When you’re searching for the right digital marketing company to meet the needs of your business, there are a few things they should be able to answer for you. By having clear discussions about your needs and your marketer’s capabilities before any work begins, you’re preparing yourself for a smoother, more fruitful and productive experience. In the Handbook: B2B Marketing Using Google & Paid Social, you’ll find an abundance of information about how and why advertising on Google and social media can be so powerful, but what if you haven’t even gotten that far yet? If you’re one of the many business owners, leaders, managers, or entrepreneurs that needs a digital marketing campaign but doesn’t know where to start, we’re here to help.
In this blog, we’re looking at 5 essential digital marketing questions you should ask your digital marketing agency when beginning a brand new campaign.
1. Are you Google Ads certified?
Still the web’s most popular advertising platform in 2020, it should be no surprise that Google Ads certification is vital to having a complete understanding of the current digital marketing landscape. Google Ads certification is a professional accreditation that Google offers to individuals who are proficient in basic and advanced Google Ads concepts. For businesses, Google offers a Partner badge, which is awarded for meeting all the requirements of a Google Partner status. Unsurprisingly, one of the main requirements of attaining a Google Partner badge is to have Google Ads certified employees!
2. What SEO strategies make the most sense for my business?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services are basic building blocks of an effective digital marketing campaign. A dependable digital marketing team will work with you directly to fully understand your business, analyze your target audience and specific personas, and design a campaign that captures their interest, spreads brand awareness, and convinces people to use your products or services. There are countless options of how to achieve all of these things, but the best methods will depend on your industry, your goals, and what you’re willing to invest. Today, digital marketers believe that one of the best ways to connect with your audience is to continuously create and publish high-quality content across your website and social media channels. Quality content that can boost your SEO services might include whitepapers, case studies, ebooks, infographics, handouts, and blog posts, to name just a few.
3. How can SEM be used to help my business?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies are those that involve paid promotion of your content. With paid SEM services, you can expect faster, guaranteed results vs. slow and steady organic methods. It provides measurable results, and you can easily manage your budget so that you only pay what you’re comfortable with. SEM services allow you to get very specific with your digital marketing campaign by targeting audience members who have already shown an interest in your products or services or have visited your site in the past. Since you get to decide who sees your content, you naturally also get to decide what to show them, and this is where SEM services can truly shine. Use paid marketing to bring people to landing pages where you promote specialized offers, such as a free demo or video that speaks to the unique needs of someone in a leadership position.
4. Should I pay for ads on social media?
There are a lot of advantages to paid social media advertising, and there are plenty of options out there if you choose to go the paid social media marketing route. Today, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the biggest names in the game, but not every social media platform may be a good fit for your business. Businesses with huge brand followings often make use of Twitter and Instagram to get their content, news, updates, and offerings in front of the millions of eyes that scroll through feeds every moment of every day. Businesses that want to speak to business owners, CEOs, managers, and other decision-makers may choose a platform with a more focused user base such as LinkedIn, which has paid options like Sponsored Content and InMail. Paid social media marketing campaigns are flexible so that you can customize your spending as necessary.
5. Do you have an experienced in-house website development team?
A quality website development team can mean the difference between a beautiful, seamless online experience, and a sluggish, frustrating mess. An experienced and professional website development team ensures that your online presence is fully functional. That means that every published page of your website is fully built and loads properly, every link works, and every image loads. They’ll test your content in various browsers to ensure complete functionality across as wide a range of users as possible, and always be on top of changes and updates to minimize downtime. This entire section may seem obvious, but one poor website experience could mean losing a customer forever. In addition to keeping all the backend functionality of your website in order, having a knowledgeable developer on your side can provide valuable insight for on-page layout and functionality for your designers and writers as well!
Get Your Campaign Up and Running Today
Now that you have some guidance on the main topics you should be discussing with your digital marketing company, it’s time to dig deeper. Download the Handbook: B2B Marketing Using Google & Paid Social for a closer look at how we’re making the most of Google’s advertising opportunities and social media platforms.