There is much approach to market your business online: PPC, email, social media, content, SEO.

Digital marketing agencies can solve that provocation for you, leaving you to focus on the work you do best. Therefore, finding the best digital marketing agency is no small occupation.

There are a huge amount of digital agencies you could work with. So how is a business owner decide?

Why work with an agency?

Marketing depends on your audience. Like, if you are targeting business executives, then you may want to be seen on LinkedIn. If you are targeting younger people, then Instagram and Snapchat are the places to be. And with the 2.27 billion monthly users of Facebook who are spending an average of 41 minutes each day on the site, virtually every business can see ROI by Facebook ads.

Because there is new marketing strategy popping up every day, it can be difficult for busy entrepreneurs to stay on the top of the latest trends, figure out the best approaches to use different platforms, and become a master in every area of digital marketing.

That is where hiring an agency can help your business.

Hiring a team of experts to supervise the more technical aspects of your marketing tactics allows you to focus on other areas of your business that you enjoy and do best, rather than spend weeks or months trying to find the right person to train and hire.

In this artifact, we will go over how to evaluate a marketing agency, the questions you should ask, and how to decide between hiring an agency or handling your marketing in-house.

What marketing agencies do?

Internet marketing agencies help you get alternative sales by leveraging different marketing tactics to attract your ideal customer and improve your online presence.

The services that agencies provide tend to vary a lot, but in prevalent, you can expect to get these services.

Market Research:

Before you even think about which marketing channels to apparatus, you need to understand your target market inside out. If you do not, any great marketing firm should be able to perform market research for you to unscramble how to best serve you. If anyone tries to sell you a one-size-fits-all method, run the other approach.

Google Ads:

Google ads are one of the great ways to capture the attention of potential customers right now when they are aware that they have a problem. Unlike normal disruptive advertising, search marketing is shown to people who are looking for a solution to their problem. More people turn to google to find an answer to their pain points, so running a google ads campaign that targets that anticipation can be highly profitable.

SEO:

Getting your object to rank high in search is not just about building ‘’brand awareness’ or getting more page views. There is more to it than that. By getting your content to rank high in search. You will be able to capture prospective customers at the perfect stage in the buyer’s journey. Right when they realize they have a problem and keep your solution! While there are certain SEO agencies, most digital marketing firms offer this service.

Facebook Advertising:

Many digital agencies offer PPC management that includes Facebook ads. Targeting features of Facebook combine with its massive user base makes it a fantastic platform for virtually any business to see a healthy ROI. You can target by gender, income, education level, locations, status updates, interests, and even major life events such as a new job, new baby, or college graduation.

Video Advertising:

YouTube reaches more 18-49 years old than the top ten primetime TV shows in the U.S. the immense audience combined with increased engagement that comes with video marketing also makes video ads a great place to see ROI. Online behavior, demographics, locations, interest, YouTube channel, and more can target video ads.

Mobile Marketing:

About 50% of mobile searches lead to purchase, and over 90% of mobile searches lead to action. When that search is related to a local business, that number is even higher: 75% of local mobile searches result in offline search terms and purchases designate high intent to purchase as well.

There is a variety of options. That an advertising agency has when it comes to mobile advertising, such as in-app advertising, YouTube ads, and campaigns to boost mobile app installs.

Content Marketing:

Content marketing is the fuel that built many multi-million dollar businesses. Many companies think that creating marketing content is just about writing a few blog posts every week and slapping them up on a website. However, those who care about sales over vanity metrics realize that it is further complicated than that. Services that agencies may offer within content marketing include infographic creation, blog post generation, SEO writing, social media promotion, and content analysis.

Email Marketing:

Email marketing initiates the most ROI for marketers, even with all the new social networks popping up. In fact, for every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in return. Agencies can offer services like list building, engaging with your list so that it does not go cold, autoresponder sequence optimization, or segmentation.

Website design:

In addition to helping solidify your digital tactics, some agencies also provide website designing services. While not generally thought of as marketing, development, and design can set you apart from your competition, improve trust with your customers, and help you get further exposure.

At the end of the day, there is one main major which can determine whether your site gets sales or not: are your visitors taking the action, which you want them to take?

That means having the right website user experience (UX), form design, and other factors to boost your lead generation and conversions. Agency services in this area can include CRO goal setting, conversion path analysis, and identification of conversion metrics, conversion optimization, and collecting data from website visitors itself. Many agencies are further specialized than others are, but in common, they offer some variation of these services.

However, before you can pick the right digital marketing agency with the right services for your particular business, you have to ask yourself and your potential agencies some questions.

What are your company’s marketing requirements?

The first step in selecting a top digital agency is to figure out your own company’s marketing requirements.

If you an in-house marketing team, what does your team have the skills and time for? What are the marketing strategies that you know you should do but have not gotten around yet? These kinds of questions will shed some light on what you can outsource to an agency to get further efficient results.

How does the agency run its own business?

If an agency can produce marketing results for themselves that is a good sign they will be able to help you do the same.

So if you are thinking about an agency for blog management, how do they generate their blog? If you are thinking about hiring them for social media promotion, how do they handle their social media accounts? If you want to hire for SEO, how do they rank in search for terms in their industry?

By the way, we rank number one for keywords like marketing funnel tactics.

You can verify these details on your own, and ask the agency, customer testimonials and case studies are also a good sign, but you should always double-check your own rather than trusting them at face value.

If the marketing company does not practice. What they preach for their own business, then it could be a red flag that they do not believe in or are not capable of the services that they provide.

What are their KPIs?

Many businesses track vanity metric numbers that may seem like they matter but have no real correlation to producing revenue for their business. Like, the number of likes you get on a post can be considered a vanity metric because it does not always translate directly to sales.

The last thing you need is for an agency to charge you premium rates every month and only deliver more likes on your posts, but no boost in sales. How will they measure your success? Are they picking the metrics that show ROI?

Here are some main KPIs or metrics in digital marketing:

The number of unique visitors:

Depending on how solid the rest of your marketing funnel is, a boost in traffic can be directly correlated to a boost in conversions. But if you are not sure exactly who your target marketing is, producing massive traffic to your site and measuring their interaction with your site may be a quick way of figuring that out.

Time spent on site:

The number of time users spends on your site is data that displays how interesting and pertinent your content is. If your content is highly relevant to a specific situation of visitors, then they will spend a relatively long time on your site. If not, then your content can probably be more targeted. Google loves using this metric when ranking content in search because it displays how valuable your website or blog is to a reader who found your keywords.

Other methods can influence time on your website as well, such as page speed. You can chase your average time on site by the average visit duration statistic in google analytics.

Traffic source numbers:

It is necessary to search which channels are driving users to your site.

Likely, if you find that most of your traffic is coming through a particular article that ranks high in search, then you will need to produce more content similar to that one.

Additionally. It is necessary to measure what type of traffic you are getting. Are most of your visitor’s referral traffic from other websites? Are you getting most of your traffic from specific marketing campaigns? Are you getting organic traffic from search?

Bounce rate:

Bounce rates highlight the percentage of visitors that leave your site after they land on it. A high bounce rate can indicate that the content on your site is not relevant or valuable. To improve it, you should understand the intent behind why someone landed on your page, as well as the match between your ad copy and the landing page.

Cost per click:

CPC cost per click is a purchasing model for paid ads where you can pay each time your ad is clicked. A high CPC can indicate that your ad is not well optimized for your target audience, depending on the ad platform you are using.

Click-through rate:

CTR click-through rate measures the number of times your ad has been clicked versus the number of impressions it received. It can help analyze how targeted audience better and test different headlines, images, copy, or even a different offer entirely.

What results do they promise?

When you are in an industry that has a low barrier to entry, you will inevitably have to deal with people who claim to know what they are doing, but traditionally have no idea. Marketing is one of those industries.

There are plenty of marketing agencies and freelance internet marketers. That promise the world to customers just to close the deal, but lack the skill and the staff to deliver. In the worst cases. They keep charging you money every month and say that it will take a long time to see organic traffic results, even though they know that their actions will never deliver results.

Agencies need also not guarantee bottom-of-the-funnel results because there are just too many methods involved, which are specific to each company that may result in differing ROI. For example, you can make all the right moves when it comes to your marketing, but results will take longer if you are in a further competitive market.

You can figure out low and scammy quality agencies by asking them for their secret sauce. What makes them different? What are their digital tactics for getting your results?

For example, regarding the social media examiner, a good question to ask at this stage is, how are you going to help with content creation? A good answer may go something like this:

The start, we will start by creating a publishing schedule. This is a list of keyword-rich headlines, which provide us a framework for the types of content we need to generate. Ideally, the content comes from within your organization, but if you do not have the resources, we can help to generate a professional writer who has experience with your industry.

In another way, we will have our SEO experts optimize and review the content before it is posted to your website.

Ideally, we can leverage the content you are already producing (case studies, white papers, webinars, sales presentations, emails, etc.) these assets can be transcribed organize, and optimized to draw relevant traffic from the search engines.

One of the most common red flags to see out for when hiring a marketing agency is low prices: a great SEO will never charge low prices. If you are hunting for a discount, chances are you will end up with an SEO who cuts corners and hurts your site in the end.

Be extra careful about hiring SEO or digital marketing agencies that charge next to nothing. You tend to get what you pay for.

Look up agencies on the better business bureau website to see their ratings and if they have any complaints against them.

What do they charge?

You can easily figure out low-quality agencies by price. Many businesses want to save money, so the price is generally the first thing they ask about. Therefore, if you find an agency that charges low prices, then chances are they deliver low-quality results, too.

Think about it from their perspective: if an agency price itself too low, then they make lower margins on their services. Because of that, they are less to go the extra mile for your business because there is no more incentive. Agencies that charge higher prices tend to treat a client with more generosity because they can afford to do. Do not cut the corner when finding the right agency for the job.

Should you go In-House or Hire an Agency?

If you run a small or medium-sized business, chances you are asking yourself this question. Should you hire a marketing agency or go in-house?

Let us start by thinking about what it takes to run a successful marketing campaign here is a great list:

Understanding:

Before running a successful marketing campaign, you should have deep insight into your customer’s behavior. Most marketing messages end up sounding generic because more companies do not take the time to truly understand their customers and the stories behind their problems. You should create a buyer persona:

Processes:

Scaling anything requires complete documentation of systems, workflows, and processes that go into completing a specific task. That means having a structured system to follow when you create a blog post, run media promotions, run a PR campaign or paid ads, etc.

Tools:

Inbound marketing campaigns require a variety of tools from start to finish. Like, you may need email marketing tools (MailChimp or Drip). Analytics tools (Google analytics), communication tools like Slack, and more. These tools help you accomplish your key tasks and hit your goals further efficiently.

Consistency:

One of the most necessary important skills when it comes to inbound marketing is patience. Typically, noticeable results only come in after several months and some of the most successful companies have been consistently putting in effort over many years.

Quality:

It is easy to write random blog posts. However, can you write quality content that your specific target audience will love to read? Do you provide something of value for your readers? Is your article bookmark worthy? Are your videos professionally shot and provide links to everything you talk about? That is what separates decent blogs from truly great ones.

Experience:

Generally, you should make sure that you have experience running and designing some portion of inbound marketing campaigns.

Hiring these different criteria time takes time. It is not easy to publish high-quality content consistently or document rock-solid processes that keep your systems on track.

Hiring an agency can help you avoid the cost of getting yourself and your team up to speed on all the digital tactics as well as avoid getting sidetracked from other necessary things you have to do in business (like closing deals or getting investors).

If you hiring a full-service digital marketing agency, you will get a team of deep specialists who can work on the channels and campaigns which are most effective for your business. They will do everything from tactics to implementation to optimization. Many agencies also offer consulting services where you get a marketing roadmap, which you then implement yourself.

You will not have to worry about assembling your content and marketing team. You will have more people working for you to get results, which can help to accelerate your business growth.

Therefore, the downside is that you will be able to oversee every detail of what the agency does on a day-to-day basis for your company. Because of that, there is a risk of the communication not working out, which is why it is necessary to select an agency that also vets you as a client to ensure that the communication will be a successful one. Since entrepreneurs tend to crave control, that may be harder than it sounds for some people.

Although you may think that the expense of hiring an agency is a downside, it can be more expensive to train. and hire a team in-house to fill important roles, especially if you need an expert for paid social, one for paid search, etc. hiring new employees means more benefits, salaries, and the time it takes to train them on marketing channels and your processes.

Digital marketing agency case studies:

Let’s look at the result that top digital marketing agency can drive for businesses like yours. From these case studies, you will also get a sense of the tangible things which marketing agencies do.