7 steps to choosing the right digital marketing agency

The reason why I am writing this is because, I often hear small business owners complaining about digital agencies.

But one interesting thing I noticed is that, most of these clients didn’t know what they wanted to achieve with promotion when they approached the marketing agency.

If your goals are not clear, how can someone else help you achieve it.

Do you want a cool website, or quality leads?. If you thought having a cool website will generate many leads that is wrong.

Some clients think they know want they want, but it is not the case.

As a result, after consultation(which clients assume is the best way to decide about a campaign), a normal agency will choose few marketing channels, which they think are the best.

Some of these promotions will generate some result. And i always wondered, how much more could have achieved if customer did a little research.

For a small business, hiring online marketing agency without proper knowledge is going to backfire.

If you are not Crystal clear about what you want to achieve with online marketing, you are going to get in trouble.

Consultation from digital agency is not going to be the best advise you can get. Only way to deal with a digital agency is by educating yourself about online promotion.

Learn the common terms like CPC(cost per click), CPM(cost per thousand), CPL(cost per lead), CPA(cost per acquisition) etc. Always focus on result oriented promotion in the first stage of campaigning.

Best way to achieve max result with a digital agency is by educating yourself about online promotion.

Always focus on result oriented promotion in the first stage of campaigning.

So if you expect to grow your business with the help of a digital agency, then I hope following information will be useful for you.

7 important steps to go through before consulting with a web agency

If you are planning to launch a new website, add online subsidiary to your retail store, or boost your online presence then, you have two options. One is to get an in house online marketing team. Or seek help from an ad agency.

Before approaching a web agency for online promotion or web development, you have to know & do few things that will help you to get maximum out of their services.

Doing some research before choosing a web agency will help you to,

• Estimate the investment needed for running an online shop for long term.
• Avoid common mistakes that will cost you a lot of money and little result.
• Get an overview of activities related to launching and managing online shop/website.
• Increase bargaining power.

Decisions to make

• Marketing agency or a freelancer – Most of the time, freelancers will provide better service compared to an established marketing agency. You can contact freelancer directly and talk to him. But in case of web agency, your point of contact might be a project manager.

• Which marketing channels should choose – it is better to decide a suitable marketing channel and a budget yourself instead of depending on agency for that.

• Learn online promotion – empower yourself through learning.

1) Launching a Website is just the beginning of web marketing and selling online.

Having a website is just beginning of online promotion activities (unless you just need an online face for your company i.e. Just to mention in your business card). After launching your new website, Web/SEO agency will try to (up) sell other services (like seo, smo, smm, sem etc ) to you.

Therefore, if you are planning to launch a new website ask the agency about add-on services like SEO, Social media marketing, search marketing etc.

2) Static and Dynamic/CMS websites – which one to choose

There are two different types of sites, which are static html website and dynamic content management site. If you are using content management site it is easy to add content and updates while for updating a static site you need basic web developing skills. So decide which one to choose based on your requirements

Static website – You need to get help from web agency for updating website

CMS website– You can easily add and update your website

3) How much will agency charge for updating/maintaining & adding features to website.

If you want to add extra features to your website (E.g. Add a career module) or update some text, then you have to pay more to add extra features. For adding extra features to website agency will definitely ask for extra money.

4) SEO for getting website views – does your online branding agency offer SEO with web-design

If you are planning to improve your search position in Google/bing then you have to do search engine optimization. Usually seo is not done during web designing and development stage (unless you opted). Most of the agencies will do some basic seo in your website but this may not be enough if competition is high. Confirm whether they have any special packages which include both.

5) Will your web agency help in creating/managing and Integrating social media accounts into your site

If you want to integrate social media accounts to your account you have to ask for it.

6) Maintaining online store / Marketing your website.

There are of course a lot of ongoing activities needed to maintain your online store. Activities like running marketing campaigns, adding promotional offers to your store, managing different user activates through back end admin panel etc.

If you cannot do it yourself then you have to hire someone or, you will be depending on your web agency for the same.

7) What marketing plan is your internet marketing agency suggesting for you.

When deciding marketing plan you have to consider factors like product type, location etc.

• Product type – retail, wholesale
• Target location – local area only or many areas

If you are targeting to sell to local area nearby your retail store then you can effectively get to top of Google results.

Selling products for wholesale will be another good option and, it will be easy to target niche product searches and location based product searches. When competition is high from big e-commerce sites it will be better to concentrating on niche product.