Hiring a digital marketing agency might be the right step for you to take your business to the next level. But only if you hire the right agency for your business.
Imagine you hired a company to solve a problem for you. And later on, you realised that due to certain reasons, they are unable to deliver the results that you desire.
That would be very disappointing, right? After all, hiring them led to a waste of your time, money, and energy
Yet, that’s the situation most businesses risk finding themselves in. Particularly when they fail to do their due diligence before hiring a digital marketing agency.
There are tons of digital marketing agencies in the world today. But because the industry has a low entry barrier, some agencies are not the experts that they claim to be. That means hiring them could be like taking one step forward and several steps backward.
To help you avoid this problem, this article will disclose four valuable tips to follow so you can ensure you’ll hire the digital marketing agency that’s a perfect fit for your business.
The 4 Tips
Tip #1 – Lay Out Your Goals
No digital marketing agency can help you if you don’t have clearly defined goals. That’s why before you approach any agency to collaborate with, be clear on what success looks like for you.
Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? Do you want more leads to call and use your services? Or do you want your brand to get more engagement with your customers on social media?
Whatever your goal is, it must be directly linked to what generates revenue for your business.
Apart from this, put your business model and structure into consideration. Different strategies work for different business models, after all. If your profits come from repeat customers, for example, a strategy that favours one-time customers will not work best for you.
Needless to say, you must understand your business and know what brings you profit before you hire a marketing agency. Failing to do so will only bring you frustration. It will also prevent the agency you hired from helping you get the best results.
Tip #2 – Get Familiar With Digital Marketing Terminologies
Of course, when you want a job done professionally, it’s best left to the professionals. But how will you know if you’re working with a professional if you don’t know anything about the field?
This is why having familiarity with digital marketing terminologies will be of help.
Your own knowledge of digital marketing will let you determine if you’re really working with an expert who knows their craft. It will also prevent you from feeling overwhelmed when an agency discusses strategies with you.
With that in mind, here are five examples of common terminologies in the digital marketing space:
- Conversion rate. This is the percentage of prospects that take a specific action. These actions could be visiting a website from a search engine or calling a business and becoming a client.
- Cost Per Click (CPC). This refers to the cost of a single click in an ad campaign.
- Impression. This is about the number of instances that a piece of content gets shown to a target audience.
- Click-Through rate (CTR). This is the percentage of clicks an ad campaign gets in relation to the number of impressions it records. Higher CTRs imply that a campaign resonates with its target audience and is doing well.
- Bounce rate. This is the ratio of how many people leave after visiting a website’s page. A high bounce rate implies that a website is not helpful to its visitors, and that’s why they end up leaving.
Tip #3 – Manage Your Expectations
Many business owners assume that simply investing in digital marketing will bring them instant results. It might be true that you may start getting results immediately when you launch an ad campaign. However, this rarely happens.
So, if you have this get-rich-quick mentality, you will end up getting disappointed a lot.
Apart from that, simply running an ad campaign doesn’t guarantee results. You won’t know which platforms or ad types are effective and work best for your business until you do some tests.
Now, some agencies boast about getting you great results in a short period of time. But don’t fall victim to those agencies. Often, they are those who overpromise and fail to deliver.
The truth is that paid advertising takes time to yield good results. Time is essential to nurture ad campaigns and optimise their performance based on the data they generate.
Tip #4 – Don’t Blindly Trust Agencies
Digital marketing agencies are created with the aim of making profits. So, their number one goal is to sign you on as a client – it’s just natural. But that also means you shouldn’t immediately trust any agency, even if they assure you that you’ll get results with their help.
To help you figure out if a digital marketing agency is not trustworthy, watch out for these signs:
- When they overpromise on the outcome. As mentioned, results take time – they are not generated overnight.
- When they use unfamiliar terminologies, don’t explain those terminologies, nor help you go along with the conversation. Using terminologies may be a sign of their expertise. But if they make it difficult for you to understand them and their methods, be wary of that.
- When they don’t give you the login credentials of your ad accounts. If an agency withholds this information, it means you don’t own the advertising they do for you. Refusing to let you see what they’re doing with your accounts could mean that their work quality is poor.
Above all, use your gut feeling. It’s easy to know if someone has a genuine interest in helping you or if they just want to make a sale.
Ready to Hire The Perfect Digital Marketing Agency?
Digital marketing agencies can help your business generate more sales and make better profits. But the reality is that not all of these agencies are capable of getting you great results. Some are just after the sale and are unconcerned about the results they can give you.
That’s why you should consider these 4 tips before you approach any digital marketing agency. They will help you to identify and avoid agencies that only want to make a quick buck off of you.
The good news is that agencies like GMS Media Group always have the interests of their clients at heart. And we always strive to deliver great results for them. In fact, we don’t take on clients if we don’t think we’ll be able to help them.
Get in touch with us if you want to capture more quality leads via search engine marketing. Go ahead and schedule your free consult with one of our GMS experts.
