So, you’re in the market for a marketing agency?
That’s exciting! Or it should be. Maybe you’ve worked with others marketing companies in the past, maybe you haven’t. What should you look for? Check out these differentiating factors that we believe will help you make the right decision.
Creative Bandwidth 🧙♂️
Any marketing agency worth its salt needs to have a strong creative staff ready to position your brand in ways you may not have considered before. One of creative’s jobs in to think of messaging and how it relates to the customer.
They put themselves in your customer’s shoes, and build strategies to connect with them in lasting and meaningful ways. It’s worth keeping in mind that yes, the business owner is the best at running their business, but often an outside perspective can be one to bring new ways to improve the business, or its brand.
When interviewing a new marketing agency, ask them about their creative staff. What is their process like? How important is creative to their business?
Technical Ability ⚒
The days of advertising mostly relying on strong creative are long gone. Now, a marketing agency must be able to offer technical services in addition to its creative horsepower. Items such as websites, applications, data analytics, and even advertising platforms relying on technical team members to provide high-levels of insight.
Instead of buying a design and signage like a billboard, you may be running a Google Ads campaign, which can create countless opportunities for data collection, landing page optimization, and a cascading series of automated user outreach. Don’t sleep on technical chops when it comes to selecting your next agency.
During the interviewing phase, ask the agency what technical areas they are able to help. What programming languages do their developers cover? How many methods of data tracking and collection can they offer?
Transparency in Service ⚖
Your next marketing agency should be able to tell you exactly what they are billing for, and how much, before they do. In the past, scope creep and billing creep were all-too-common when it came to ad agencies. Now, with round the clock communications, it isn’t difficult to keep a client up to date, before things happen. Especially in the age of Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and more. These instant messenger style chat rooms allow for 24/7 updates, both by individuals and automated bots.
Ask the agency your consider about how billing new projects is handled. Do they provide an invoice before items billed are authorized?
Project Management & Leadership 🥇
The previous topic is a great segway into this one. Project management, especially in times of so much work-from-home, higher levels of stress and distraction, and tighter budgets, are more important than ever. Slack, makes a great addition to this style of decentralized project management, as it allows automated updates sent based on triggers related to the project.
Website down? Slack knows. Need approval on new creative? Slack messaged. Got a new lead calling in from Google Ads? Slack! Plus, it keeps everyone updated that needs to be, instead of those in long-winded email chains that we all despise. And, this is on top of ongoing reporting and project notes. You should have everything you need in six months to look back and see what work was being done.
You should also ask them what is included? Are there free automated SEO reports? Do they offer an analytics dashboard that ties all your data together? How will they prove success or failure in marketing efforts as time goes by? These are important factors when making a decision on a website developer, an advertising agency, or any other vendor. What is the method of determining your return-on-investment? And can they coach you on how to set reasonable goals for this process?
Request from your prospective marketing agency they tell you how they manage a project for twelve months. See what they say!
Local Integrity & Reviews ✨
Just like when we’re shopping on Amazon and we check the reviews of a new product, we can do the same when selecting a new vendor. Explore your prospective agency’s Google My Business, Facebook Reviews, Yelp, BBB, and others like G2, UpCity, ThumbTack, and many more.
Extra credit: Do a Google search for the business name and see what comes up!
We hope this list of recommendations was helpful for you. Finding a new marketing agency should be fun, albeit a bit of work. It’s an exciting time for your business, as there’s likely so much potential to be uncovered. Let us know on social if you have other project needs that are important to you when picking a new agency.
Ready to get started on your own marketing project? Contact V12 Marketing in Concord, NH and get a free consultation!
