The vast changing world of digital marketing dictates businesses to always be on guard and keep up with the tiniest changes, otherwise one will be out of the competition. That’s why hiring a digital marketing firm is not a privilege but a necessity.
That said, we’ve prepared a list of 6 useful tips on how to select the right digital marketing agency for your business.
Check Out the Company’s Website
A strong online presence is a must for a marketing firm and the key element of it is a highly functional, user-friendly website.
To pick the right marketing agency to perform a smoke testing of the company’s website. If some pages of it show you 404 error instead of useful piece of content, it’s not a trustworthy partner. Another important thing is how the website displayed on mobile devices. Ignoring the indisputable importance of mobile design, the agency shows how unprofessional it is, and the last thing you need is to deal with frauds or newbies whose real-life clients’ list consists of zero.
Investigate Previous Clients
How often do you see bright and well-polished logos placed at the main page of a sales driven website titled “Our Clients’’? Unfortunately, the picture-perfect approach can outsmart a lot of people willing to choose the right digital marketing agency but if you dig a little deeper you might get unpleasantly surprised.
Try to click randomly on some logos. Sometimes, you can discover that some of their owners have very poor online presence, an obvious proof of low-quality service provider.
Get in Touch with Their Support
One of the simplest yet effective ways to select the right marketing agency and check your would-be partners’ reliability is to contact their support. We recommend you establish first contact by email. If the company developed proper guidelines for their reps, you must receive a response within two business days max.
Next, in case everything went smoothly, contact their reps by phone and ask some random questions about their services. Properly trained customer support representative must give you an immediate answer. If not, it would mean the agency hasn’t worked out a set of SOP (standard operating procedures) of processing newcomers, which is a big red flag.
Challenge Them
How to find the best digital marketing agency? Challenge them! Let’s assume you’ve already come up with 2 or 3 options and almost ready to sign a contract. On this stage it’s reasonable to run a contest. Give the agencies a test task that would be close to the one you’re planning to delegate (don’t be too specific, by providing less details you’re checking whether an agency can capture your vision) and set expectations.
The results will help you understand how good the contestants are at pitching ideas, meeting deadlines and keeping up with the latest marketing trends.
Hold One On One Meetings
Treat the process of hiring an agency as though you were hiring an employee. Request resumes and run personal interviews with each one of the team members. Ask the following questions:
- How long have you been working in the industry?
- What projects have you launched recently?
- What are your greatest achievements?
- Describe your last experience of collaborating with {your industry} companies?
The list is incomplete; you can add more industry-specific questions if necessary. The thing is to reveal true talents, the co-thinkers with relevant experience, whose fresh ideas and innovative approach will serve for your benefit.
Ask For Recommendations
To pick the right marketing agency one must apply both creative and scientific approach. Plus, the whole process can be rather time-consuming and exhausting unless you have someone from your business circle who already collaborated with a marketing firm. In this case, you can ask your college for a recommendation, another powerful way to trace the right marketing agency.
However, be careful and don’t fall victim of word-of-mouth advertising. Be unbiased and focus on the actual projects completed by the agency, as the smoothly running experiences received by your business partner may not go the same way for you.
In Conclusion
Choosing the right marketing agency is a big deal. You can either benefit from the effective cooperation or end up losing both time and money. So before making this vital step, take precautions and spend some time on research.
Let’s briefly go through the guidelines one more time to make sure you’ll come up with the right choice:
- Check out the company’s online presence
- Research their former clients
- Get in touch with their customer support service
- Hold face-to-face meetings
- And finally, ask for a recommendation
If you make an adequate choice, you will acquire a long-term partner whose efforts and dedication will become a major leverage for your business. So choose wisely.
Blast Sourcing Team is the best choice for your business!!