Although your internal marketing team might have implemented successful strategies in the past, there will come a time when they can no longer keep up with the ever-changing trends in the marketing technology landscape. This leaves you with a need for third-party intervention with a different set of eyes, skills, and ideas to implement your marketing needs. With most companies switching to digital marketing tactics lately, you don’t want to risk staying behind your competition.
However, the worst thing you can do is hire a digital marketing agency that doesn’t generate results for your business. Despite their track record and good reviews online, there could be something off with their systems that you fail to spot early on. Hence, you must prepare a list of questions for your digital marketing agency to ensure they best fit your company’s needs.
Here are some questions that the third-party entity should be able to answer:
What Are The Inclusions Of Your Digital Marketing Services?
It’s essential to rely on an agency like Caffeine Marketing, which is a marketing agency in Bristol if your business is in this area. Yet before anything else, ask the most basic question from your digital marketing candidate. You want to know what their digital marketing package offerings include. Ask if they will be providing the services you need. This allows you to assess whether they fit your marketing needs. At the same time, it will make it easier for you to compare different digital marketing companies.
No matter how intangible, every marketing campaign needs to set realistic deliverables. Unfortunately, if an agency can’t provide you with their plans and goals for your business, those could be red flags. They might be too lenient and passive about achieving targets, and you shouldn’t go for a company like that. Ensure that your hired digital marketing expert knows your business, what’s wrong with it, and how to improve it. Make sure you get specific plans rather than accepting broad, meaningless explanations.
It would be typical for your third-party agency to want to achieve goals like expanding your target market or increasing brand awareness. Although these are what you want and need for your company, you want to know how they plan to administer strategies to achieve such goals. Ask which among their included services should be able to address these concerns.
How Do You Report And How Can I Track Progress?
An agency that provides digital marketing services is also considered your business partner. Thus, you want to know how they’re performing and what they’re achieving. It makes sense to track and evaluate their services, considering you’ve paid for them, so you can decide if it’s a worthy investment.
This leaves you to ask this next crucial question: how you can track their progress. They might be using key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics, data analytics, and other tools to assess and evaluate the results of their strategies. They should be able to be transparent with you about this information.
Before hiring them, ensure they will measure the KPIs relevant to your company’s goals. Regularly reviewing will allow you to see your progress with your new digital marketing agency and what challenges remain. Monthly reports are most often the best option. This should be enough to see what improvements and strategies work well for your business.
When Can I Expect To See Results?
This next question is necessary because you can’t afford to waste a long time to achieve results. It’s essential to know their timeline and when you can expect to see results. However, beware of digital marketing agencies claiming to provide a substantial return on investment in a short amount of time.
Chances are they’re too good to be true, so it’s a sign that they only probably want to get you into a contract with them, but they don’t understand your actual situation. Truthfully, marketing strategies take some time to yield positive outcomes, but you should be able to tell how long is enough to generate these results.
Who Are You Going To Work With From Our Company?
It’s critical to communicate with the agency about your digital marketing activities. However, it’s essential to ask them about the people or team they need to collaborate and work with to ensure a smooth flow for your project. This is because while they’re experts in different digital marketing efforts, they need someone who can provide facts and details about your company. Hence, you have to assign a team or someone who can assist them.
The agency of your choice should be able and willing to train your internal team to meet your goals and ensure successful campaigns. This includes teaching your internal staff how to use the new tools and software they’ve set up for your business.
Conclusion
Many skills are required to improve your digital marketing, yet with so many ongoing tasks for your internal staff, it’s best to leave your marketing activities to third-party experts. However, ask the right questions when evaluating a digital marketing company for your brand. Like any other services you availed from other vendors, you must get value for your money. Hopefully, with the questions listed here, you can better assess whether the agency you’re eyeing right now is the best fit for your business.