When DIY Becomes DI-WHY

Hey Bob Vila, how's it hangin'?

We've all been there: You go into a home improvement project with so much energy, only to slowly get bogged down in the details, the what-ifs, and the where-did-that-socket-wrench-go of it all. Your Pinterest-perfect vision gets derailed by inconvenient realities, costly mistakes, and avoidable delays.

DIYing your own creative advertising is exactly the same as trying to let YouTube teach you how to plumb a bathroom. Sure, it sounds easy when ole Bob is explaining it, but once the screen goes dark and your sleeves roll up, the grisly truth comes into sharp focus.

That's about the time "DIY" turns into "DI-Why did I do this to myself?" and it's time to call the pros. Riiiiight after you find that water shut-off valve.

Why Oh Why Did You DIY?

We may be a creative agency, but believe it or not, we understand the appeal of trying to tackle your advertising yourself. There are a lot of valid reasons why you might want to handle it:

• You know your brand inside and out — How could anyone else ever understand your brand ethos the way you do? It's your baby, your brainchild, your creation, after all. Of course you want to control how it's presented to the world.
• You understand your audience — You created your company for them, the people who consume your product or hire your service. You know what they like, what they need, and how to talk to them best, so of course you want to be the one who does the talking.
• You know how much groceries cost — Keeping your monthly budget in the black takes some creative thinking sometimes, and you know you can shave some zeros off of your operational costs if you manage your own marketing.
• You think it'll be pretty easy — With all the digital automations and AI assistants out there, it seems like managing a company's creative advertising would be a whole lot easier in the 21st century than it ever was before.

These reasons—among many others—make it seem like managing your own marketing and creative will be safer, more cost-effective, and easier than hiring a creative agency to help ease the load. Famous last words, probably.

When DIY Become DI-WHY

As your brand grows and the demands on your time increase, you may start to notice some red flags popping up in your advertising strategy and execution. These can be things like:

• The Time Suck: Successful marketing efforts take time, and as a business owner or decision maker, your time is at a premium. If advertising tasks are consuming a disproportionate amount of time in your work week, distracting you from core business activities, it may be time to hang up your wrench.
• The Results Plateau: If your metrics aren't moving, your following isn't growing, and your leads have gone colder than the water in the shower you tried to plumb yourself, then you may have hit a plateau. No one grows in an echo chamber, so it may be time to hire a thought sparring partner.
• The Quality's Iffy: Listen, we know you have a vision, but as professional creatives and advertising industry veterans, we can always spot an amateur at work. Crooked grout lines, sparking wiring, inconsistent brand representations, and myopic messaging all show themselves eventually.
• The Technology's Confusing: As your marketing efforts ramp up, they can often become incrementally more complex, with multiplying marketing channels and sophisticated tools and platforms that require specialization to use effectively.

There are also hidden costs associated with taking on your marketing yourself. In addition to the very real threat of long-term brand damage from inconsistent messaging, you could be taking on out-of-pocket costs for tool subscriptions, ad tests, courses, and more.

Hire the Damn Plumber Already

In this case, the plumber is actually a creative agency like ours (oh hi, we're Prolific, welcome!). Agencies already have all the good tools, the professional relationships, the media partners, and the in-house talent to bring your creative vision to life in an effective, consistent way.

Creative agencies also bring an outside perspective to your project. While this might sound more like table stakes than a true benefit, this may actually be the most valuable service your creative agency can provide. They can leverage their expertise, skill, partnerships, and insights to find the holes in your branding, the gaps in your marketing, and the missed opportunities in your messaging. Then they can plug those leaks.

We Won't Caulk it Up

The truth is, you already have a job. And you're probably great at it. But there comes a time in every business owner's life where they have to admit that the smart strategy is to hire a professional to breathe life into the vision.

Hiring a creative agency like Prolific can accelerate growth while freeing up your time and resources for other considerations and opportunities. As a tight-knit team of ad pros, we know how to onboard quickly, roll up our sleeves, and start making an impact immediately.

We are Prolific.