What distinguishes a top-notch digital marketing firm? A few considerations include testimonials, a variety of digital marketing services, and cultural fit, but there are a tonne more. We also talk about how to look for and select the best digital marketing firm.
For optimum success, include the agency as a member of your team whenever possible and whenever it makes sense so that they can manage your company with the same context and knowledge that you possess and may even take for granted. When an agency aspires to become an equal partner with you and a driven steward of your business, you know you’ve made a wonderful partner choice.
A few Important Considerations for Selecting the best Digital Marketing Consultant.
First, specialisation
The flexibility of an agency to provide numerous services based on client needs at the time, or based on a bigger, holistic plan, is frequently traded off with “full-service” one-size-fits-all agencies.
This is not to say that a certain organisation is not excellent at a variety of services, but there are some areas you would want to pay particular attention to:
User experience design versus web design
While some agencies focus on user experience (UX) design, others specialise in artistic, creative web design. UX design creates more utilitarian, user-centered designs that are frequently supported by user research, heatmap data, and artificial intelligence rather than more ethereal and art-focused concepts and trends.
By looking at an agency’s homepage, you can typically identify what kind of design they specialise in because gloss and glamour are usually a giveaway. Instead than just impressing your internal marketing team and executives, UX design agencies are more concerned with results, KPIs, and metrics—things that will truly move the needle for your organisation, your users, and your consumers.
Find out whether your agency views itself as a creative design firm or a UX design firm. They’ll probably respond with “both,” but you should look at their portfolio, case studies, and service offers to make up your own mind. Tech vs. Nontech Apps and websites, oh my!
While some agencies have capable internal technological teams, others outsource or even contract out their technical work. Giving it to a less technical agency increases the risk significantly if your website or app is moderately complex. Not just for the immediate delivery, budget, and quality of the finished product, but also for the technology’s long-term maintainability and future-proofness, which can easily cause you to accrue technical debt, which can later drain your marketing budget.
Ask your agency if any of their projects are contracted out or outsourced, and if they have any particular technical platform specialisations. SEO is the process of improving a website’s visibility on search engines by producing material that is both relevant and useful to users. You should have a “intent strategy” and a keyword strategy for the material you publish. You could compare having an agency handle this to asking the agency to take your place. While this is undoubtedly feasible in the long run, the best outcomes occur when the firm actually understands SEO from the inside out; otherwise, your experience may be very different. Additionally, SEO is most effective when your internal staff and the agency work together to create content.
Inquire about your agency’s SEO methodology and guiding principles. If someone promises to do and write everything for you but you have in-house knowledge in a particular area that enables you to produce content of a greater calibre than they can, you should doubt their motivations and reliability.
Content Promotion
Content marketing is connected to SEO. Content marketing is a very particular technique for obtaining links from other websites and high rankings for content through inbound marketing, either naturally or by deliberate outreach and link building. In addition, the material should ideally support email marketing and encourage lead generation.
Ask your agency about their link-building and content marketing strategies. They may be experts if they focus on producing extremely high-quality material that can outrank other content and promote it through social media groups, blogger outreach, and other strategies. Paid Search and Advertising
You can implement sponsored marketing initiatives with the assistance of a variety of paid advertising experts and firms. For an agency that doesn’t focus on paid advertising, having the knowledge necessary to coordinate ad copy, creative, landing page messaging, and layout, as well as the technical know-how to run and optimise the actual ad campaigns, can be a challenging task.
Ask your agency about the idea of “ad scent” and how they continuously improve landing sites and ad campaigns. Avoid agencies that lack a clear optimisation procedure in place or that don’t comprehend the concept of “ad scent” (the matching of messaging between ads and landing sites).
2. Reviews, testimonials, and case studies
Of course, you should always seek evidence. Although some good, competent agencies have the “cobbler’s child has no shoes” problem—that is, they are poor at handling their own marketing because they are too busy servicing their clients—or they mainly rely on word-of-mouth and referrals—lack of proof might be a warning sign. But even these organisations ought to be able to produce some sort of convincing evidence.
Do Not Only Relieve On Google Reviews. Request evidence and examples from the agency.
3. Integrity, openness, and good nature
The business is replete with shady practises and agencies that look out for their own interests rather than yours, making this one difficult to quantify, but it may be determined through interactions with the agency and those who have worked with them in the past.
Several points to think about
Do they provide “SEO” services without specifying exactly what you are getting and how they approach it strategically? Are they merely resolving technical SEO concerns and peddling snake oil?
Do they attempt to lock you into their own exclusive hosting platform or any other similar system rather than granting you free ownership?
Do customer evaluations and testimonials reflect their humanity?
Use your common sense. Make integrity and moral character a key determining factor. Possibly the most significant determining element.
4. Metrics-Based Approach
Any effective digital marketing company should put a strong emphasis on KPIs and analytics in order to move the needle for your business.
5. Marketing Strategy Knowledge
Digital marketing is wasteful and ineffective without a sound digital marketing plan. There is nothing worse than an agency that doesn’t comprehend or provide value to your strategy, even when you may own that plan internally. Marketers already have a lot on their plates, therefore agencies should employ strategists who are capable of adhering to a marketing strategy and serving client objectives.
6. Partnership Agencies that would rather work independently from your internal team than collaborate with them have only their own self-interests in mind.
7. Costing
Value is ultimately what matters the most, therefore always try to understand how one agency may provide more value than another. You shouldn’t compare these two price points as being apples-to-apples, for instance, if one agency charges the same amount for social media management (which only involves posting content and monitoring social channels) and social media marketing (which involves actually working strategically with your social media to bring in new business and complement your SEO efforts).
Two things that aren’t as important as you would think
Sometimes the client becomes fixated on minute details that, while they could matter a little, are orders of magnitude less important than the above-mentioned variables.
1. Business Experience
While some industries do have unique requirements and quirks, they usually serve more as a convenience for the client than as a real, practical advantage to most projects. Advertising and the use of customer data (PII), such as HIPPA compliance, are subject to strict laws in some sectors, such as healthcare and finance. The same is true for institutions of higher learning and other sectors that cater to the public; compliance with the ADA is crucial for accessibility.
Any serious digital marketing firm should have a solid understanding of ADA compliance, regardless of which industry they serve, for example. A smart, technical agency with experience in other or related industries can quickly catch up on your particular requirements and regulations.
One area where it might be important is design. A college or university website design certainly needs a distinct style than a B2C glitzy website with an e-commerce feature.
2. Knowledge of Particular Technical Details
It’s probably not a big concern if an agency is very technical, has experience with UX design, CRO, and e-commerce in general but not with your unique platform, which is one of a hundred similar platforms. Instead of specialising in one or a limited subset, the agency can manage anything and has probably learned a lot from dealing with a number of e-commerce platforms.
Another example is a highly precise feature that the client perceives as vital but is unimportant to the project’s success, such as “experience migrating Drupal to WordPress with a site that has X pages.” For example, if the agency has experience moving hundreds of sites to WordPress and hundreds of sites to Drupal, many of which have hundreds of pages, and a few which have moved from Drupal to WordPress but not with that exact number of pages, the importance of this detail is actually infinitesimally small in comparison to the other factors mentioned.
How To Choose Agencies: Can’t live without them, love them, or despise them?
A lot of marketers have had bad experiences with agencies. We’ve seen a lot of “beautiful disasters” in web design and development, or brochureware that is aesthetically pleasing but is either technically unmaintainable, unreliable in terms of delivering business KPIs and expected objectives, or both. We’ve witnessed beautiful email campaigns, landing pages, and websites that receive little traffic when it comes to digital marketing.
You may adore beautiful things as a marketer (we do, too!) However, at the end of the day, your management team (should) be concerned with real statistics, such as outcomes, data, KPIs, ROI, and long-term costs of investment.
The ideal agency is strategic, data-driven, and actively aware of and takes your company’s objectives and KPIs into account. This promotes your success and the success of your company or organisation.
Bring the agency on board as a member of your team whenever possible and as needed for the greatest results so that they can manage your company well and benefit from your context and knowledge of the industry. A company that asks questions, tries to learn, wants to be a real partner and an addition to your team is a really positive indicator.
How to Look for and Select the Best Digital Marketing Company
Referrals, word-of-mouth, SEO/organic search, PR, speaking engagements, or paid advertising are a few of the ways clients reach an agency. The internal marketing staff is often in charge of this search, although occasionally a small business owner will take the helm. Many individuals begin their searches on search engines with local results, however this can be constrained. Others request recommendations from their peers.
Word of mouth is the most reliable method, but it doesn’t necessarily result in the best results or the widest range of possibilities. Nothing speaks louder or has more weight for a potential client than the word of someone who has successfully worked with the agency, so don’t be hesitant to ask to talk to references. An agency’s sales and marketing departments may do the heavy lifting to bring in new clients.
What Characterises a Good Fit for an Agency’s Client?
Values, size, and money are the three main factors that determine a strong agency match. Partnering with clients who don’t share your values as a company or as people is usually not a good idea. It’s crucial to ensure that your attitude towards your work is positive.
Size is the next consideration. Because they will be looking for a much bigger agency that probably has an international presence, O8 typically doesn’t work with many significant corporate organisations. Setting realistic project budgets is made easier by taking on the proper sized projects, preventing time from being given away for free.
The budget is the last and most crucial component of the puzzle. It’s important to allocate enough money for services, advertising, tools, etc. The necessity for a marketing budget is frequently not anticipated by clients, and it only becomes apparent later. Therefore, before beginning a project, it is imperative to go over all relevant budgetary factors with the client.
Do Firms Ever Reject Prospective Clients?
Relationships and connections are our main priorities at O8. If a potential customer isn’t seeking for that, another business might be a better fit. Our preferred clientele are not one-and-done projects. However, other businesses focus exclusively on one-off jobs.
Establishing a precedence for the kinds of clients you wish to engage with is crucial. There must be an honest exchange of ideas and a cooperative, wholesome connection.
Once more, it’s critical to have a solid understanding of the project’s size and budget. It could be either too tiny or too big for the agency. Knowing this up front will help you avoid a lot of time and frustration later on.
Client Recommendations When “Shopping” for Agencies
The most important piece of advice is to avoid comparing agencies just on pricing. An organisation that won’t be available in an emergency after hours or that won’t provide you with the complete range of outcomes you’re searching for may offer you a wonderful value. Even if you immediately receive a stunning website, it won’t help your business in terms of conversions. It won’t be straightforward to maintain or growth-oriented.
You’re going to rack up technical debt with companies that create websites without a technological plan or goal in mind, which will end up costing more in the long run. You don’t realise there are hidden costs until you have to make it grow, move, and be maintained. When looking for the best software developers, in particular, we advise paying great attention to evaluations and endorsements.
A Successful Agency-Client Relationship: What Makes It Work?
The cooperation is what ultimately matters. It is necessary for both parties to the equation to be really open to collaborating. Those are always the partnerships that succeed long-term and meet the expectations of both parties. The amount of cooperation that results from mutual respect—between what you do and what we do—is priceless.
Gaining the trust of a new client and reaching a stage where you can collaborate effectively is one of the hardest obstacles. Since the agency serves as the intermediary between the two parties, it is crucial to understand who the main points of contact between the customer and agency are.
A “Un-Agency” may be your best option.
The O8 team views itself as a “un-agency.” We purposefully avoid using the word “agency” since it carries a lot of baggage. We would use that word if there was a term in the English language for “a business that enhances and extends your marketing team”! Unfortunately, we are constrained to sharing our story and describing ourselves as best we can.
Here are some of the characteristics that distinguish us as an un-agency and the reasons why businesses ought to consider working with us rather than individual developers or other conventional agencies:
Developers shouldn’t be managed by marketers.
They frequently speak entirely different languages, which causes great irritation and burnout. In your company, there are better places to spend your time. We have the technical capabilities to: Please developers.
Hire the best developers and keep them around (we typically keep people around for at least 5 years), keeping the team working on your project together.
These same individuals will still be around to help your website’s and your attempts at digital marketing as they advance.
To match the experience that an agency like ours delivers, you would need to hire a staff of at least 11 people:
Technical strategist in chief
(To oversee the development team) Technical PM
Front-end Lead Technical Architect Developer Back-end User Experience for Developers Designer A web designer (technically capable of creating designs for B2B websites)
CRM Integrator/Specialist
Lead CRO specialist and marketing strategist
Business Analyst with expertise in SEO and analytics
Even if you employed those ten employees, things can still go wrong:
We have really assembled an all-star crew over the past ten years.
But it took years and a number of difficult lessons before we got the ideal hiring procedure.
With a business like ours, you get the marketing and strategy pieces on top of solid technological foundations:
Every two to three months, on average, we advise having in-person strategy sessions.
One of our clients, for instance, wishes to personalise this year. Our advice was important since, despite being a marketing concept, customization is also a highly technical notion that must interact seamlessly with their website. On this crucial business decision, they required our technological expertise.
The same client also frequently asks us to help with SEO problems and emergencies, A/B testing issues, menu changes, the acquisition of new brands and product lines, and other marketing-related problems because we are a marketing agency (that also happens to have a solid technical foundation).
As a result,
Of course, I’m partial, but I genuinely believe that O8 is unique. By all means, give a local agency a try if you find one that reflects several of these qualities.