You’ve been running your business for a while now and are starting to hit a plateau of customers you can reach while handling your everyday operations. If you’re not drawing enough customers or are simply weary of the noise and bustle of self-promotion, why not engage a digital marketing agency? You can concentrate all of your efforts on managing and expanding your business by hiring a digital marketing agency to handle all of your internet marketing requirements from a single location. And that’s just one justification for working with a digital marketing firm.
There are other reasons too, maybe you’d like to make some money. Or maybe you don’t have extensive knowledge of the field but don’t believe an agency could offer anything extra. In either case, working with a digital marketing agency has a number of benefits. In order to make things clearer, we’ve compiled the top 5 things to consider before hiring a digital marketing agency, and how to choose the best on for your business.
1. Your Business has hit an online plateau
There may come a time when you’ve maximized the clients you can reach with your current business model. If you want to acquire more customers this may be a good time to hire a third party that can access more channels than you. Increasing your reach online can prove to be difficult considering things changed very quickly.
You could have social media and google search algorithms down at the start of the month, and then Google ads an update that flips everything on its head by the end of the month. Digital marketing agencies are tasked with keeping up to date using these channels and mediums to acquire more leads so you don’t have to.
2. You can save money
A common mistake that many businesses fall into is to throw all their marketing funds into digital advertising in hopes that they get an ROI or go viral. This isn’t a practical way to increase your ROI in the long run and although you may see a small bump in sales. The best strategy consists of a balanced approach that divides the budget into certain areas to save you money.
It could be at the start of campaigns, allocating advertising resources, and creating assets like graphics for logos, flyers, kiosks, and print materials. It also includes campaigns that generate feedback like reviews and User Generated Content (UGC) and creating evergreen content that shows your business’s authority.
3. Save time for other business needs
It goes without saying that running a business requires attention to many areas and tasks that should be delegated. When you get to the point where you need more leads, but also need to maintain the current customer base you have, it can be hard to juggle both while continuing business operations.
This is usually a big pain point for small business owners, in many industries. Leaving the heavy lifting of acquiring new leads to a third party can be a great option to open up some time for other important matters, like running the actual business. If you’ve hit the point where you’re hiring more people on board to expand the business but also need more customers to keep everything together hiring a digital marketing agency is one of the best options.
4. You need extra resources that a digital marketing agency would have
Most agencies are subscribed to a variety of marketing tools. They spend thousands of dollars every month to stay up to date on digital marketing trends and tools that are made specifically for marketing. Make no mistake there are free resources you can find online that may help you get your foot in the door. However, many of the PRO features on these resources are what make the difference in trying to get awareness and actually thriving online.
A digital marketing agency usually has their hands on applications that specialize in: keyword optimization, search engine optimization, content creation tools, and customer relationship management. We’ve made categories for this on Goodlink Marketing as well as reviews comparing softwares and what you should use if you ever decide to.
5. Want a new perspective with industry professionals
Getting to work with a digital marketing specialist can help you see business from a different perspective. Agencies are employee marketers who have worked in various industries and have been a part of teams that have run successful campaigns that can be compared with your business.
If you were ever thinking of implementing a new strategy but have no information on how successful it could be these specialists may have some insight on whether it would be worthwhile or not. There is a chance they have implemented certain ideas and seen success, so they can trim the fat and walk you through the steps to success. They could also have tried some ideas that proved to be unproductive and can help save you time and money by suggesting not to do it.
Choosing a digital marketing agency for your business
There are a few things to consider when hiring a digital marketing agency. We’ll go through the agencies you should avoid at all costs, and the questions you should ask an agency that you feel may be right for your business.
Red Flags
There are universal red flags you should look out for when hiring an agency. The likelihood of agencies that shows these signs should be avoided at all cost. You’ll be more likely to run into complications like poor to no results, agencies just up and leaving mid-campaign, or unprofessionalism in general.
If the agency you’re looking into has no track record this will prove to be a problem. Even if they state from the get-go that they are new/inexperienced an agency would need some sort of portfolio or limited success to prove that they can benefit your business. If they have no ground in the industry and not many recommendations or referrals, we suggest you avoid them.
If the agency you hire has little to no online presence, a lackluster website, or virtually no social media activity it’s a surefire way to run into some issues. Why would you hire an agency to expand your online business when they can’t even do it for themselves? Of course, if they have a track record of working for other industries that may be better or easier to grow than a digital marketing agency this is still an area to pay attention to when hiring one.
Professionalism is a great asset when working with a digital marketing agency. This means getting responses to questions, emails, and calls in a reasonable time. Answering questions and concerns with great understanding, and overall communicating with their clients in a way that makes working with them a productive experience.
Questions to ask before hiring an agency
Once you’ve narrowed a few agencies, you should create a list of questions that you’d like to ask on a discovery call or email. These questions will highlight how well informed the agency is, their expectations on working with your business and if they are a good fit to your goals. Some questions you may ask are:
What KPI’s do you find the most important?
What experience relating to my industry, if any do they have?
How do you handle reporting and at what frequency?
What is your expected ROI?
Do you have a client portfolio and success stories?
Do you outsource any work to a third party?
What areas of digital marketing do you specialize in?
What are the terms for payment? What are your contractual terms?
A digital marketing agency can help you reach your goals as a business much faster than by doing it yourself. Before hiring one you should remember to ask the right questions and vet the agency to make sure they are the best fit for your business. You should also remember that there is no perfect time to hire an agency for work, but your business should be in a position where the ROI on hiring an agency would be well worth it.
If your business is in the position to hire a professional digital marketing specialist on your team instead of a third party you should read this article on the benefits of hiring a freelancer, an in-house marketer, and a digital marketing agency.
