Digital marketing is one of the hottest marketing trends right now, as companies seek more effective ways of capturing and retaining their audience's attention in a world of smartphones, search engines and social media. By fully leveraging digital technologies, you can help your clients create better marketing campaigns.

Given the popularity of digital marketing, forming a working relationship with a software & web development firm might be the smartest move that you make this year. Marketing agencies who partner with a development company can set themselves apart from the crowd by offering more services to their clients, making their clients happier, and saving their own time and money.

Our free guide covers everything you marketing agency needs to know about choosing the right development solution for you.

1. Expand Your Service Offerings

Marketing agencies often lack the client demand and the budget to justify hiring developers and other technical employees, so it's relatively rare for them to be full-time staff members at such a firm. Even if you retain a developer or two on your payroll, you likely can't employ the dozens of people with different skills and programming languages that you would need to cover all your bases.

What you can do, however, is work with a development firm on an "as needed" basis. By working with a development partner, you'll be able to provide your clients the technical expertise and the skill set that they're looking for.

Building a website or mobile app as part of the package that you offer to clients may be the key differentiator that lands you the next contract. Alternatively, if you're already providing these services with full-time developers but you're currently tasked to capacity, you can temporarily partner with a development firm to shoulder some of the load from new clients.

2. Keep Clients Happy

The first rule of marketing is "know your audience," and that applies to your own clients as well. Partnering with a development firm allows you to give clients the products and services that they truly need and want.

From web development and e-commerce sites to mobile apps and Salesforce integrations, the plugged-in marketing campaigns of today require serious tech talent to pull off. The development firm with whom you partner won't just do the grunt work to make it happen, they'll also serve as a source of knowledge for your clients' questions before, during and after the project.

Working with a development partner can also be a major advantage if you need to rescue a client's project that's showing signs of struggling. Projects can go underwater for any number of reasons: employees have too much on their plate; the skill set required is beyond developers' capabilities; a freelancer disappeared or a vendor went out of business. Your partner can help bail out the client, scoring you a massive PR win in the process.

3. Save Time and Money

Hiring a new employee is expensive ― first you have to spend time and effort interviewing, hiring and training them, and then you have to give them salary and benefits. On the other hand, the developers at the firm with whom you partner aren't on your payroll, and you already know that they have exactly the knowledge and experience you're looking for without having to get up to speed.

Working with a development partner also gives you more flexible pricing options, as best fits your business situation. Instead of paying a flat salary, you can be billed either hourly or per project, depending on how the task is formatted.

4. Build a Project Management Platform

Many marketing agencies rely on software's like Jira for issue tracking and project management, but it's not necessarily the ideal solution for every organization. Jira's "jack of all trades" approach to project management means that the software can be overwhelming to new users and not optimized for customers in certain industries.

The right custom software development partner can build you a fully custom-built project management platform that will save the entire company time, from HR administrators to account managers and sales representatives.

Instead of spreading your important processes across multiple systems, you can easily integrate software such as QuickBooks for billing and PandaDoc for document management. You can easily keep track of the projects, timelines, reports and files for all of your clients in a single readily accessible location.

How to Choose the Right Partner

We've talked a lot about the right partner for your organization, but how exactly do you choose the right development partner? Before getting started, do your research: make sure that you check out prospective partners' testimonials, case studies and portfolios. In the meantime, compile a list of your internal requirements and specifications — the "must haves" for any partner — as well as the most important pain points in your business processes that can feasibly be addressed by custom software.

Conclusion

Joining forces with a custom software development company can be a game changer for marketing firms looking to attract and retain tech-conscious clients. Not only can your choice of partner create custom-built solutions for your clients, they can also develop for your own company's needs and save you time and money in the process. As a result, you'll expand your service offerings, save time and money, and continue to grow your business.