Nowadays, there are a plethora of digital marketing agencies popping up left and right, all offering similar promises to businesses seeking marketing guidance. And unfortunately anyone can claim to be an expert, even if they have no real expertise.

Working with a digital marketing agency can help a business significantly improve its marketing functions and also enable its owners and executives to focus more intently on broader, overarching business operations. You always have the option to manage your digital marketing needs in-house, but more often than not digital marketing agencies tend to have the advantage of being in touch with the most cutting-edge, modern, and effective ways to market your business online.

But with so many options to choose from, it can be overwhelming to determine which agency is the right fit for you in order to achieve your desired marketing results and ROI metrics. So how on Earth are you supposed to know which one you should choose?

How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency

Before we dive right in, let’s cover the basics of what digital marketing agencies are, what they do, and why it’s beneficial to work with one if you’re looking to up your marketing game.

A digital marketing agency is a marketing service provider that aims to strengthen online presence, maximize efforts using effective tools and services, and perform market research for clients to help them reach their marketing goals, among several other functions. Some common services that digital marketing agencies can provide include:

• Market Research
• Content Marketing
• SEO Strategy
• Paid Search Services (SEM)
• PPC Management
• Local Digital Marketing
• Facebook Advertising
• Social Media Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Video Advertising
• and many, many more!

Okay, so we’ve clarified what digital marketing agencies are and what they do, but you’re probably still wondering: Why should your business want to work with one?

Benefits of working with a digital marketing agency:

In the world of digital marketing, there are a myriad of moving parts that are constantly evolving. This means that implementing a successful digital marketing strategy is a time consuming and granulated process for businesses. On top of this, it can be difficult for businesses to stay tuned into each new development that continues to appear in the digital marketing space when other aspects of their business also require close attention.

This is the part where hiring an agency comes in handy. Working with a digital marketing agency to help you manage your marketing efforts and keep up the pace of the most recent and efficient marketing tactics can allow you to focus on other important business aspects, like fostering client relationships or maintaining your company’s overall vision.

Thankfully, the people who make up digital marketing agencies are also usually experts in their fields and have extensive knowledge about the marketing and advertising industries. Receiving insight from seasoned marketing professionals can help you improve not only your marketing strategy but your overall business targets.

So How to You Choose a Digital Marketing Agency?

With all of this in mind, you’re ready to start the decision making process. As you begin the process of finding the best digital marketing agency to partner with, it’s important to evaluate your own objectives as a company.

• Evaluate your business goals, targets, and thresholds. This is where you should assess your team members and their capabilities, solidify your existing strategies, and make sure you have strong foundational concepts and ideas. 
• Make sure you understand that like most things, it will take time to start seeing results. Time and trial-and-error testing are necessary investments to make in order to see the effects of any new developments or changes, and are especially required if you want long-term successful results rather than a quick fix.
• Be prepared to conjoin your efforts with an external agency and be open to collaboration. Working with an agency means that you may not have the same amount of control over every detail as you would if handling your projects yourself, but sometimes the best way to generate new ideas is to collaborate with others.

Once you’ve sorted out your own business goals, it’s finally time to choose an agency!

Because the marketing industry has a low entry barrier, it’s important to remember that many agencies will tell you exactly what you may want to hear in order to gain your business. However, not all agencies are capable of delivering the results they promised or the quality they ensured when trying to obtain you as a customer, making the decision process seemingly more difficult.

Luckily, we’ve put together a list of qualities and characteristics of a great digital marketing agency to help you determine a good fit for your business necessities.

6 Qualities of a Great Digital Marketing Agency:

1) Assess Their Experience and Knowledge – Practically every marketer you encounter these days will claim to be an expert in their field, but whose word can you actually trust?. When you’re looking for a digital marketing agency to work with, you want credible, experienced, and knowledgeable industry leaders to be taking on your marketing endeavors to produce the best possible results. Take a look at their previous clientele, success stories, portfolio, or the services they offer to get a sense of the quality of their work. You can also observe which marketing tools they use to perform specific marketing services such as managing website content, social media marketing, CRM, SEO, and more. 

2) A Stellar Website – Every great digital marketing agency should have a website that draws in their audience with innovative designs and attention grabbing content. A well-designed, easily navigable, and high-functioning website are key indicators that the agency you’re looking at is good at applying its marketing principles to its own business. Additionally, using key terms to find their information through a Google search and browsing through their blog content and website copy are actions you can take to give you a better idea of the agency’s search engine optimization and content strategies.

3) Get to Know Their Team – As we’ve mentioned before, the right agency will have the most qualified experts and marketing gurus on its team. The right digital marketing agency will have dynamic, multi-disciplinary team members that have diverse and competitive marketing talents. They should have an exceptional grasp on various complex marketing principles and ultimately provide you with insight into how to expand your own marketing services. Most of the time, you can find an agency’s team members by looking at their “About” website page or by searching for the company employees through professional platforms like LinkedIn. Doing research on an agency’s team members can give you the information you need about each member’s specialty areas and previous experience.

4) Aligned Values and Culture – Choosing the right digital marketing agency involves assessing whether or not their values and culture are aligned with that of your business, since they will be representing your business and telling its story. Ensuring that you share a similar vision and outlook as the agency you choose is almost as important as assessing the quality of their work. It’s no secret that you’ll be working closely with the agency you choose, so it’s imperative to create a cohesive environment for productivity, creativity, and the progression of your goals to bloom.

5) Evaluate the Quality of Their Offer – Take a close look at the results an agency promises to help its clients achieve. Many agencies will tend to overpromise and underdeliver instead of the other way around. While it would be magical to have all your expectations met and goals exceeded at the drop of a hat, that’s just not realistic. Look for attainable and realistic promises that are still goal-oriented and success driven. Often, the quality of the promises that a digital agency will outline for its potential clients is indicative of their knowledge of the industry itself.

6) They Vet Your Business Too – In the midst of evaluating which digital marketing agency is the right fit for your business, it can be easy to forget that agencies have a vetting process for their clients, too. An agency that carefully considers and vets its clients before bringing them on is likely to have a better understanding of the scope and tools they’re equipped to provide their clients with in order to achieve excellence.

The process of choosing a digital marketing agency can be a daunting task, especially when you don’t know where to start. However, partnering with the right agency can promote the efficiency of your team towards broader business objectives while eliminating the burden of having to set aside additional personnel and resources towards a marketing team and budget.

Like anything in life, hiring an external agency to help you with your business functions can be risky, which is why it’s crucial to ensure that you’re set up to make the best decisions possible when it comes to trusting someone with your marketing needs. At Lift Digital Marketing, we’re committed to providing our clients with the best marketing services at the highest quality. Click here to get to know us better – We’d love to get in touch with you.