10 Steps to Find the Best Digital Marketing Agency

Nowadays, it is hard to find the best digital marketing agency as there are multiple agencies out there trying to get clients. In the beginning, marketing is all about figuring out where your target audience or customer focuses their attention and then creating content in that place. In the olden days, It was used to be the case that people’s attention was focused more on radio, newspapers, and other offline media outlets.

So it was enough to create and take out ads on those platforms and be in front of your right audience. But now it is more complicated. People’s attention is split across a variety of different platforms. So to grab their attention, you need to have a clear marketing strategy that can be planned and delivered to you by an independent Digital Marketer or a Digital Marketing Agency.

A good Digital Marketer or an Agency will handle all of your digital marketing campaign’s needs right from inbound marketing (such as Web Design, Website Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and Social Media Marketing) to the outbound marketing (such as Traditional Marketing, and outreach campaigns).

You need to know exactly what you want the digital marketer or company to do, and how to identify if they are really good at it. In this article, I will help you to find the best digital marketing agency for your business. You will find out answers to all the following key questions.

• Why you should be using Digital Marketing?
• Why do you need a Digital Marketing Agency?
• Choosing the right Digital Marketing Agency
• Getting the maximum Return on Investment

Why you should be using Digital Marketing?

First of all, it is important to know why you should involve your business in digital marketing. Though there are multiple reasons to market online, the following are crucial reasons to utilize the potential of Online Marketing.

• Your audience is spending more time online
• Build targeted traffic to your website and business
• Delivers better customer experience
• Solving customers problem
• Increase your conversion rates
• Grow your brand’s reputation
• Establish your authority as a brand
• Potential to earn higher revenue
• Expanding the audience reach
• Create your own online communities
• Provides an opportunity to go Global

If you are serious about growing your business and take it to the next level, then digital marketing is the answer not just for today, but for the future. The world is going digital and now it is time you do the same. If you get a chance to find the best digital marketing agency, you will stay on top of your competitions.

Why do you need a Digital Marketing Agency?

Now, you need to know what a digital marketing agency can do for your business. Not all companies employ experts in every aspect of digital marketing. Often agencies will specialize in one or two areas, and be generalists in others. Start by identifying which aspects of digital marketing you are looking to outsource. These might include:

• Brand strategy (Market Research, Strategic Documentation, Management, and Reporting)
• Website Design and Optimization (Layout, Content Writing, and Management)
• Content marketing (Strategy, Writing, Distribution, and Optimization)
• Local SEO (Google My Business Setup, Management, Optimization, and Reporting)
• SEO strategy (Technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO)
• Email marketing (Strategy, Content Creation, Scheduling, Subscriber Management, and Reporting)
• Social Media Management (Content Creation, Posting, Engaging with customers and Reporting)
• Social Media Advertising (Ad Campaigns, Audience Management, Optimization, and Reporting)
• Pay Per Click Advertising (Strategy, Content Creation, Budget Management, Optimization, and Reporting)
• eCommerce Solution (Web Development, SEO, Paid Advertising and Email Marketing)

A bigger Digital Marketing firm will provide you with all the above-mentioned services as the niche digital marketing firm will provide you only with selected core services. Once you have found agencies that specialize in the right services you are looking for, you are ready for the following hard-hitting decisions.

Choosing the right Digital Marketing Agency

Before you start interacting with the chosen digital marketer or digital marketing agency about a digital marketing strategy for your business, there are few things you should do first which are as follows

1. Decide how you want to Work

Do you want to hand over all your marketing efforts to an agency, so you can focus on your core business? Will you prefer to work with a larger agency that will provide a broad service range or a niche agency that is specialized in a specific type of marketing with deep expertise? Do you want a digital marketing firm to be an extension of your marketing team? How much time can you and your team afford to spend working with an agency?

You have to decide on all these points before everything. Remember, there are pros and cons to each approach. Ultimately, it is about you on how you want to manage your business relationship.

2. Know Your Budget

Next comes the budget. For your digital marketing budget, you need to take three things into consideration: What you wish to spend, what kind of ROI are you expecting, and what are the goals that you wish to achieve. All these start with examining the overall digital marketing budget and deciding with which you are comfortable spending. But still, you may not come to the conclusion of the marketing cost. Finally, It is more about the ROI than the initial investment.

3. Define Your Goals

Have a clear goal and what you want to achieve with the digital marketing strategy. Not only you do need to have a clear end goal, but you also need to consider the KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) that will be used to determine your digital marketing success. If you have a clear goal, a marketer or an agency will help you to achieve your defined goal.

4. Check their Online Presence

Since you have a clear vision about goals and budgets. It is time to start hunting different digital marketers and digital marketing agencies. It is important for an agency to have a strong online presence. If they have it, they are capable of doing the same for your business. If not, you might check other agencies. Because, if an agency cannot market itself and create an online presence, it cannot do well for your business.

5. Evaluate their Passion

You want people working on your marketing team or on your behalf should love what they do and will take it personally. The combination of passion, professionalism, and experience can create powerful work. If they are keen on your budget than your goals, it is better to stay away from them.

Because they will not provide you with the value that they are paid for. Instead they will look to charge more on their service. So do look to work with people who show a keen interest in your goals and customers than budgets.

6. Check their Credentials

You need to check the references of all the digital marketing agencies that you interview. You should ask them to show their case studies, winners, and losers of their campaigns with past and present clients. If they have listed their clients on their website, it is good to choose a couple of them at random and enquire about their experience with this agency.

If you are looking for any specific type of digital marketing strategy, you need to look at their work in that area. For example, if you want some agency to develop a website or manage your social media accounts, take a look at their previous website works and their client’s social pages to check the authenticity of their works.

7. Assess Company Culture

It is equally important to look at a company’s culture and approach. You need to work with a team that will invest their time and effort to truly understand your vision and mission. Too many companies will pull a generic marketing strategy off the shelf and apply it to multiple businesses. But every business situation is unique and deserves a unique solution, so find an agency that provides unique solutions for your goal

8. Demand Transparency

Digital Marketing pricing will vary irrespective of the demanded service depending on the tools and hours spent on your services. You need to have a descriptive billing of what all are the services that you get, agency deliverables, and what you will pay for each of its items. If they are outsourcing any service on your behalf, demand transparency with that also. Because only transparency can help to maintain a stable business in the long term run.

9. Reporting And Communication

You need to have an agreement about reporting and communication signed with the agency. You need to discuss your point of contact, on how will you see marketing reports or have reviews. At which KPI, you need to check for the effectiveness of the digital marketing campaign. Many relationships with digital marketing agencies that have gone awful are due to the different expectations from both sides. It is necessary to make a clear statement about communication and reports

10. Listen to their Ideas

After the research, if you believe they may be the right fit for your business, it is time to put them for an evaluation before going for the bigger campaigns. Put it across a piece of information about a specific goal you are willing to achieve and ask them to define the best marketing solution for it. You also need to listen and see the demonstration of the ideas suggested by them.

When figuring out a pitch, following are the important metrics that you need to take into consideration:

• Creativity: Does the strategy relates to your brand?
• Strategy: Do you believe that they can fulfill your goals?
• Presentation: Do they have the caliber to deliver and achieve your objective?
• Budget: Does it comes under your budget and are they able to deliver the best out of it?

Getting the maximum Return on Investment

It is always about getting the best value. You need to have a healthy relationship with the agency you have chosen will have a desire to work for your goal and should be able to deliver you what they promise. It is not about finding the cheapest service or agency. There are multiple agencies that are ready to provide you service for the cost that they quote. You have to spend enough to get the right agency for your goal.

Always, look for a creative agency that offers unique and better solutions. There are situations where they will be spending more in the beginning and it will differ from other businesses depending on the sector. So don’t compare costing with other businesses as the strategy will be different for different sectors.

It is a kind of investment that you should never miss. If you have found the right agency, they will cut down the useless spending and will increase your ROI.

Wrapping Up

These are the steps that will help you to find the best digital marketing agency for your business. Before you start hunting for the right agency for your business, make sure you know what you want from them in terms of marketing experience, agency size, and of course price.

Finding the right digital marketing agency will not be that difficult. The best digital marketing agency will focus on finding the solutions to market your ideas and develop specific & unique strategies to provide the best return on your investment (ROI). Then, it is up to the agency to win you over and prove that they are the best fit for your business goals.

Still, if you are facing troubles to find the best digital marketing agency for your business, you can contact me where I will help you to find the best service for you.