What To Look For In A Digital Marketing Agency (Pt. III)
Let's look at some helpful questions to ask a prospective digital marketing agency.
What kind of KPIs do they use?
In the previous blog, I mentioned how important it is for both you and the agency you hire to keep track of important metrics. If you are considering hiring a certain agency, ask them about their key performance indicators, or KPIs.
It’s great to see that your business’s Facebook posts are getting more likes and shares, as it means more people are becoming aware of your business. But that’s not the reason you hired an agency.
You really want to know how the work that the agency is doing is affecting your sales numbers and site traffic. For this, there are better metrics than likes and shares.
For instance, agencies should be tracking the number of unique visitors on your website, the click-through-rate on the ads you are running, and the bounce rate (the percentage of visitors that leave the website after they have landed on it), just to name a few.
How can an agency help you reach your marketing goals?
In order for you to be able to ask this question, you have to be aware of what your goals actually are. Before you meet with any agencies, decide what you are trying to achieve by hiring them.
Asking this question will not only help you get a better read on an agency, but it will help them determine if your goals are within their capabilities. The best marketing agencies are more than willing to admit their limits, and won’t try to sell you on impossible expectations or promises.
Be sure to ask the agency to go into detail about the steps they will take to reach these goals. They should be able to explain their processes in a clear and straightforward way. It’s not enough for them to say they will create a sound strategy to help you reach your goals--you need specifics.
How have they implemented digital marketing strategies for their own brand?
If an agency is reluctant to share their own internal marketing strategies with you, it could be considered a red flag.
If they are having trouble selling their own brand online, odds are they will struggle with yours. Ask the agency what their own marketing strategies look like, and how they have executed these strategies.
This is a good opportunity to also ask them about how they resolve issues that inevitably arise during their own marketing campaigns. If they are able to handle such issues for themselves, it’s a good sign that they are capable of handling them for their clients.
What does the timeline look like?
Be wary of agencies making outrageous promises of overnight success. The truth is that digital marketing is usually a slow-moving process. If your brand isn’t going viral (most aren’t), it will take some time to start seeing boosts in traffic, revenue, click-through-rates, etc.
The good news is that once you and the agency you hired have put in the work, your online presence will continue to grow as long as it is managed properly. You can think of digital marketing as a long term investment.
As with any long term investment, it takes time to accrue value. But once it does, the value compounds, and the six months or year of unremarkable results seems well worth it!
The Aletheia Difference
I’ve included this section in the two last blogs in order to highlight aspects of our services that we feel play a big role in our continued success with clients. Not only does our agency strive for a certain level of transparency and expertise, we also take pride in the things that separate us from other digital marketing agencies.
As mentioned in the first part of this blog series, one of those things is how we make it work for the client. We fervently believe in carrying out our clients’ visions, and in order to do that, we sometimes have to find workarounds to unexpected issues.
At the end of the day, we want to do everything in our power to help our clients reach their goals, as they are the primary focus of our company. Another aspect of our company that we think makes us stand out is our commitment to great customer service.
We place a high value on clear, polite, and consistent communication with our clients. Good customer service is more than just delivering stellar services to clients, it’s also about the continued management of those services. A big part of any working relationship is open communication, and we maintain that with our clients.
The final piece of the puzzle that is “the Aletheia difference” is our willingness and ability to build relationships. Our clients are at the core of everything we do, and we want to see the continued growth of their businesses.
We realized if we want to be around to see our clients’ businesses grow, we have to foster strong relationships with them. And making it work for the client and solid customer service both serve the ultimate purpose of developing great client relationships.
Now that you know a little bit more about what you should be looking for in a digital marketing agency, you are ready to start the arduous process of actually finding one!
Of course, these lists of tips are not exhaustive. They are just here to help you get started, and there are a lot of things to consider before making the final decision of which agency you want to go with.
Remember to keep your goals in mind, research any prospective agencies, and ask lots of questions during any consultations you have!
Stay tuned for more tips and trends in the world of digital marketing!
