You’ve set up a new website and your social media. You post regularly on Facebook and Instagram. But how can you increase your brand’s or your company’s visibility, realize the full potential of your digital presence, and use it to grow your business?
These days, every company needs to stay on top of digital marketing. Yet digital marketing changes so fast, how can anyone keep up? That’s where digital marketing companies come in. A digital agency can help a business with web development, e-commerce, reputation management, social media management, email marketing, lead generation, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (ppc campaigns), among others.
J.O. Agency has helped hundreds of brands increase their visibility, effectively using digital marketing as a tool. We’d like to share the insights we have garnered from these successful relationships with you.
While specific strengths between traditional, digital and full-service agencies vary, something they share is operational consistencies and how clients can get the best from a working relationship with them.
Working successfully with an online marketing company starts with a collaborative relationship. With digital marketing moving at such an accelerated pace, an organization must be committed to working closely with their digital marketing agency, allowing them to provide strategies, insights and expertise while acting as an extension of your in-house team.
Keys To Delivering Results With A Digital Marketing Agency
1. Set your goals and objectives
Either before you engage a digital marketing agency or in collaboration with it, make sure to agree to what you’d like to achieve for your business before moving forward, along with how to measure success. This includes setting goals, objectives and KPIs (key performance indicators). It’s best to have these goals in mind as you are selecting your digital partner, as that will help determine which specific areas of expertise you need delivered.
Digital Marketing Services Can Come From Several Types Of Agencies:
Full Service Agency – many marketing agencies focus on overall marketing strategy for clients and include traditional marketing, digital marketing services and web development in their offerings.
Digital Agency – specializes in internet marketing strategies overall, including digital, social and ppc advertising; web design and development; email marketing, SEO and local SEO.
SEO Agency – dedicated to elevating the brand’s position in search engine results pages (SERP) above its competitors, in order to attract traffic to the client’s website. Web content and technical aspects considered by the search engines’ algorithms must be optimized. These companies often have expertise in pay per click (PPC) as well.
Owned media specialists – specializes in content marketing, with expertise in social media, email, SEO and content production for websites.
Mobile marketing specialists – focuses on apps, mobile messaging and potentially website design.
While the terms internet marketing, online marketing, digital marketing and digital advertising are often used interchangeably, digital advertising is actually a subset of marketing. Digital advertising refers to buying advertising on the internet, whether on social channels, search engines or ads on websites people visits. Internet, online or digital marketing includes your website, the posts you make on your social channels, any emails you send out, how your manage online ratings of your product or service, and search engine optimization.
Remember to determine what you want to achieve so you can determine how digital marketing can help. By having done your homework upfront, you can choose an agency that has the right skills, expertise and team to help you achieve growth through attracting new customers.
2. Establish a Scope of Work and Processes
Once you’ve engaged a company for digital marketing services, the next step is to agree to what they will deliver and the processes agreed to get there.
Its important to agree from the beginning:
What is the scope of work and the turnaround time for work?
Will the marketing services work be strategic, tactical or a combination?
Who will meet whom, when and how often?
How will the briefing process work?
How will you measure activity and results? What data and KPIs will you measure?
How will results be shared?
By establishing how you will work together, both you and your internet marketing agency can fell confident knowing how each will contribute to the outcome.
3. Create focused briefs
Many clients often expect their digital marketing company to anticipate their problems and pain points, but without a thorough briefing on the situation, your marketing partner will not be able to recommend ways for you to solve them. Developing a tight, focused brief that outlines exactly what you want and how you want to achieve it will help your agency create a strong marketing strategy.
The insight and expertise furnished by a marketing agency is facilitated by the client’s guidance toward the situation and what you are trying to achieve.
It is, therefore, up to you to provide your partner with a detailed brief that includes:
Business background – what are you trying to achieve
Objectives
Target audience(s) and priorities
Key messages (with agency’s help)
Timing
Knowing what you want to achieve and your timing will help the marketing team recommend the best digital marketing approach to take. What may initially seem like a straightforward link-building project for SEO, may in fact turn into a content marketing project that encompasses both search engine optimization and a digital advertising campaign. Best results are almost always found with strong communication and cooperation between the client and its digital marketing agency.
4. Keep on top of budget and costs
These days, budgeting is more important than ever. You may have a retainer agreement with your agency but some client requests go beyond the original scope of work. No matter the size of the project, it’s best to check in on costs and to ask the agency to let you know if any client requests fall outside the original scope agreed upon. This will help ensure you manage both your agency and internal stakeholders effectively by keeping control of budget, costs and timing.
5. Focus on learning from your agency
When working with a digital marketing agency, always consider how you can benefit from learning at every point in your relationship.Your agency will have a depth of knowledge and expertise that is unlikely to exist within your company (that’s why you’re working with them!) You have the opportunity to learn and develop in your digital marketing knowledge as a result of the work you produce together.
while it is important that your relationship with your agency is based on trust, do not forfeit the opportunity to build up an understanding of your own so that you can more confidently challenge them on their proposals, ideas and suggestions.
6. Measure results
As with any activity, measurement is key. Go back to your initial meetings and discussions and consider what you’ve achieved over time since working with your agency.
Go over the shared goals, objectives and KPIs you set up with your agency and ask whether you’ve achieved what you’ve wanted with them over the time you’ve been working together.
If your agency specializes in SEO, then you’ll want to have seen an improvement in overall rankings for your top target key phrases, an increase in non-brand organic traffic and an improvement in the quality of visitors to your site.
If you’re working with a social media marketing agency, you’ll want to have seen an overall improvement in engagement with your content, brand awareness and consideration of your product/ service portfolio through multiple social channels.
7. Apply any lessons
Assess overall not only how the agency has performed, but how both you and your digital marketing agency have worked together to meet the objectives and deliver results set out from the start of the relationship. By making an honest assessment, you can correct your course and improve outcomes the next time. Striving for constant improvement is both healthy and in line with best practices.
Key Takeaways:
By establishing your desired outcome upfront, choosing a digital agency with the kind of expertise to help you get there, and working collaboratively with check-ins along the way, you’ll give your brand a strong foundation for success.
J.O. offers not only the digital expertise but the strategic thinking you need to create a path forward. We’d love to talk with you about your needs, contact J.O. at 817-335-0100 or request more details here.
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