HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY!!!

Digital Marketing is today’s trend and every futuristic company is having one or other digital marketing company working for them, but the real question is if these agencies who sprang up like mushrooms are addressing the real concerns of their clients, it comes as a surprise when most of the campaigns or activities fail to live up to the expectations of the clients or the promises given.

As a marketing consultant, when am speaking with clients, everyone mentioning that they are having a digital marketing agency working for them and only few are so much excited about the agency and a big chunk of them are either not aware of the results or having a shady response, several clients who are investing heavily on Digital Marketing also come with comments such us:

• They bring us on the first page of Google, but not sure if it did anything for my business.
• Measurable results are not seeing as per the investment done.
• Tangible results are not showing as per the given promises.
• I feel more confident in the traditional marketing.
• Now am going to do campaigns directly to save cost.

On the onset, it’s high time to think what went wrong, if the Digital Marketing company is not professional enough to handle your case or you are not investing your part with the agency or the whole strategy developed was not right for your type of services. However investing time and money with a wrong Digital Marketing company is not only an economy loss but you will tend to move away from the concept of Digital Marketing itself.

Finding the right Digital Marketing Company is the key for your business success and that decision should not be an impulsive one, rather you should have a clear understanding on your needs, your target results and who is professional enough to make you achieve your organizational goals. The following points should be clear from your side before proceeding to hire a Digital Marketing Agency;

• Role to be played by the Digital Marketing Agency.
• Investment plan for the same.
• Time period which you want to achieve your target goals.
• Time you or your team can invest/support the agency.
• SWOT analysis of your team.

Once the above points are clear, you can proceed to hire the right Digital Marketing Partner for your specific requirement and budget. The following points will help you in identifying the right Digital Marketing Partner who can support you in establishing yourself and who will be providing effective ROI.

Getting engaged with the right Digital Marketing Agency will have direct positive impact on your business not only in short term but also for achieving long term business goals. It’s important to work with capable professionals who understand the business trends and who could translate that into business making use of the wide scope of the digital marketing domain should be your choice. You need to identify an agency who covers the entire gamut of business and that list might include the following;

• Creative in concepts
• SEO –Search Engine Optimization
• SMM – Social Media Management
• Search Engine Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Analytics
• Online Advertisement
• Content Marketing
• Web development and coding
• Marketing Automation
• Inbound Marketing
• PR and Reputation Management
• Blogging

In general few things you need to check and understand before finalizing the agency are listed below, since you are going to invest your time and money with them, furthermore you should have confidence in giving your brand to their hand and that reason you have to double check the reliability of the agency with whom you are going to associate;

• It’s always better to work with an international agency, their cross cultured and multinational experience will reflect on the QOS and lot of industries good practices will be in their standard working model.
• Low cost should not be a decision factor, low cost usually mean low quality services. Instead of low cost you should be focused on the results/targets what they can promise. If you are looking for an agency who could handle all your online requirements for a cheap cost, then results may not be positive, better than that will be to associate with a reputed agency and negotiate for a better deal in the initial period. Once ROI got assured over a period, you can accordingly steer your budget.
• Work with agency and peoples who understand your business language. In the initial interactions with the agency peoples itself you should identify that they are having not only technology know-how but could able to understand your business needs. They only could transfer the technology know-how to results in the long run.
• Credibility factor also need to check before the association. Need to check the details of clients whom they are already working. Their association with Government bodies and domain expertise and all can be checked. Their website checking and direct client interaction and will sort this out.

Association should be a long term for getting effective results, whoever you are finalizing should be given opportunity to work in a long term and then only the agency could understand your core ideas and thus support you in not only in campaigns but act as a positive contributor to your long term strategies.

• Digital Marketing Agency selected should be able to work along with your company and the mode of operandi should be giving the feeling that they are your extended marketing support arms.
• They should be capable enough to understand and translate your company’s vision and long term objectives in a better way thru online activities.
• They should be someone who can give creative suggestions and feedback according to the online trends.

Digital Marketing Mix, something different from the traditional marketing mix, but handling the same 4P’s of marketing namely – Promotion, Price, Place and Product. But how these can be effectively addressed by a digital marketing agency need to be checked.

Since you are promoting your product thru virtual space, you cannot play on the quality of the product, since customers are getting or find product reviews and consumer feedback ready in the online space and if the product quality is low, very high chances of negative impact for your product.

Price of the product also matters highly, until you already created a proper branding for your product in the online domain, your product will not start moving online. Likewise promotion also should be according to the online market trends and should be planned by proper analytics and consumer behavior tracking. Finally where you have to showcase your product also matters to reach your target segment.

All these points how effectively a Digital Marketing agency can handle should be given importance, or to be more precise what are the major attributes which an agency should have to address the above concerns should be watched with top priority.

• Marketing Attributes – Today everybody agrees on the point that online marketing is really vital, but for doing marketing online the agency should have in-depth knowledge in all the concepts of traditional marketing and expertise. You should ensure that the agency is having team who are having marketing domain experts.
• Technology Attributes – The Digital Marketing agency should be well versed with the trends and technologies on how the search engine algorithms works and need to check their association with Google and other companies to know how they are getting updated to the latest trends in the industry on technology aspects.
• Psychological Attributes – The third and the most important attribute to check is how effectively the Digital Marketing Agency can incorporate the Psychological aspects into digital marketing strategies of your company. You will get all analytical reports and feedback by doing the right campaign, but need to check if the agency is having experts who can understand these reports in a psychological point of view and develop strategies accordingly for the future and when psychological triggers are well placed within your marketing strategies, you can be sure of your success rate.

To conclude the same, choosing the right Digital Marketing Agency for your business is vital and the above mentioned are few of the important points to consider in the peripheral level, however the list can be more and depending upon companies and their needs we can still research further.