How You Can Find the Perfect Digital Marketing Agency
Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Agency for Your Needs
Advertising your products or services online is crucial to reach the target audience in today’s technological world. No business can become successful without spreading its word on the World Wide Web. There are many important aspects that you should consider before hiring or start looking for the perfect digital marketing agency. You can’t trust any company with a blind eye.
Here you will explore steps that you need to follow for making the right choice. Let’s discover them without discussing anything further!
Determine Your Advertising Requirements
Businesses and companies hire advertising agencies for more than a few reasons. Not all agencies offer the same experience or services. That’s the reason first you should figure out what services you need.
The common services offered by today’s digital marketing companies include Video Advertising, Mobile Marketing, Google Ads, Market Research, Search Engine Optimization or SEO, Facebook advertising, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, Analytics, Marketing Automation, SEM, and Social Media Management.
If you need someone to create postcards and sales letters, then an expert graphic designer or a freelance copywriter can do the job. You don’t have to hire an entire advertising agency for this task.
On the other hand, you can’t move on without a trustworthy marketing partner if you need to run a broad marketing campaign. They will take care of everything, from paid ads to boosting organic searches. Analyze their functioning and make sure they can fulfill your requirements.
Make sure to check your website’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in detail the way things are analyzed in this Ford Motor company case study. A good SWOT analysis can save you from disappointment. Established digital marketing agencies do a lot of things to help you achieve marketing goals.
Make sure you have a clear objective in mind before you look around for a marketer. Remember, they can only help when they understand your requirements.
Decide on a Marketing Budget
There’s no dearth of digital marketing agencies in the world. Some of these are small and many work on a larger scale. It is understood that larger companies charge a big amount as compared to small ones. First, decide your marketing budget and then start looking for the right deal.
If you have a limited budget, prefer hiring small agencies as they are likely to offer a comprehensive marketing plan on a low budget. You can also choose a few specific services rather than opting for the whole package.
Remember, most of the marketing firms have 3 to 6-month advertising plans. They can charge either a fixed amount per month or variable depending upon marketing efforts. Some companies also charge on an hourly basis. Get in touch with the agency of your interest and ask about their schedule of charges. It’s important to know everything in detail before you sign an advertising contract.
Check Their Background
Doing a little background research won’t take hours. Before you move on to sign a contract, make sure to know about the background of the digital marketing agency that you are going to rely on for your marketing activities.
A quick investigation can save your time and investment. You don’t have a magical stick to check the credibility. So, what’s the solution? The solution is to review the results that they have produced in the past. Look at what they have delivered to their previous clients.
For example, if you want the right digital marketing agency to improve your website’s SEO, then check the rank of the agency that you are thinking of hiring. If they do good for themselves, they can help you rank better in the Search Engine.
Likewise, if you want the company to take on your content marketing, make sure to check their blog. If you are satisfied with the type of content they produce for themselves, then moving on with a positive gesture is fine.
Another great way to check the credibility of an advertising company is to ask for recommendations through social platforms. You can drop an inquiry on LinkedIn and ask peers. If you get positive feedback from other professionals, then it means you can rely upon your company’s digital marketing endeavors.
Ask Questions
No one goes straight into signing a contract. Asking questions is a productive way to satisfy yourself. There are several questions that you should consider asking.
Ask them about similar campaign examples. You can request them to show a portfolio of projects that they have completed previously.
Inquire about team members who will be completing the task. Every digital marketing agency has a diverse team to perform different marketing tasks efficiently. Generally, they have SEO experts, a social media team, email marketing personnel, copywriters, and CPC experts.
Ask them about the duration required to complete the advertising task. You can also request them if they can deliver promised results. Normally, marketing companies don’t make fake promises. Things like SEO takes time to rank your website. So, never get delighted after hearing flattering remarks. If someone is making continuous promises of guaranteed results, there should be something wrong.
Enquire about KPIs
Key Performance Indicators tell how efficiently an advertising company meets marketing goals. Discover what their KPIs are and how effectively they can work to deliver great results. Measuring success rate is not possible without metrics.
In digital marketing, these are the common KPIs:
CPC
Cost Per Click is a paid advertising model where the advertiser pays for every single click on the ad. Paid ads should be well-written using the right keywords. CPC rate is different for different key terms. Google Keyword Planner is used to see the search volume and CPC rate.
CTR
Click-Through Rate or CTR tracks the number of impressions vs. the number of ad clicks. An ad that has a low CTR indicates that you are not focusing on the targeted audience in the right way, and you may need a better copy or even a different advertising offer.
Unique Visitors
Getting a decent number of unique visitors is crucial for increasing sales and leads. You are not supposed to see a boost in conversions without getting the required amount of unique visitors. However, it is important to get the right traffic from the targeted segment. There’s no use in getting visitors who take interest in your products and services.
Average Time on Site
Every visitor coming to your website is likely to spend some time reading the content or going through different category pages.
If a visitor gets what he was looking for, he will likely spend more time on your website. Google values time spent on a website and considers it as an important factor to rank sites. The average time on a website allows Google to evaluate the quality of targeted content.
Aside from the quality of content, site speed is another factor that affects the average time on a website. If a website loads quickly, it’s likely to have a better score in terms of time spent on site. These statistics can be easily tracked through Google Analytics.
Bounce Rate
Sometimes visitors bounce back as soon as the site gets loaded. They cause an increase in the overall bounce rate. This tendency shows that they didn’t take interest in the content. If a visitor leaves your website without spending time on it, then it means the content is irrelevant to their query.
A higher bounce rate signifies that you are not providing quality content or information to your visitors or getting relevant. This can be detrimental to your overall rankings.
Traffic Channels
You are likely to get the targeted traffic from different sources. It’s crucial to know what channels are driving visitors. Being informed about traffic sources helps you in maintaining a good flow of unique visitors to your site.
For instance, if a specific blog post on your site is driving a good amount of traffic, you should create similar content for increased exposure. Furthermore, you will know how different marketing channels are performing to achieve your traffic goals. Metrics of different sources will show the traffic contribution by marketing campaigns, organic sources, affiliate partners, and other websites.
Miscellaneous Checks
Apart from the strategies mentioned above, there are a few important checks that you can run to ensure the best selection.
- Make sure the digital marketing agency you select is capable of delivering results and is specialized in your business niche.
- Understand their working mechanism and how they achieve set goals.
- See their customer feedback and overall ratings on reliable review websites.
- Don’t consider hiring agencies that are willing to work at cheap rates. If you do so, don’t expect great results.
- Before making the final hiring decision, make sure to discuss every aspect of your marketing needs.
- Discover what tools and techniques they use to provide quality results. Cheap and free tools can’t bring an amazing output.
Conclusion
A digital marketing agency is responsible to meet your advertising requirements, no doubt about it. However, you can’t hold them responsible without playing your part. It’s your responsibility to do proper research and explore every little detail before hiring any marketing company. Give yourself the time you need to complete the research work. Don’t be hasty as this is one of the most important decisions that you could ever make to set the fortune of your online presence.