10 Most essential questions to ask before hiring a Digital Marketing Agency

Digitalization is the buzz words these days. A few years ago, what was seen as a futuristic medium has become a crucial part of today’s business strategy? The ongoing global pandemic has only hastened the adoption and how! Digital marketing has given Phillip to sagging businesses on one side and spawned some innovative companies in the last couple of years on the other side!

Digitalization has also helped brands & businesses match up and sometimes leapfrog competitors irrespective of their size and scale! And to help companies to achieve their visions, it is vital to have an excellent digital marketing agency on board! But the most important question that lies here is how you choose the best agency for your company. How exactly will you decide who to hire? When hiring a digital marketing agency, it’s important to do your homework and ask the right questions to make sure you find the right partner that will help your business succeed.

Here are the ten questions that we recommend that you ask potential partners, which will help you decide on the best one for you!

1. Why will your agency be in business for the next five years?

A big one to open with! The answer will differ somewhat depending on the person you ask and their seniority, but any team member should provide some solution. And if they indeed tell you that they are optimistic about their agency’s business five years from now, below are a few follow up questions you can ask, such as:

• Year of inception?
• How big is your agency?
• The average duration of both clients and employees with you?
• Who are your clients? 
• No of clients with long-term or yearly contracts?
• Cost range for the partnerships?

Answers for the above will help project future stability and how they position their digital marketing agency. You are looking for a partner committed for the long-term and can learn & grow with your company.

2. What are their areas of expertise?

One of the factors that will help decide is an agency’s competence, adaptability, and effectiveness. Check and ensure that the agency can offer the required services such as web designing, web development, website hosting, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, video marketing, social media strategy, branding, Adwords, to name a few. Every agency is good at some things more than others. For your marketing efforts to be thorough & effective, your agency should have a plethora of expertise at its disposal.

3. Do you have official partnerships with the leading search engines?

Having a Google Partner badge means your agency has employees certified in Google AdWords, has access to their own Google agency team, and keeps up with the latest innovations.

Going beyond Google – check if they’re possibly a Bing Accredited Agency. They are small but growing!

4. Their roaster or past & current clients?

It gives a good understanding of the agency’s capabilities by looking at their past & current clients and the areas they have worked for. Proven results can help you strongly believe in their capabilities. Also, by comparing the agencies and their client roaster, you would understand their industry experience and expertise besides clearly avoiding conflicts of interest with your competitors. If the prospective agency has recently worked with another client in your industry, it’s mutually beneficial.

5. Budgets?

While agencies may do good work, it all boils down to at what costs/budgets? It is essential to take the agreement forward only after understanding their approach to the pricing! It would help if you recruited a digital marketing agency team that is considerate with its pricing. You can also start with a nominal amount on a pilot project/market and slowly increase the same as they deliver results and your confidence goes up! Speaking to a few agencies will help you know benchmark costs and how they fare vis-a-vis their competitors. 

6. What project management tools do they use?

Different software tools serve other purposes like managing projects, tracking the reach, making reports, etc. Getting to know the device being deployed also gives an idea of your agency’s knowledge and expertise on the subject! What are the tools they are using, and will they be good enough to help you power your business ahead?

Service and transparency are as important as the project itself, and a good agency will have the systems and processes to ensure these are built into the way they work with you.

7. How good are they with content optimization?

A key aspect of a digital marketing agency’s work is content and optimizing it to reach our planned goals. While hiring an agency, you expect them to improve your content to enhance your presence and visibility. It’s good to be curious at times. Ask for a foolproof plan, and don’t just rely on assumptions. 

8) What can you do to help our company reach new goals?

The need for partnering with a digital marketing agency and invest in all things digital is to help increase your business in the digital space. Hence, you must know how the agency rolls out its strategy to grow your business to a whole new level. If the prospective agency isn’t giving you a satisfying answer, then look out and zero in on one that is forthright and gives you a straight answer.

9. How will you assess your campaigns?

While efforts can be appreciated, what matters is results! From time to time, it’s important to keep track of progress so that you can tweak it if required to achieve desired results! The agency you intend to partner with should be able to regularly share with you a concise yet precise progress report to be updated about the campaign’s performance. This will help you take a call on continuing with the plan or shelving it and looking for new routes to achieve the objectives.

10. Why are you suitable for me?

A digital marketing agency could consistently do fantastic work and still not be the one for you and your company. Wonder why? Well, you don’t need just any good digital marketing agency; instead, you need one that’s good for you. Read that again!

And how do they attempt to be the ‘right’ one? By investing time and resources in understanding you well, you must have the proper thought process and correct first impressions!

Long-term relationships and initiatives bear fruit! It’s the same with the Digital Marketing practice. To get the desired result, you have to establish a long, productive relationship with your digital marketing agency.

Bonus Question: Do you have the right person for the job in your company?

They say it takes two to tango! Irrespective of the digital marketing agency you finalize on and eventually work with, it’s critical to have the right person to lead your team and drive them to get the desired results. 

With the questions in hand, it’s time to go out there and get started with the process of finding your perfect partner! 

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