Why You Should Hire a Digital Marketing Agency and What You Need to Know
Why should you need to hire digital marketing agency? Having to find and hiring a digital marketing agency can feel like a daunting task. On your lookout to find the right marketing agency, you may want to know exactly what it is you need. From a set budget to the kinds of problems you want a digital marketing services provider to take over, there’s a host of things to consider before hiring a digital marketing company.
In this guide to hiring marketing agency, we will explore the aspects surrounding how to hire a digital marketing agency and why it is necessary.
Things to Keep in Mind Before Hiring Digital Marketing Agency
Without having proper clarity about why to hire digital marketing agency and what goals you want to achieve – there’s no point in partnering with a digital agency. Below we will explain things you must know before you hire a digital marketing agency.
1. Know What You Require
Knowing what you need will lead you in the right direction. There are different types of digital marketing companies which help solve diverse problems. One type of digital agency will cater to services in one domain. For example, an SEO agency will offer a different skillset and service structure than a web design agency.
For a better understanding, let’s look at the general categories of digital agencies for hire:
Web Design Company
As the name suggests, these agencies have expertise in designing websites. They have expert designers who understand the design trends popular in various industries. Apart from website designing, they may offer initial optimization for search. However, such agencies are looking to add more marketing services to their offering.
SEO Services Agency
An SEO agency solely provides SEO services. SEO or search engine optimization is a vast marketing area, and an SEO-only company caters to complete SEO-related services and reporting. An additional service they may offer is SEO content creation, such as blogs and other web content.
Specialized Digital Marketing Company
Digital marketing agencies execute a single or a combo of different marketing strategies like SEO, design, paid advertisement, social media campaigning, content creation, and email. A client can take a single group of services, such as SEO, or a combination of more than one digital marketing category.
Inbound Marketing Agency
These are the companies that execute inbound strategies and methods. The work of these agencies revolves around creating relationships with customers and bringing in new leads. Such agencies are primarily focused on direct sales.
Content Marketing Agency
In content marketing, distribution is followed among video content, graphics, and all the written text. A content marketing agency is specialized in creating content and organizing the visual elements on screen so that leads can be generated and sales can be boosted. Such agencies are run by single individuals or a team of videographers and content creators.
PPC Agencies
PPC stands for pay-per-click. A PPC agency specializes in paid digital media. Such an agency focuses on advertising on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, as well as on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and others. It always creates a positive difference to outsource advertisement work to an agency that specializes in PPC.
Be clear about what services you are looking for so you can pick an agency that’s the right fit. Is it a need to redesign a website? Or are you seeking to improve your email campaigns? The needs of different businesses are diverse. One business may need several combined service categories, while another may need just a single service category.
A study by HubSpot shows that the more work you do on aligning your sales and marketing relationship, the better impact this will have on the marketing campaigns. Therefore, fitting your goals right from the start will let you know what you need:
2. Prefer an Agency with a Relevant Portfolio
The agencies you choose from must all have experience in serving your industry. A digital marketing company with past clients from your industry in its portfolio is in a better position to understand your pain points.
Experience in providing services to a specific industry enables a digital agency to understand the target audience and devise effective marketing plans to reach that audience. Ask a digital agency that has previously served clients in your industry how much success they had on marketing goals. If you run a consumer products company, ask the agency personnel what results they got on similar campaigns.
3. What Outcomes Do They Offer?
The problem with results is that many digital marketing agencies will share with you inflated claims and promise fast results. You need to beware of such companies. However, if an agency promises you outcomes that are good to be true, then you can trust them.
The best way to tackle and know if something is the real deal is to ask for proof. When you hire a digital marketing agency, if a company makes out-of-the-world claims, have them show their best strategy and their strategy is better than their competitors. They should be able to communicate their unique selling proposition that should be logically convincing.
It would help if you did not trust an agency that promises bottom-of-the-funnel results. Bringing in sales and customers is a process, and if an agency ignores the marketing funnel’s initial stages, then it might not be trustworthy. Especially for businesses functioning in competitive environments, it is seldom possible to get any quick results.
4. Do they Use Advanced Tools?
When looking to hire a digital marketing agency, knowing the tools used is important for your marketing efforts’ success. Whether you need SEO services or Website design and development, the digital marketing company should be able to provide value with the best software tools.
For instance, if you partner with an agency for SEO services, are they using advanced tools like Ahrefs, SE Ranking, and other such efficient SEO tools? In case you need to run email campaigns to nurture leads, is the digital marketing firm using the best tools, such as Email Hunter and HubSpot?
An agency lacking the necessary advanced tools is not the right fit as it shows its unprofessionalism and disinterest in delivering results. You may feel it may not be a big deal, but using the best marketing tools clearly distinguishes professional digital marketers from unprofessional ones.
5. Research the Marketing Agency’s Past Clients
Another critical factor is the firm’s overall experience when hiring a digital marketing agency. The about-to-partner marketing firm should have experience serving companies of your size. Also, the businesses they serve should be from the same industry – so compatibility can be understood.
Equally essential is to see what past clients have to say about the agency’s work. For this, you can read client reviews by checking the prospective agency on Yelp, Google, and other reviews platforms for the relevant industry. This will give you a good idea about the level of services provided by a marketing firm you want to hire.
6. Consider the Scale and Size of the Marketing Firm
Before you hire a digital marketing agency, consider the pros and cons of the agency’s size. You can find good marketing companies that have only 3 to 5 people working. Then there are also big agencies with 400 to 500 people working for them.
Hiring a small-sized firm will allow you easy and direct access to the people managing your marketing work. You can share your thoughts and concerns directly with the technical people. However, the problem with smaller agencies is a potential lack of diverse skillsets. For example, three people can be good at doing ten things, whereas 100 people can offer a broader range of skills and expertise.
An agency with some 250 technical people working can provide a vast range of diverse services in various aspects of online marketing.
It depends on your business’ marketing requirements and your preference whether you’d go for a small or big digital agency. Research done by WordStream shows that a majority of digital marketing firms offer at least seven marketing services – highlighting the efficacy of smaller firms in getting the job done.
Source: wordstream.com
A Smaller firm gives you more opportunities to interact with the people in charge of your project – giving you more control. Whereas with large-sized firms, you do not have that degree of control.
7. Getting Along with the Team is Crucial
Developing a level of comfort with the team responsible for your campaign helps take things forward smoothly. You may not talk to these people daily, but in most cases, you may communicate with them weekly and monthly.
If you or any team member is uncomfortable communicating or are in un accord from the very start, then there’s a high chance you will likely have issues in the future. No matter how good the record performance of the agency is, if you have a gut feeling that you won’t be able to work together, then it’s time you clear out the doubts.
You can ask the marketing agency people some cultural fit interview questions before deciding to work with them. If you find it difficult to communicate because of incompatibility, you should move on and find another marketing firm.
8. Thoroughly Read the Contract
Marketing agencies that are known for their professionalism always do things according to the procedure. They will make sure to have a formal contract signed, including the scope of work that will be done and the pricing. This way, the work is started formally, and both parties are aware of the outcomes.
Source: semrush.com
The contract includes several legal clauses and terms that define the bounds of the contract and the basis on which the bonding is being done. If the contract consists of a twelve-month term, then a client is legally obliged to be bound to them for the whole year – even if a client decides to cancel the work after four months.
It is essential to go through and understand all the terms and clauses being used once you sign, then the whole contract has the force of a legal document. Also, if you find terms you don’t understand, send the document to your attorney for a review, so they may clarify it.
Hiring Digital Marketing Agency VS In-house Marketing Team
Reasons to Hire a Digital Marketing Agency
Hiring a digital marketing agency is usually costlier than hiring a single in-house person responsible for marketing. However, a digital marketing firm’s employees are experts in the digital marketing domain and offer a full range of services in various digital marketing domains. Below are the benefits of working with a marketing agency.
Vast Expertise and Specialized Skillset
When you work with a team of experts at a marketing firm, you get access to specialists who know a lot about their area of expertise. A marketing firm helps you shape your business’ whole marketing strategy, so you can effectively reach the target audience using different mediums such as email, paid advertising, SEO, inbound marketing, and social media.
An agency has dedicated staff members with up-to-date knowledge and can quickly get the job done. What you pay for is the skill, specialized expertise, proven-to-work techniques, and up-to-date knowledge.
Source: skillsyouneed.com
A Third-Party Perspective
A significant advantage of a marketing firm is you get unbiased suggestions about improving your business. You may have good knowledge about your clients, but being a marketing expert is different. The positive difference experienced when you hire a digital marketing agency is the agency’s staff has experience working with many different companies – enabling the experts to give you a new and practical perspective on your business.
They will be able to pinpoint the pitfalls in your marketing strategy and will come up with fresh ideas to make it better. They will tell you what you’re doing wrong and hindering marketing progress and how to do it right.
Fast Working Pace
Among the benefits of hiring a digital marketing agency is the fast pace at which the work is delivered. As marketing firms serve many businesses in different industries, they thrive on strategies and processes that are already in place, and can be executed without unnecessary delays. Also, they usually have a large number of employees, and a significant workforce can execute and complete projects at a fast pace.
For example, if you’re looking to launch a business website, you can have the site go live in two to three weeks. Because of the ability to arrange dedicated teams for individual clients, marketing agencies can provide quick services – so your time is not wasted.
Persistent Efforts
Professional marketing firms have specific standards and understand the importance of providing good quality work while being consistent with your business branding. Businesses often stop paying attention to marketing efforts such as newsletters, PPC advertising, and other marketing collateral. And that’s where laziness starts hurting the business
Whereas, with a marketing firm by your side, you can rest assured that the firm will stay focused on ensuring the SEO, advertising, content marketing, and the rest of the marketing aspects are seamlessly moving.
Why Hire an In-House Marketing Team
Having to hire or not to hire an in-house marketing team depends on the requirements of your business. You increase your monthly expenses by hiring an in-house marketing team (or a single individual). However, at the same time, you get complete control over the marketing strategy and how it is being executed.
In this case, hiring a marketing professional who is an expert of marketing is essential. Such an individual has knowledge about many aspects, from lead nurturing and generation to organically ranking your website. Below are the benefits of an in-house marketing team.
Focused Activity
An in-house team is free from the constraints of dealing with multiple businesses. Such a team can focus on just your business’ marketing. Your dedicated team of in-house professionals will constantly keep an eye on marketing processes and can also introduce quick tweaks to marketing goals and procedures. This way, you and your team are the airplane pilots in the cockpit.
Availability
A dedicated team is available throughout the week in the set shift timing. Also, some members can work even part-time apart from full-time. This way, you are free from the cycle of scheduled times and can review and revise plans throughout the week.
