How to Hire a Digital Marketing Agency?

If you have a business, chances are you need help with your digital marketing initiatives. Working with the right marketing agency can help you meet your long-term business goals while allowing you to stay focused on managing and running your business.

As a business owner, you are probably too busy to keep up with the ever-changing technology landscape and marketing changes. Still, you should also understand the importance that digital marketing has on your business.

When it comes to outsourcing your marketing needs to an agency, there are many things you should consider before making a decision.

When you work with an agency, you’ll want to make sure they can deliver what you need, avoid the temptation of working with an agency that promises to deliver on all of your marketing needs – which may involve things for which you haven’t planned.

You’ll want to look at your current marketing situation to figure out what your wants and needs are exactly. Finding the right digital marketing agency also involves having a clear understanding of your budget, as well as what your expectations are.

Assess your Digital Marketing Needs & Wants

Before reaching out to potential digital marketing agencies, be sure to consider what your marketing needs are and how you expect to reach your overall business goals.

Below, you can find some of the questions you can ask yourself to get started.

 

Have you conducted market research and analyzed your competition? 

By researching your market, you’ll be able to understand your current position better and set ambitious but yet achievable marketing goals.

Taking the necessary time to research your competition will also give you a better idea of some of the things your company could be doing in the digital landscape, which you can later brainstorm with a potential digital marketing agency.

 

What are your current marketing initiatives, and where do you need help?

It may seem tempting to hire an agency that will solve all your marketing problems, but this can be a mistake. Start by looking at what you’re currently doing and where you need help.

For example, you may already be pursuing SEO initiatives, but you are not actively pursuing paid marketing initiatives like Google Ads and Social Media advertising. You may also need some help with content marketing.

If you are satisfied with your SEO results, you can then focus on potentially hiring an agency to help solve your paid advertising needs. You may even consider additional assistance to fine-tune your content marketing initiatives.

 

Photo by Smartworks Coworking on Unsplash

Define your Budget

Once you know what you need help with, it’s time you decide on how much you can invest in it to make it happen.

Having a well-thought-out digital marketing budget and splitting your available resources well will allow you to better track and measure your long-term business objectives with digital marketing.

For example, let’s say you decide to continue pursuing specific digital marketing initiatives on your own, like SEO. Still, you realize you need some help with paid advertising and content marketing. In this case, you could set yourself up with a budget to continue managing your SEO and set aside another part of your budget for paid and content marketing, which you can discuss with a potential agency.

 

Define your Expectations

Once you know how much you want to invest in your overall digital marketing efforts, you’ll want to define what you expect to get from it and set some goals with clearly defined deadlines.

Keep in mind that different marketing initiatives may require a substantially different amount of your overall marketing budget and a different time frame in terms of deliverability.

For example, SEO can take months or even years to generate a sustainable ROI, but you’ll need to invest sufficient time to make it work.

On the other hand, paid marketing initiatives can result in near-immediate results, but it can take a more considerable upfront investment until you find what works best. By working with a marketing agency, you can have a potential team of experts continuously optimize your campaigns to increase your ROI. Moreover, with the ongoing changes in the digital marketing space, like algorithm updates and even policy changes, you’ll save a lot of time by working with an agency that takes care of proactively addressing issues.

Always remember to set S-M-A-R-T goals, either when working on things on your own or with a potential digital marketing agency. That is, your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

When you know what success looks like, you’ll have a much better chance of achieving it and knowing when a particular agency delivers the results you expect.

 

Research Potential Agencies

It can be an excellent idea to research multiple digital marketing agencies before deciding to find one that aligns with your particular budget, needs, and expectations.

For example, if you need help with your paid advertising needs, consider looking for agencies specializing in this area. If you need assistance with something specific in the paid advertising space, like Facebook ads, you could go as far as working with an agency specializing in such.

However, just because an agency provides many different services does not always mean that it will not do a good job and successfully meet your expectations. Many agencies have various specialist departments with the right professionals, allowing them to do an outstanding job in more than one area.

Additionally, when you visit their website, always look for testimonials from previous clients. It would help if you also asked them for references so you can hear from past clients directly. Any reputable agency should also have a website containing sufficient information about its clients and areas of expertise.

It can also be a great choice to work with a digital marketing agency that may already have experience working with your particular industry if you think it would help accomplish your marketing goals.

 

Conclusion

Hiring the right digital marketing agency is an excellent investment as long as you take the time to understand your marketing needs, budget, and goals.

 

📸. Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash