What to Look For When Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency

Digital marketing is an essential component of your overall marketing strategy. Choosing the right marketing partner to tell your brand’s story is critical. It is important that you know the right questions to ask and key things to look for when choosing the right digital marketing agency to align with. Below are seven key questions that will help you make your decision.

What are your goals in partnering with a digital marketing agency?

Before setting up discovery meetings with different agencies, you need to know three key things:

1. Why do you want to hire a digital marketing agency?
2. What do you want them to do for you?
3. What is your budget?

The answers to these questions will help you and the agency dialogue about how to leverage digital marketing to build your brand.

What questions are they asking?

The quality and depth of questions you are asked by the agency will give you clues about their overall understanding of digital marketing and how they may be able to apply it to telling your brand’s story.

What does winning looking like?

Before investing in a marketing or business initiative, you have to have an end goal in mind. Whether it is generating more leads for your sales team, increasing e-commerce sales, or generating more brand awareness, you and the agency have to know what you are trying to accomplish.

How do they measure success?

Data is the backbone of successful marketing strategies. Ask the agency what kind of tools they use to assess marketing performance. You also need to know how often and in what manner that data will be presented to you.

Do you trust them?

Based on your perception of the agency and your interactions with them, do you believe they will be able to deliver results?

Do you believe they will be transparent if things are not going according to plan?

Do you like them?

Depending on how much marketing you want the agency to do for your brand, you or members of your team will be spending a lot of time working with agency team members. You need to be comfortable working closely with the agency's team on a regular basis.

Do they practice what they preach?

Invest some time exploring the agency's social media channels, website, blog, and other digital channels. Do you like what you see? Do you feel that what you experience in the sales process aligns with what they are doing?

Choosing the right digital marketing agency is an important decision for every organization that chooses to outsource marketing functions.

Making the wrong choice can cost you time, money, and negatively impact your brand.