Over the last decade, the business world has transformed significantly. There has been a turnover in the marketing strategies that entrepreneurs need to succeed.
Companies are spending on digital marketing more than ever before. According to this, spending on digital marketing efforts eats up 58% of marketing budgets.
Working with a digital agency should also be a two-way relationship; you must engage closely with the agency. Inform them precisely what you want and then allow them to offer you strategic insight and expertise.
If you have an in-house team, ensure the experts also stay connected to the company’s team to sync activities. Thus, to attain the best out of a digital marketing agency, you must seek to benefit all-rounded from their integrated services.
Our article below looks at how you can get the best out of your digital marketing agency. But, first, let’s find out what a digital marketing agency is and the things they can do for you.
What Is a Digital Marketing Agency and What Can They Do for You?
A digital marketing agency is a resource that offers a wide range of marketing services all under one roof. These are services that businesses seek when they don’t have in-house expertise.
Working with a well-established agency can boost your marketing power to greater heights. Such collaboration can also help you attain a tremendous increase in your return on marketing investment (ROI).
Presently, corporations and SMEs depend on an effective marketing agency to enhance their marketing efforts.
Some of the digital marketing elements you can benefit from the agency’s expertise include:
- Generating an effective website
- Marketing campaigns
- Content strategy
- Social media marketing
- Inbound marketing
- Lead generation
- Fine-tuning your SEO
- Creating attractive promo videos
- Generating pay-per-click (PPC) ads
If you’re a business startup, the agency will come in and build your marketing from the ground up. They will work to ensure you succeed by integrating all the above elements.
In short, a digital marketing agency takes over your digital marketing efforts. They provide their services to cater to your diverse online marketing needs.
The goal of engaging a digital marketing agency’s expertise is to:
- Boost your business
- Establish your brand
- Build customer loyalty
- Increase sales through digital marketing efforts
You get to accomplish all the above by incorporating digital technologies that are:
- Measurable
- Targeted
- Interactive
How Can You Get the Best Out of Your Digital Marketing Agency?
1. Ensure You Set Agreed Working Contract
Once you choose the digital marketing agency you’ll be working with, what follows next is to set up an agreed working contract.
A digital marketing contract defines a legally-binding agreement between the concerned parties. It indicates the duty of each party while also protecting each individual’s rights.
It’s essential to make clear agreements from the start to avoid colliding along the way. You can come to an understanding of the following contractual factors:
- What the is the scope of work
- Agree on the frequency of your meeting
- Decide on how the work briefing process will be.
- Establish how information and data should be shared and distributed
- Establish the service level agreement (SLA) plus the turnaround time for specific activities
- Decide on the ways that you’ll be measuring activities and their results
- Find out the key performance indicators (KPIs) that should be measured
- Agree on the professional work relationship
Once you establish an agreed working contract, both you and your agency can proceed to work together confidently. Mutual work collaborations become more manageable when you know who is supposed to do what, when, and at what time.
2. Come Up With Focused Briefs
Some clients tend to assume that the agency already knows everything they need. Don’t expect your agency to read your mind and figure out your problem. Ask yourself: how can one help you solve any issue that you’ve not told them about?
Therefore, you must create a clear and focused brief outlining precisely what you want. The brief should also describe how you want to achieve that particular need. Otherwise, you’re unlikely to get the best from your marketing agency.
Remember that it’s the agency’s role to offer insights and expertise that your business lacks internally. But, it’s your role as the client to guide your agency towards the company’s work you want them to produce.
So, it’s up to you to offer the agency a detailed brief containing:
- Business background
- Goals
- Objectives
- Key message
- Targeted audience
- Events’ timeline
Once you’ve given the brief, it becomes easier for the marketing agency to discover the best digital marketing approaches that work best. Working with a focused brief allows the agency to align their thinking right.
3. Decide on How You’ll Measure Activities and Results
For success in your business activities, measurement is the key. Constantly revisit your previous meetings and agreements with the agency. Try to consider the things you’ve achieved over time. Determine whether the performance goes in line with the set timelines.
Check the goals, objectives, and KPIs you shared with your agency. Have you achieved what you wanted with the agency by now?
For example, you might have needed help with the agency’s specialization in SEO. In such a case, check out:
- Whether there’s an improvement in your overall rankings for the targeted keyphrases
- If there’s an increase in the non-brand organic traffic
- If there’s an improvement in the quality of visitors engaging with your site
And, if you’re working with the agency on social media marketing, you’ll want to see an overall improvement in:
- Brand awareness
- Customer interaction with your content
- Customer consideration of your products or service
- Consideration of your products and service portfolio through various social channels
The critical factor is not just to analyze how the agency has performed over time. But, find out how both you and your agency have collaborated to meet your set objectives from the beginning. Whenever you make an honest assessment, it becomes easier to establish the way forward.
Key Takeaways
The digital marketing industry continues to become dynamic. That’s why everyone looking to succeed in their businesses must keep up with the advancing pace.
The last thing you want is to remain behind. You don’t want to watch competitors get ahead of you while you remain reluctant to implement digital strategies.
Therefore, knowing how particular areas of your business are performing is critical. It can help you examine where your business is both strong and weaker. Hence, you can establish what factors you need to change for the better. This should guide you in managing your performance effectively and proactively.
As a business looking to diversify, it’s essential to outsource the services of a digital marketing agency. And, it’s even more critical to establish a good working relationship with them. This is because you might have to rely upon these experts to manage your business’s marketing growth for a long time.
