It can be confusing whenever you need to employ the services of a digital marketing agency for your business promotions.
The main reason for this is that there are just so many of them. On top of that, each one promises to be the best, ideal and right partner for you pledging over the top results.
Many entrepreneurs and small businesses find that they learn a tough lesson after signing up with an agency as expectations normally do not match reality.
Experience and cost of service are usually the two main factors in narrowing down on the agency you want to work with.
However, they should simply be the starting points in your search for a digital marketing agency. There are a number of other considerations and you must ask and discuss about all of these to ascertain which agency is ideal for your specific requirements.
Defining ROI
This is the most important discussion you need to have with a potential marketing agency.
After you have provided the brief and explained your requirements as well as expectations, you need to ask the agency how they would define return on investment (ROI) for your project.
When you talk about ROI, you can clearly differentiate between the pretenders and the real deal.
A genuine agency would first provide what they feel is a generic return on investment on similar projects and then discuss about ROI for your specific marketing campaign.
Return on investment quite obviously differs from business to business. You may be looking to promote an ecommerce company, a SaaS platform, a content based blog, forum or even a brick and mortar business.
The digital marketing agency should be able to discuss regarding your marketing objectives, budget, avenues used for marketing, their own expertise and come up with a realistic return on investment plan.
This plan, will actually provide you with a much better insight on the proficiency of the agency than their main digital marketing plan.
Beware of those agencies that put the onus completely on you or simply tell you there is no proper way of measuring ROI for digital marketing campaigns. A good healthy discussion on ROI will give you the comfort level to go ahead with the agency’s marketing plan.
Analytics setup and integration
When it comes to digital marketing, simply executing what has been agreed upon is not enough.
You need to be able to track, measure and analyze the traffic you receive on your website or app from the campaign.
You need to ask the marketing agency you are interviewing their policies on setting up and integrating analytics and tracking on your website.
You also need to ask how they would be interpreting the data and what do they usually look for to comprehend whether the campaign is progressing as per expectations. If not, then what would they do to ensure the campaign is a success.
Note that it is perfectly reasonable for a digital marketing agency to ask you or your developer to install all tracking codes or anything necessary to track and measure data. They could ask you to signup with services such as Google Analytics and provide them with an access after the developer has inserted all the codes.
If they can do the integration themselves, then it is a bonus. However, if they come back saying data analysis is not part of the service provided, then you need to move on to some other agency.
Specializations vs full service agencies
Not everyone has the budget for a comprehensive digital marketing campaign that includes various facets such as search engine marketing, social media marketing, PPC and SEO, content promotion etc.
It is best you not only understand what you need to do but take the recommendations of the various digital marketing agencies you are interviewing as well.
Over here, you may have to understand whether you need to opt for those agencies that specialize in something specific like PPC or those that are considered a full service agency.
Agencies specializing on particular aspects may be good for short-term campaigns and may even be cheaper than full service agencies.
However, if you feel your campaign will expand in the future to include various other forms of digital marketing, you may want to opt for a full service agency so that there is proper continuation of the campaign without having to go through the initial interview process all over again.
Reporting methodology and samples
This is another important point to discuss.
You must always ask the marketing agency their policies with respect to reporting. You need to ask what kind of reports you can expect, their frequency and what methodology they would be using for the reports.
More importantly, please ask for a sample report so that there are no surprises later.
The sample report will help you understand what data you shall be receiving and you may ask for anything specific that you need at that time.
If you ask for specific reports after the campaign has already begun, then it may surprise the agency and they may not be prepared for it. Best to talk about reporting before finalizing on the agency to avoid any misunderstandings later.
What is needed from your end
Both the client and the marketing agency often make the mistake of not talking about what is needed from the customer’s end during initial negotiations.
Too many agencies come back later saying the campaign didn’t work out because so and so was missing from the client’s website or landing pages.
Please ask the agency what they would like to see from your end. Some may ask for regular content to be updated on the website. Some may ask for a specific type of landing page. Some may even ask for images and graphics related to the company.
Whatever it may be, clear out the client side requirements during contract negotiations.
Final thoughts
The above provided considerations are just a part of overall interview process to finalize on a digital marketing agency. However, they are important and should be discussed without exception.
As mentioned above, you need to also check your own budget, experience of the agency and the recommended duration of the campaign before taking a final decision.
