The decision to appoint a digital marketing agency is not one that many businesses take lightly and for good reason. When choosing the ideal agency, you want to be confident that they can deliver on their promises and help your business to reach its ultimate marketing goals.
With many years’ experience in meeting prospective customers as an agency, I have gained a great deal of insight into the best ways of truly identifying whether we are a good fit for the business, and indeed the other way around. Here are my top tips for businesses seeking to work with a digital marketing agency.
Appointing a digital marketing agency
1. Face to face meeting is a must
It’s important to make sure you have a great relationship with the team of people that you will be working with. Meeting face to face is a great opportunity not only to get to know the team, but to check out their premises. It can be extremely difficult to get a feel for the agency from a proposal or quote alone, don’t forget that an ongoing business relationship relies on not only what they do but the people you will be working with.
2. Make sure the person in your company who is ultimately making the decision meets the agency early on
You might be a marketing manager who has been tasked with appointing a new agency and building up a really good rapport with a potential company, however when presented to the board or MD they may opt for the cheapest proposal without looking into the agency itself. Setting up a meeting early on in the decision-making process between the decision maker and an agency will more often than not eliminate the risk of your marketing going in an entirely different direction than you had planned.
3. Find out who your main point of contact will be
It’s likely that in the initial meetings you will be seeing the owners or directors, but it’s important you know who will be managing your account once you get started. Meeting this key contact in the initial stages is a good opportunity to interview them, finding out how long they have been in the business and their experience in the marketing industry.
4. Ask to speak to the agency’s clients
What better way to get the truth; any agency can tell you how great they are but it’s much more helpful to hear this directly from an existing client. Speaking to an agency’s client will give you a chance to really quiz them about the agency and what they are like to work with (their pros and cons). If you wish to do this, we would recommend speaking to more than one client so that you get a more well-rounded ‘review’ of the agency.
5. Be clear about your budget
It’s always better to disclose your budget early on, so that the agency can analyse and propose how they will maximise your ROI for your budget. It can be tempting to hold this back but it usually results in a waste of time for all parties involved.
For over 10 years we have worked with our clients on an ongoing basis, working with budgets both big and small and helping our client to maximise their returns from the work we carry out.
Are you looking to appoint a digital marketing agency for your business? I hope these points have helped the process for you, we’d love for Entyce to be considered as an agency to help you achieve great things.