A digital marketing agency can be a valuable partner to your business, though you may not fully realize all they can do for you. As a sales or marketing manager, your job is to bring in customers through your business’ “front doors.
Today, 81% of customers undertake online research before making a purchase decision, so having a strong online presence that engages and nurtures clients along their customer journey is critical. A digital marketing firm can handle all of this and more for your organization.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a multifaceted strategy aimed to target, reach out to, and build relationships with customers online, across a broad range of channels, ultimately getting them to make a purchase and more purchases in the future.
The outcomes of internet marketing are astounding. When compared to companies that never publish, blogging alone may help them generate 67 percent more leads. SEO also has a conversion rate of 14.6 percent, which is far greater than typical outbound tactics’ 1.7 percent conversion rate.
Digital marketing consists of the following tactics:
- Content Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Video Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Online Advertising
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
A digital marketing agency employs a wide variety of different tactics, strategies, and online tools to help a business attain its marketing and sales goals. This can make planning and executing a successful digital marketing campaign a challenging prospect for most solopreneurs and smaller marketing departments.
Given the scope of digital marketing, it’s helpful to look at the most popular types of digital marketing agencies and the services they offer.
7 Types of Digital Marketing Agencies (and What They Do)
If you are unfamiliar with the business, selecting a digital marketing agency might be difficult. Some agencies focus on a single sector or service, while others provide a wide range of options. Keep in mind that the ideal option for your company will be determined by your budget, digital marketing goals and objectives, and how hands-on you want to be with your digital marketing. Seven of the most popular types of digital marketing companies are listed below:
1. Digital Marketing Agency
A digital marketing agency reaches customers online through omnichannel marketing, multichannel marketing, or single-channel marketing. With multichannel and single-channel marketing, agencies interact with customers in one or multiple channels such as websites, blogs, email, social media, and more. Omnichannel marketing refers to marketing that provides a seamless customer experience across channels and devices throughout their lifecycle. A digital marketing agency typically won’t offer traditional marketing services.
2. Full-Service Digital Marketing Agency
A full-service digital marketing agency is often larger than other sorts of firms and provides a wide range of digital marketing services. Full-service digital marketing companies are frequently partnered with businesses because they have experience with specific tasks that the businesses require, such as lead nurturing campaigns or website redesigns. These companies can also provide additional strength to existing marketing teams at a lesser cost than hiring new employees.
3. Inbound Marketing Agency
Inbound marketing methods and strategies, as opposed to typical outbound strategies, are provided by an inbound marketing agency. Inbound marketing firms work to position a company online so that customers can find them, gain confidence over time, and finally make purchases. Inbound marketing methods can provide considerable returns over time, but they usually take a longer time horizon (six months to a year or more) before leads and sales “hockey stick.”
4. SEO Agency
Digital marketing agencies that specialize in SEO (search engine optimization) help their clients’ websites and website content to rank high on search results. They will have specialists perform the following:
- Keyword research
- Website audits
- Backlink audits
- Website and blog content
- Metadata assessment (checking the quality of URL, title tags, meta descriptions, etc.)
- Video description optimization
- Link building
- And more
Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEM Rush, and SEO Moz are just a few of the data analytics and website development tools that an SEO business will use. SEO firms are always among the first to implement search engine optimization best practices, such as ensuring compliance with Google’s constantly changing search algorithm.
4. Digital Ad (PPC) Agency
Sponsored search, often known as paid advertising, is another method of driving visitors to a company’s website. Paid traffic, as opposed to free organic traffic, is investing money to bid on keywords and ad placement in search results. Websites, search result pages (SERPs), and social media platforms can all display digital advertisements.
Digital ad agencies know how to produce attention-getting, keyword-filled ads that conform to the best practices of the digital platforms on which ads appear. Popular services include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube ad creation and deployment, and Google Ads Manager account creation and maintenance.
5. Online Ad Agency/PPC Agency
Paid search, also called paid advertising, is another way to generate traffic to a website. Unlike free organic traffic, paid traffic involves spending money to bid on keywords and ad placement on search results. Digital ads can appear on websites, search result pages (SERPs), and social media channels. This can bring you leads quickly, but your campaign must be properly set up to reach your target audience.
Online ad companies that specialize in digital marketing know-how to create attention-getting, optimized ads that follow best practices. You can employ an online ad agency on its own or in tandem with other firms as part of a larger web strategy. While PPC may be effective on its own, it is most effective when combined with a less costly long-term plan that can take use of the sponsored traffic you produce.
6. Social Media Agency
When businesses want assistance with creating and sustaining a social media presence, they turn to social media companies. Social media firms may manage and generate social content as well as set up ads on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. They’ll also provide services for responding to and reacting to client interactions on social media. Influencer outreach for cross-promotion or affiliate marketing may also be available.
7. Web Design Agency
A web design firm is a group of creative designers that work with businesses to create customized and optimized websites or web pages. Whether it’s for a completely new website, a website makeover, or a smaller job, web designers will manage the look, feel, and functioning of the pages. User experience and user interface (UX/UI) design and research, picture production and storage, web development, and web hosting are all services provided by website agencies.
Digital Marketing Consultant
A digital marketing consultant is a professional who may or may not be affiliated with a digital marketing agency. Digital marketing consultants have a broad knowledge of digital marketing and can help businesses come up with a digital marketing strategy. They can identify weaknesses in your current strategy, areas of improvement, and the best way to make the most gains. They may also have a network of other marketing professionals or agencies they can refer you to for further assistance.
What Does a Digital Marketing Agency Do?
Companies work with digital marketing agencies because of their expertise in online marketing. Agencies know the latest trends, best practices, and best tools and strategies that are needed for digital marketing success.
Below are specific things to expect when working with a digital marketing agency:
Digital Marketing Agencies Grow Organic Traffic to Your Website
The overall goal of any digital marketing endeavor is to generate as much organic traffic to one’s business website. Marketing professionals at digital marketing agencies know the ins and outs of inbound marketing, customer journeys, and search engine search algorithms. When you work with a digital marketing agency, organic traffic (traffic from people who find your website online via a search engine search) to your website will increase. Your website will attract more leads with fewer costs. These leads will also be better quality leads that will increase the probability of them making a purchase.
Digital Marketing Agencies Generate Sales-Ready Leads
The professionals at digital marketing agencies will know your business, your marketing goals and objectives, your sales funnel, and your ideal targeted audiences. Additionally, they will also be knowledgeable in various inbound marketing tactics such as content marketing, social media marketing, web design, and search engine optimization.
In your sales funnel, different inbound marketing tactics are more effective than others based on where leads are within your sales funnel. When working with a digital marketing agency, you’ll be able to get the right message delivered through the right online medium, at the right time to each lead within your sales funnel. A digital marketing agency will help you generate sales-ready leads by moving leads from the top of your sales funnel to the bottom.
Digital Marketing Agencies Expand Your Brand Reach
Your clients are on the internet. That is something you and every digital marketing agency are well aware of. Because digital marketing companies specialize in promoting businesses online and building online relationships with customers, they understand how to increase your brand’s online reach. Working with a digital marketing agency will help your website gain more visibility through keyword analysis and customer persona building. Your brand will get an additional online presence on numerous social media platforms if you hire a digital marketing agency to handle your social media marketing.
Digital Marketing Agencies Improve Your Marketing from Top to Bottom
The digital marketing agency you choose should feel like an extension of your internal marketing team. What your internal marketing lacks in terms of specialized digital marketing knowledge and time, your digital marketing agency partner will address.
A digital marketing agency will also catch weaknesses in your current digital marketing activities. If your marketing team is small, chances are you won’t have the expertise your unique digital marketing campaign needs to be effective. For example, you need web design, SEO, public relations, email marketing, and social media marketing. You may not have the expertise in all these areas.
A full-service digital marketing agency like Digitizal, on the other hand, offers:
- Search engine optimization
- Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
- Social media marketing
- Marketing automation
- Content marketing
- Facebook advertising
- PR services
- Email marketing
- Video production
- Event coordination
- Website development
Is a Digital Marketing Agency Right For Your Business?
Before hiring a digital marketing agency, it’s important to first assess your company’s needs. Do you need help with overhauling your content, implementing some SEO changes, or redesigning the UX for your website? Then you’ll want to evaluate your company’s own marketing skills, strengths, and capabilities to determine whether an agency and what type, can benefit your business. Do you already have an in-house team that needs some help or is all of your marketing outsourced?
Once you’ve asked these questions, you’ll have a better idea as to whether or not working with an agency is the right choice. You’ll also know what kinds of digital marketing services your business needs.
Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency? Ask These 12 Questions
When choosing a digital marketing agency to work with, be sure to do your research ahead of time. You will also need to know your digital marketing goals, budget, and the degree to which you want to be involved in deploying a digital marketing campaign.
Below are some questions you should ask prospective digital marketing agencies:
- Will you have a designated contact person or project manager in the agency?
- Will in-house specialists or freelancers execute the work?
- How big is your contract relative to the other ones the agency is under?
- What online tools and software do they use?
- How much of your budget will go to administrative costs?
- What does a good client look like for the agency? Or a bad client?
- What KPIs does the agency use to measure success and how will this be communicated to you in routine meetings?
- What can you expect from the first 90 days (or an equivalent starting period) of your contract?
- How often will you be informed about the status of your digital marketing campaign?
- What is the agency’s pricing structure?
- Is there any proof of their success with companies like yours?
- What do their testimonials, BBB ratings, or Google Reviews indicate?
You want to ensure that you are making the best decision for your business before handing over the reins to a digital marketing agency.
What Does Digitizal Do Differently?
At Digitizal, we embrace the inbound marketing framework, because it’s designed for the way today’s customers think and act. We can help your business attract customers when they’re ready to make a purchase decision instead of cold-calling and hoping they’re ready to buy.
To do this, we first have to find out how we can actually help you improve your marketing. We know that every business is different and a cookie-cutter approach won’t help you achieve your specific marketing goals. That’s why we use our 6-step inbound marketing methodology to find the kinks in your marketing machine. With this process, we’ll quickly pinpoint the problems in your sales and marketing funnel and work backward to devise a strategy to fix them.
And we have the talent to do so. Our T-shaped marketers have a wide breadth of knowledge of everything marketing and can spot needed areas of improvement. However, each also possesses its own superpower, whether it’s writing sensational content, generating more traffic than you ever thought possible, or creating graphics that are truly an art. That means each member of our team can deliver on the changes that need to happen.
Some of the outcomes of the results-driven process at our digital marketing agency include:
- Growing organic traffic to your website
- Generating and nurturing sales-ready leads
- Using new channels to expand brand reach for customer acquisition
- Increasing revenue
- Reducing lead acquisition cost
Digitizal: A Data-Driven Digital Marketing Agency That Will Help You Increase Revenue
Effective digital marketing may help your business create leads and consumers, but doing it on your own can be laborious, time-consuming, and costly. As a result, many firms hire a digital marketing agency to help them. Contact us now for a free 30-minute strategy consultation to examine your strengths, weaknesses, and areas of potential to see where your marketing might improve!
Ready to work with a digital marketing agency? Find out how we can improve your online presence and generate sales!