8 Steps to Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Agency
Choosing the right digital marketing agency for your business project will require a lot of thought. It can be difficult to choose a good digital agency that will fulfill your dreams. The days of having a business that is only advertised in print are long gone.
Today, almost every company and project has an online presence, whether it is a website or social media pages. To effectively market your business, you need to use digital marketing.
There are many different ways to do this and one of the most popular methods is through search engine optimization (SEO). But digital marketing is not limited to SEO only; it is a whole process of understanding business needs, strategizing and working accordingly.
The digital marketing industry is a fast-growing and dynamic field. It is constantly changing and evolving. As a result, digital marketers stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies. One of the best ways to do this is to outsource your digital marketing.
The best digital marketing agencies have years of experience and can provide you with the best results possible. In this guide we will answers the most fundamental questions and guide on 8 Steps to Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Agency.
Benefits of Outsourcing Digital Marketing
Time Management – If you are an entrepreneur or business owner who is always occupied with the day-to-day running of your company, then outsourcing digital marketing tasks to experts will free you from the burden of running the business. A digital marketing agency will have a pool of experts who can take care of the work for you.
Outsourcing digital marketing can be very cost effective because you only pay for the services you actually use.
Another benefit to hire them is that you get access to a large pool of experienced digital marketers. This means you can get access to a wide range of skills and expertise.
And, the third benefit is that outsourcing digital marketing can help you build a relationship with a company that can provide you with a lot of value in the future.
An experienced digital marketing team can provide you with more services at a lower cost than you would be able to do yourself.
How to Select a Marketing Agency – 8 Steps to Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Agency
Clearly Define Your Requirements and Goals
Begin your search by taking a close look at the required services for your business, and then make a list of requirements. You need to know what you want to achieve before you choose a digital marketing agency. The requirements before choosing a digital marketing agency may include:
- Web Design and development
- Website Maintenance
- Content creation, generation, and orientation
- Blog Writing
- Email marketing
- Search engine optimization (SEO) and Google Ranking
- Social media marketing (SMM)
- Marketing automation and Analytics
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Online / Paid advertising including Pay Per Click, Google AdWords, Facebook Ads
Goals before hiring a digital marketing agency define what you actually need and why you need a marketing agency. These Goals determine what suits you and what combination of services will work for your business. Your Goals may look like:
- Creating Brand Awareness
- Generating Traffic on your Website
- Getting Leads and Sales
- Any sort of Digital Improvisations
- Product or Brand Consideration
The company should maintain coordination between the in-house marketing team and the agency for balanced and success in marketing.
Set Your Budget
Set Your Budget After you have defined your requirements, it is time to set a budget. It is important that you discuss this with your marketing agency. The best digital marketing agencies are able to suggest the most cost-effective solutions to achieve your goals.
Make sure that you ask about the various pricing packages available to you. Some agencies offer discounts for multiple services, while others might charge more if they have to provide more work than you need.
Asking about pricing is one of the most important aspects in selecting a digital marketing agency. The last thing you want is to spend a lot of money on a service that is not going to benefit your business.
As you can see, there are many different factors that you need to consider when choosing a digital marketing agency for your business. This can be quite daunting for someone who is new to the industry because they can’t find the right digital marketing agency as they expect.
Find Out the type of Services
You should also look for an agency that can do more than just one thing. You will want to find a company that has experience in many different areas, including social media, blogging, paid marketing, ad management and web SEO. This will help you to get the best results.
You don’t want to find a company that does just one thing. You want to find a company that can help you to succeed in all aspects of digital marketing.
This is important because when you have a business; one type of marketing is not recommended. You can choose a company that provides a wide range of quality services. This means that you will have a wider choice of which service you want to use.
At times you need to run paid campaigns, other times you need related content for web blog, sometimes you want an online world wide successful project, and on other times you want strategies for local businesses and projects.
Decide the type of Agency
There are multiple types of digital marketing agency and all of them have their own work strategy and pros and cons. Make it sure to research all types of agencies before you choose any of them, so that you can partner up with the best fit for your business needs.
Here is the list for types of digital marketing agencies:
- Generalized Services Digital Marketing Agency
- Specialized Services Digital Marketing Agency
- Creative Digital Marketing Agency
- Industry Niche Digital Marketing Agency
- Global Reach Digital Marketing Agency
- Local Reach Marketing Agency
- Large Agency
- Boutique Agency
Consider the Size of Agency
A larger agency will have more resources and staff, but it is also likely to be less personalized and more impersonal. A smaller company is more likely to have access to senior expertise than a larger company.
According to our opinion larger agencies are likely to hand off smaller accounts to junior teams that are less experienced. Smaller agency will have more time to think about your problems and suggest best possible solutions.
When you sit down with people who have the time to answer all of your questions, you will get a more personal experience.
Check their Portfolio
An up-to-date and complete showcase of the type of work that an agency does and their creative capabilities is what an agency’s portfolio should be. Check out what type of work they did for your industry clients to see if they understand the scope.
This is really important because there is no point paying for a company that cannot deliver what they promise. You also need to be careful of any marketing services that are offered as it is very easy to get caught up with marketing services that look very good but don’t actually deliver anything. A team having no portfolio and testimonials is sort of red flag.
Look at their Past Client and Testimonials
When picking a digital marketing company, you should look at their past clients to see if they have an impressive track record of successfully improving their client’s businesses.
Check the references of any digital marketing agency that you are considering hiring. You want to make sure that they can be trusted and that their services are good enough for your needs. You can do this by asking them to give you a list of clients who they have worked with.
They should also be able to show you examples of work they have done in the past. It’s important to note that not all of these clients will be satisfied with the results. Some of them will complain about the services, but you still need to check the references of any digital marketing agency.
You need to consider the type of clients that they have been working with. You want to make sure that you hire a marketing firm that can help you reach your goals.
Examine the Agency’s website
Not all businesses have the capabilities or the skill to take on a digital marketing project. Once you have decided that any agency is right for your business, think about its functionality and services area.
You can learn more about an agency from website and determine whether or not you want them on your team. Also from website, you can have an idea of type of organization, their services, their team expertise, their client type, how they handle data, their process and partnership strategy.
An Example Digital Marketing Agency Website
Consider the Experience and Values of Team
Do they have the same clients as you? Agencies are not the same. Some serve large clients, some only serve niche industries, some work for local and related audience while others have expertise in world wide audience.
If you want to have the best experience with an agency, you’ll want to make sure they know your industry. The marketing company can transition from the research phase to the implementation phase much quicker if it has clients in the same industry.
The benefit of hiring a full service digital marketing agency with prior experience in your industry is that you’ll start getting results in less time as compared to any other agency. They will have an idea on how to make marketing successful in certain type of industry and how it works.
Choose an Agency for Value Not Price
Many marketing teams offer a sugar coated pill which attract newbies but if you have prior experience working with digital marketing agency, you know well what it means. Before choosing any package offered by the agencies, clearly ask them the value they’re offering because at the end of the day, it is the value that matters and not the price.
For Example, there may be a team offering social media advertisement at the same price the other one is offering social media management. At first it may look same to you but in terms of value, both are different and have different pros and cons. So it is recommended to choose packages wisely by keeping your goals, requirements and budgets in mind.
Partnership for Long Term Relationship
It might sound ridiculous but it is wise to have a long term relationship with your marketing partner. The longer you go, the better you grow. Because once you’ve clearly explained your goals and requirements to a marketing team, and you both have figured out a strategy together, you both know how things started and what pattern is going on.
Explaining it all to a new marketing partner and creating new marketing strategy, doing all the things in a new way can be costly as well as it can negatively affect your digital presence. So it is better to choose the right digital marketing agency for the first time and have a long term relationship with them.
Other Tips for Working with Digital marketing agencies
- It is better to hire a full stack digital marketing agency rather than multiple agencies offering one service only, when you need a complete package.
- Before hiring, make sure that you know all the work and payment policies of agency.
- It is recommended to have conversations with employees and team of the agency too.
- Listen to the suggestions of marketing experts and hired agency because they know how things work and what is good for you.
- Don’t hesitate in making negotiations because agencies always have room for negotiation.
- Document all the discussion and finalized deal among you and great digital marketing agency. It will help you both to stay on same page and monitor the progress accordingly.
- Make sure to give timely feedback to your marketing partner because no matter how skilled they are, they always need you to keep things aligned for your brand.
- In house and outsourced partner team should be aligned for quality project and brand advertising.
- Always be punctual in providing related content and data to your digital partner because their efficiency and success in projects depend on provided data.
- Ask them about their workflow, the tools they use, view their example projects, observe the content they produce for companies, their process of content and marketing strategy.
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