Investing in a partnership with a digital marketing agency is critical in today’s fast-paced digital world – but wasting money on an inexperienced or ineffective firm does more harm than good. There’s nothing more frustrating than blowing an already-strained budget on an agency that doesn’t give you the results that you want and need. Can you avoid this expensive headache? You bet! To be sure you choose the right agency to market your brand, follow this expert advice on how to evaluate a digital marketing agency.
Finding the right digital marketing agency is difficult because you’re discussing a field in which the agency is the expert. It can be easy to lose your way and start valuing their priorities over your own. This can create a bad fit. What you have to do is focus on your needs and your priorities within their expertise. Follow these ten tips on how to do just that:
1. Make sure you clearly define your expectations
Before you even set out to work with an agency, identify and clarify your expectations. Miscommunications hinder results. Now, this isn’t all on you. Your digital marketing agency should have a proven process by which they immerse themselves in your business. Be on the lookout to see if they are asking the right questions to learn about your brand, and be sure to set the goals you want to meet early.
These goals shouldn’t just be about numbers, although they can include these sorts of milestones. These goals should primarily be about how you work together, and how decisions are made. These goals should incorporate what you want your website and social media presence to look like.
In other words, goals should be about building a foundation that the right digital marketing agency can create with your business. These goals should be about the structure you create together, a structure that will allow you to reach numerical goals more efficiently. This tells you how well you can meet the objectives you set, and not just whether they can agree to a set of numbers.
2. Do your homework
As the digital landscape expands, so too does the number of agencies purporting to be able to help you. Start with a broad search for agencies, and then begin a more targeted search for those with positive online reviews, client testimonials, and BBB ratings.
Every digital marketing agency should be proud to show off their successes. Ask to see some recent work. Do they have case studies that demonstrate how they applied a strategy? If they can’t show you a previous example of their digital strategy succeeding, this is a red flag.
Ask to see work that intersects with your industry, too. This doesn’t mean that you have to follow the same strategy as one of your competitors, but it does show you the agency already has knowledge in your industry and how to mount campaigns within it.
Finally, ask them to share how they solved a major issue. When have they failed with an initial strategy or element, and how did they course-correct? You want to work with someone accountable, and who isn’t glued to their egos about a strategy. You want an agency that’s flexible and adaptable. Every agency has encountered something unexpected, whether it was their fault or not. How did they work with the business they served to handle it?
3. Get client referrals
Ask the agency for referrals to find out firsthand what types of successes they’ve helped their clients achieve. Are the referrals happy with the agency’s services? Would they recommend them? Burrow down past the surface details, too. What were they most happy with? If they had a critique about that agency, what would it be? The best way to make sure you choose the right digital marketing agency is to ask probing questions.
Understanding both the good and bad about other businesses’ experiences allows you to start developing an idea of how they’d fit yours. If all you hear is a blanket recommendation, that doesn’t suggest their way of working or communicating. When seeking out referrals for quality agencies, ask how the agency excelled, where it struggled, and how they worked to fix that struggle.
An agency that encounters an issue, and then works and communicates to solve it may be a better selection than an agency that encounters no issues at all. You know one can solve a problem, acts accountability, and communicates. The other may have just gotten lucky. Get full pictures of the business-agency relationship.
4. Don’t overlook the Agency’s Own Marketing Efforts
You can know all the ins and outs about how to evaluate a digital marketing agency, and still miss the most obvious one. How’s their marketing for themselves? Does their own website load quickly and present cleanly on multiple platforms? Is their content interesting, educational, and edited correctly? Are their ads effective?
What about their social media? How do they give a voice to their own brand? Do they interact with comments reliably? If they use chat bots, do they come across in a friendly manner? Are they useful?
A digital marketing agency can’t do for you what they can’t do for themselves. Make sure the technical aspects of how they market themselves work well. It’ll be different from how they’d market your business, so this is less about their strategy and more about their implementation. Make sure they’ve implemented technical, design, and content elements cleanly and consistently.
5. Send a request for a proposal
You are an expert in your business, and that’s why it’s important to make sure that your request for proposal contains relevant information that a digital marketing agency would need to develop an effective strategy.
Talk about your brand background and how you’re currently positioned. Explain who your target customers or consumers are, and describe your budget and timeline. A lot of your questions about the agency’s approach should be answered with their proposal.
6. Consider starting small
It is possible to give a prospective agency a small assignment before you sign with them for a larger one or for a long-term commitment. For instance, you can ask them to audit your website. An audit will give you insight into how you can improve your digital offerings. An audit will also give you insight into the digital marketing agency’s offerings.
Where would they want to optimize what you’re already doing? What do they see you doing successfully that their expertise and resources can build on and expand? What are the strengths they see in your current marketing strategy that will either reinforce new strategies or that new strategies can reinforce?
At the same time, what efforts of yours do they see as inefficient? What elements of your strategy need a tear-down and a re-think? Does the website need to be redone? Does an app need to be pulled back and overhauled? Is your social media presence setting a bad tone?
Know both what they see as strong that can create the bones of your new strategy, and what they see as needing an overhaul or replacement. Understand the schedule they suggest for replacing certain elements, and be realistic about cost and time to do so.
7. Evaluate the Agency’s Input and fees
As with anything, if what they tell you seems too good to be true, don’t accept it. Some firms will say anything to get your business, but the will deliver an honest appraisal of your strategy.
At the same time, a fee structure that you feel comfortable with is a must. Typically, it ranges between 10 and 20 percent of a media buy. Features such as a website overhaul or content production might follow different fee structures depending on how these are timed or how they’re built into campaigns.
All of this should be on the table starting out. It might vary as you hammer out plans and decide to scale up one element or another. Yet you should have a clear idea of what the fee structure will look like well ahead of time and how it factors into your own budget.
8. Try to meet Face to Face
In today’s world it might be difficult to physically meet with with people in your , but thankfully you should be able to video chat. Set up a time to meet in person or virtually with the experts so that you can know, exactly, who you will be working with. It’s helpful to put a face to a name, particularly to your dedicated account manager.
9. Make a Decision
You may find more than one right digital marketing agency. You may find one that will work with your current marketing staff in a cohesive way, and one that supplants some of their duties efficiently. You may find one that’s extraordinarily strong on design elements, and one that’s superb at rapid communication and technical implementation.
You can find yourself frozen between two great choices, and end up making the only bad choice: none at all. When you have the information you need, get going. Make a decision. Hire one and get started. Don’t float between them for months on end imagining what could be with either. Many digital marketing strategies rely on building a foundation for long-term growth. You only make it longer by delaying.
Know when you have the information you need, and if you have two great choices, start moving forward with one.
10. Sign the agreement
Make sure you don’t sign any agreement that is restrictive or one that states unrealistic expectations. Be sure that every aspect is clear; if it’s not, ask questions. And if they are not answered to your satisfaction, hold your pen.
With these tips, you can find the right for your business and get started on forging a mutually beneficial relationship.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2018 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.