hire an agency

These are the most common blunders we see B2B SaaS companies making when they start their search for an agency partner:

1. Thinking an agency will get you from 0 to #1

Agency partners can do so much. They can craft long-form SEO blog content, spin up social media campaigns that drive leads, and create stunning, engaging email marketing campaigns.

But they can’t make something out of nothing. 

Don’t expect your agency to create something immediately successful from scratch. Remember, it’s a partnership: To maximize results, you need to do your part. 

2. Assuming that results will be instant

Organic growth doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long-term goal that requires a long-term plan. You’re building a relationship with your audience — gaining trust, sharing your expertise, and proving your value. It’s a gradual process that takes more than a week or two. 

When you’re ramping up your organic content engine, expect to see results in a handful of months. It’ll gain speed as it goes, so as those first results trickle in, don’t panic. With an invested agency partner, they aren’t going to leave you high and dry. Your success is their success. 

3. Having inconsistent (or nonexistent!) goals

If you’ve ever said (to your team or an agency you’ve considered), “We just want to get started,” it’s time to dig deep and get specific with what you actually want to accomplish. 

Inconsistent goals from different stakeholders at your company lead to confusion and stunt potential opportunities. Worse, not having any goals at all leaves your agency directionless. 

To maximize your partnership’s potential, establish measurable goals that align with your overarching business direction. Things like using on-site optimizations to improve content performance and increase conversion rates on bottom-of-funnel blog posts by 25% by the end of the year. 

That we can work with! 

4. Deprioritizing the search for an agency partner

Hiring an agency isn’t something to take lightly. The perfect agency fit won’t materialize in front of you without any effort on your part. (Wouldn’t that be great, though?)

Instead, it’s important to internalize the gravity of this decision and treat it as such. Define your marketing goals, identify agencies that fit your needs, and actively pursue them. 

This business decision defines the trajectory of your growth. Deprioritizing it wastes time that you could have used to amplify your reach. 

3 companies that got it right

Let’s take a closer look at three companies that partnered with an organic growth agency at the right time and made the most of it. There isn’t just one perfect fit here — organic growth agencies can be successful in various industries and many different phases of business. 

Bitly: Large, established company

Bitly had high domain authority, but its extensive website was hard to wrangle. They had the team but needed an agency to help streamline the process, providing focus and expertise. Ten Speed stepped in to solidify their technical SEO and manage their content updates. 

Workvivo: Large company pursuing acquisition

In 12 months, Workvivo grew its traffic value by 90% to over $54,000 per month. How? We capitalized on their brand authority and revitalized decaying content that was dragging their performance down to capture middle-of-funnel traffic that just needed a nudge in the right direction. Focusing their content efforts on high-intent traffic ultimately helped them get acquired by Zoom.

ProsperOps: Small, hyperscaling company

Early-stage ProsperOps wanted super-accelerated growth, but their existing strategies weren’t helping them see the results they wanted. Partnering with Ten Speed allowed them to create authoritative content that solidified their place as a leader in the FinOps landscape.  

Are you ready to supercharge your organic growth? Let Ten Speed help

Choosing an agency to work with is a high-stakes situation. Knowing when and how to start looking for an agency partner could change the future of your company. Don’t let rookie mistakes — like neglecting to set clear, attainable goals or expecting the right agency to fall in your lap — stop you. 

Ready to kickstart your organic growth? Work with us. Ten Speed’s team of experts has the tools and experience to build and fuel your organic growth engine.