Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Agency for Your Needs

Marketing a brand or business can be challenging. With more platforms and outlets than ever, it can be difficult to maintain even a surface-level knowledge of digital marketing trends.

One of the most popular ways to combat this is to outsource your digital marketing strategy and approach to an agency. However, due to the increasing demand, there are now more agencies to choose from than ever, each with a seemingly unique approach.

So, why is it worth choosing an agency? And how can you pick the right one for your needs?

Treat this blog as your ultimate guide for selecting the right agency for you.

Why choose a digital marketing agency?

First, let’s cover the primary benefits of choosing an agency to form and/or execute your marketing strategy.

When adding firepower to your digital marketing approach, it may be tempting to opt for a freelancer or an in-house staff member.

While each has its benefits, there are a few key areas that can tip the scales in one direction or another.

Cost-effectiveness

If you’re looking for marketing on a more modest budget, choosing an agency is a great way to make it go further.

While adding staff to your in-house team or working with a freelancer can provide a significant boost to your output, these costs can add up over time, including hourly rates and in-house expenses beyond a baseline salary, such as insurance.

Choosing an agency allows you to hire multiple digital marketing professionals, generally for a similar or even lower cost.

Not only will you save on service costs, but also on the purchase and training of specialised tools, such as Ahrefs and Adobe Creative Suite, that an in-house staff member may require to fulfil their duties.

Wide range of skills

By choosing an agency instead of additional in-house staff, you instantly increase the breadth of experience and knowledge available to you, thanks not just to the combined industry experience of the agency, but also the various services covered within an agency, which could include:

• Out of Home Advertising (OOH)
• Strategy & Project Management
• Social Media
• Public Relations
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Reporting, Insights & Analytics
• Branding & Design
• Paid Ads
• Photography & Videography

While a freelancer or a small in-house team may be able to cover some of these aspects, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to cover all of them, in-depth.

With an agency, you can enjoy the peace of mind that the agency staff you work with are highly skilled within their particular niche.

A fresh perspective on your business

When you’ve been involved in the day-to-day running of the business for several years, it can be hard to have an objective view of things.

If you want an objective view, you might not be able to glean this so easily from a single-discipline freelancer or a new hire, as they may have a lot to learn about the industry in which you operate.

Regardless of industry, if you hire an agency to support your strategy, they can harness their broader experience and a bird’s-eye view to help you discover the winning approach to marketing.

Increased scalability

Finally, one of the most appealing benefits of hiring a digital marketing agency is its scalability.

If you’re at a crossroads with your marketing needs, and you’re finding that there are a lot of ‘ifs’ ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’ within your business forecast, it can be tricky to determine how many people to hire, what level to hire them at, and for how long.

By using an agency, you can forgo many of these questions by adjusting your service fee as needed.

While this is also achievable through working with multiple freelancers, each will have a slightly different approach.

If you only need social media and a basic strategy to get started, but then quickly see the benefits and want to incorporate additional services like SEO and PR to support your business growth, many agencies will be agile enough to expand with you.

What to think about before contacting a digital marketing agency

If you’re feeling positive about the idea of working with a digital marketing agency, that’s great!

Now that you’ve considered the benefits, it’s time to look more closely at what you should ideally have a rough idea of before you begin soliciting agencies.

Here are some things to think about before diving in…

Your target audience

Whether this is anecdotal knowledge of who is most likely to engage with your business or hard analytics on purchasing trends, having a general idea of your target audience can be a valuable metric for your chosen agency.

However, while having an idea of who you’re already currently attracting is crucial, it’s just as important to have an idea of who you ideally want to attract, as this will help inform your agency’s strategic approach.

Identify what you need

Examine your current marketing output – what gaps exist within it?

Are there aspects that seem to be underperforming, or aren’t performing at all, because you’re not sure how to approach them?

Identifying your areas of need can help an agency to prioritise their approach and to solidify a budget.

Budget

Once your priorities have been set, the next step in identifying a suitable marketing agency is to determine your marketing budget.

While you might not be 100% certain how this budget aligns with your marketing needs just yet, having a ballpark figure or upper limit can help you identify the size of the agency that will be most suitable for your needs and the kind of services within their offering that work for your ideal spend.

Determining KPIs

Although determining exactly what benefits you will yield from your marketing output will depend on several factors, knowing what your business’s preferred KPIs are can also help an agency to triangulate the best service for your business.

Examples of typical marketing KPIs include:

• Increased brand awareness
• Improved conversion rate
• Increased website traffic
• Improved sales/leads
• Improved audience engagement

Whether you’re looking for one of these or a mix of a couple of KPIs, your agency of choice will be able to devise a strategy to match.

Your communication preferences

Finally, if your business is looking to hire an agency, setting clear expectations for how you and your team will communicate with them can be helpful.

Whether it’s determining how hands-on you’d like to be, establishing points of contact or forming sign-off processes, the ideal agency will be able to tailor their service to suit your preferred style of communication.

If you are unsure of the answers to any of these questions, don’t worry.

Even if some of these factors aren’t set in stone, your chosen agency will be able to work closely with you to reach an outcome that suits your business needs. 

What to look for when soliciting digital marketing agencies

Now that we’ve covered benefits and key considerations before seeking out an agency, we can look more closely at some of the areas that will set the ideal agency apart from the rest.

Strong communication

Excellent communication practice should be an agency’s bread and butter.

Laying out a clear roadmap, remaining open and responsive to developments, and providing feedback with clarity and purpose – a quality agency should be adept at keeping you informed.

Not only this, but they should also be able to accommodate your communication style.

Whether you prefer a top-line summary that outlines key areas of opportunity and success or a detailed report with meticulous details, considering your preferences should be of paramount importance and is something that the right agency can accommodate.

As well as the broader quality of comms, the best agencies won’t keep you in the dark and will be prompt and precise in their responses to your queries.

To make a final point on communication, a good question to ask yourself is:

‘Are they your kind of people?’

There’s no denying that working in a fast moving team can be stressful at times, so it’s best to surround yourself with people that you get along with and can trust – agencies are no different!

Therefore, getting to know your agency is just as important as learning about what they offer. For an indicator of this, check out their social channels to get a feel for their culture.

Experience in your sector

When it comes to whether or not you should choose an agency with experience in your sector, there are a couple of ways to look at the issue.

On the one hand, if your industry is particularly technical and has a jargon-heavy vernacular, e.g. pharmaceuticals, law, or engineering, then a more general agency may not be as well-versed in the technicalities of your industry.

Depending on your KPIs and how specialised you’d like the content to be, you may wish to seek out an agency that has particular experience with your field or even specialises entirely within it.

That being said, many agencies will be used to working across multiple industries and will invest time in researching your industry as part of the service.

As mentioned previously, it can often be beneficial to have an outside perspective. Having this outlook may mean that the agency can identify ways to make your work stand out, thanks to broader marketing expertise, and tried-and-tested methods applied in other industries, keeping you ahead of the curve in yours.

To get a feel for this before reaching out, look for examples of their work in case studies and testimonials, usually found on their website.

A bespoke service

While we have covered the range of services available and identified your business’s general needs before contact, the ideal agency will be able to provide a suite of services tailored to your budget and the marketing channels that are most likely to capture the attention of your target audience.

Whether it’s a campaign focused on sign-ups in a particular region or you want to grab the attention of a niche industry, agencies will be able to provide you with bespoke solutions designed to meet your specific goals.

Agency location

The question of an agency’s location is often brought into question when hiring external marketing support, but it might not be quite as important as you’d first think.

While there is no one correct answer, it’s worth noting how much of your business is conducted in person and whether an agency would need to adhere to similar levels of face-to-face interaction.

For example, suppose you’re looking for social media support to help sell your products.

In that case, it may be sensible to choose an agency with premises or staff who can regularly visit and conduct shoots on your site, resulting in minimal transportation costs.

At the expense of immediate convenience, there are, of course, ways around this, e.g. postage of items or having a budget to cover larger travel expenses.

A finger on the pulse

When choosing an agency, it often comes down to experience versus expertise. While similar, the two traits aren’t always like for like.

For instance, a digital marketing agency with decades of experience in the industry can be an indicator of quality, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re at the cutting edge of how the industry currently operates.

With digital marketing in particular, choosing an agency that is comfortable reconfiguring itself to meet the needs of today’s clients is just as important as working with a long-established agency.

Particularly in the case of social media, choosing an agency that is comfortable with new platforms, updates, and trends can be the difference between a successful digital campaign and a flop.

Summary

We hope this has provided you with some helpful information and food for thought on the journey towards building your business’s marketing output.

There’s no one correct answer, so play the field and get curious!

As an agency with many years of combined experience across a vast number of industries, GRA is ideally placed to support any sized brand or business.

Get in touch today to learn more about our services and how we can help.