Cutting Through the Marketing Fat:
Traits of a Worthwhile Digital Marketing Agency
These days, looking for digital marketing services online is ridiculously easy. Digital marketing freelancers and agencies are a dime a dozen, and you can easily find one that will offer you all the digital marketing jobs you need within the budget that you have. However, the problem starts when you need to choose the right digital marketing agency to work with.
Every single digital marketing agency out there is going to proclaim themselves as the best, and that you would be a fool not to work with them. They’re all going to say that they have a “powerhouse team with years of experience”, “dozens of satisfied clients”, and that they “keep ahead of the competition by using all the latest and modern digital marketing techniques”. All of these qualities sound great, but they’re just buzzwords designed to attract your attention. They are a marketing agency, after all, and if they can’t market their services to you then they’re not a good agency in the first place!
The question now is, how do you actually separate the great digital marketing agencies from the run-of-the-mill ones? Well, here are five qualities that you should look for:
Fast, Flexible, and Nimble
A great digital marketing agency should be fast, flexible, and nimble. While those three traits might sound similar, there are actually distinct differences among them.
Fast refers to the ability of the agency to produce high-quality output within or even ahead of deadlines. They should be able to respond to client needs and inquiries as quickly as possible, and they should be able to produce reports in a timely manner.
Flexible refers to the agency’s ability to change and adapt to a client’s needs, such as unexpected schedule changes or sudden additional elements in the requested work.
Nimble refers to the agency’s ability to be able to keep updated or even ahead of trends in digital marketing. They always keep themselves updated with all the latest news regarding the niche and they should constantly learn new techniques so that they can offer them as part of their services for their clients
Puts A Lot of Focus on Storytelling, Rather Than Just Informative Content
Digital marketing is more than just a career; it’s an art. Any digital marketer worth their salt will tell you that, when it comes to effective digital marketing, how content is presented is just as important as the content itself. You can put as much critical information as you want into your content, but if you can’t present it in a way that resonates with your audience, it’s basically worthless as a marketing tool.
Continuity Beats Out Campaigns
A good digital marketing agency will be able to come up with novel campaigns for you in a heartbeat. A great one will be able to craft campaigns that integrate your existing campaigns into long-term plans in order to further strengthen your established brand. The main goal of promoting continuity in your digital marketing campaigns is creating a strong foundation and sense of stability in your company, and not just focus on those little hits that fizzle out just as quickly as they catch on.
Teaches You How to Run Customer Support, Instead of Doing It for You
This might sound counterintuitive: isn’t a digital marketing agency supposed to take over the role of customer engagement from you so that you can have time to focus on other aspects of your business? Some agencies do offer to take this job off their client’s hands, but in the long run, they are actually hurting their clients rather than helping them. A great agency teaches its clients the proper way to manage their client relationships, and not take over for them completely.
Data Transparency, Always
When you work with low-quality digital marketing agencies, you might notice that most, if not all, of the reports and suggestions you get from them are limited. You might get a list of keywords from them, for example, but they won’t willingly share how they got those keywords and why they even choose those keywords to begin with!
Great agencies, on the other hand, are more than willing to share their whole data gathering and analysis process with you because they believe that their client will only benefit from understanding all the aspects of data collection and analysis. They are also open to suggestions or criticisms regarding their services and are willing to work with you to find the best possible solution for your business.
