When it comes to picking a digital partner for your next project, the landscape of agencies may be a little overwhelming.

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Not only is it difficult to judge the quality of an agency just off a website, but it’s not clear which agency actually fulfills your needs the best. One of the first obstacles to deal with is determining the value of hiring a specialist agency versus a generalist agency.

Unfortunately, this is not always a simple task – it’s not easy to know what your current and future needs may be, so here are two helpful factors to consider before making a decision.

Convenience vs. Effectiveness

As a rule of thumb, the greatest value of a generalist agency is convenience.

Having all your services provided by one entity can save a lot of time in coordination, but that convenience can come at a cost of actual skill. While it’s completely possible to find a generalist agency that can excel at all aspects of a project, it’s more likely that the agency is just strong in a few categories.

Alternatively, a specialist agency provides more skill, but will likely be required to work with other vendors.

This can potentially lead to a lot of coordination effort, and may even cause delays in a project when multiple vendors are waiting on one another for parts of a project. While a specialist agency can provide more value, their capabilities can easily be affected by other vendors if not managed well.

Discreet vs. Integrated Projects

If your project involves multiple pieces to be completed under the same timeline, then a generalist agency may make more sense.

For instance, having an entire website designed, developed, marketed, and maintained by several different specialist agencies is an organizational nightmare.

The success of each of those steps is somewhat dependent on other decisions, so having multiple specialist agencies may not lend well to a cohesive strategy.

If, however, you already have a website and just need to work on generating leads, then it would make more sense to hire a demand generation agency over a generalist one. In this particular case, a generalist agency will not have the time or resources to optimize that part of your business, so you will likely be left with mediocre results.

If you can name your issue fairly discreetly, then a specialist agency is definitely the better value.

The decision on picking the right agency is not a simple one, and if you’re having difficulty weighing all the factors, then contact us today and let us find the perfect agency for your business.