Your Go-To-Checklist for Finding a World-Class Digital Marketing Agency

Outsourcing your digital marketing may feel like a big step, but employing an agency is an effective way to improve results and free up staff hours within your organization. Once you’ve decided you need a digital agency, the next step is to ensure you pick the right one.

Here’s what to consider when looking for the best agency for your marketing:

Build goals from your problem points

The reason you’re thinking of employing an agency in the first place is to tackle a number of problem areas. Make sure these remain at the forefront of your search, because sometimes it’s easy to forget why you started the process to begin with.

It’s likely you need to outsource digital marketing services because:

• You’re getting limited results in-house, which could be in the form of engagement or revenue. Ask a potential agency how they’ll address this in their strategy
• Marketing is taking up too much time and your employees need to be focusing their energies elsewhere. This can lead to new trends in the digital space getting overlooked
• Your staff don’t have the required expertise, which can often be the case if you’re relying on one person to carry out tasks in multiple areas
• You aren’t using data successfully, which means your strategy isn’t based on solid foundations likely to produce results
• Different marketing channels have multiple approaches that don’t align with each other

Look at how the agency approaches their own marketing

An effective way to judge the abilities of a digital agency is to see the results it’s generated for itself. If you’re interested in blog management services, take an in-depth look at the agency’s own blog. If search engine optimization (SEO) is a priority for your business, then check out its rankings.

Ask to see case studies

Good agencies should be able to give you examples of successful work they’ve done for other organizations in the past. Not only should these demonstrate that there are other satisfied customers out there but also that the work they did is in line with your goals and the type of strategy you’ll require.

Back this up by asking pertinent questions like how long an average client stays with the agency and who will be completing the work. The answers will either reassure you or set off alarm bells, so pay attention to what you’re told.

Assess the marketing tools an agency prefers

Digital marketers have a wide selection of tools in their arsenal and using the wrong ones or outdated options will slow things down and stop them from being as effective. Find out which tools an agency uses for everything from content management to social media and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Do your research to see if these are good industry standards and add this intel into your data to help make your decision.

Put out a select number of requests for proposals

Once you’ve whittled down the number of potential agencies, ask them to submit a proposal, which will go into more detail about how they’ll carry out the work you require. The responses you get back will enable you to do direct comparisons between agencies before making your final decision.

Refine your search further by setting a task to complete

The only way to truly see if an agency is up to the task is by getting them to do it. Once you’re down to just two or three agencies, you can set them a task to complete and find out if their ideas and processes are in line with what you’re looking for. Set up metrics to monitor the results of the campaign or post you ask them to create, so the hard data can inform your decision.

Build a relationship

It’s very important that you observe how your team gels with the agency, as this is a working relationship that needs to run smoothly. Hold a series of meetings so that everybody involved in creating digital marketing campaigns for your business can meet each other. Pay attention to interactions and how emails are worded, so you know there won’t be future misunderstandings or communication problems.

Think carefully about the price

Every business wants to know they’re getting good value for money, but this doesn’t necessarily equate to using the cheapest agency. Digital services should be priced correctly, so you know you’re going to get high-quality results from outsourcing your marketing. It’s totally legitimate to request an agency’s pricing model so you can fully understand what you’ll get for the money you spend with them.