When you’re ready to hire a digital marketing company, it can be difficult to know where to start. What questions should you ask?
How do you know if they’re reputable? Here are the 5 most important questions you should ask every digital marketing company when interviewing them to help you decide which one to hire.
Agencies who offer the full suite of digital marketing services – SEO, Google Ads, Social Media, Analytics, Content, Video etc - can be very appealing. Having a ‘one-stop shop’ who can meet all your digital needs is much easier than juggling multiple providers.
However, in some cases, these generalist agencies turn out not to be actually not very good at some of those things. They’re a jack of all trades, but master of none.
We sometimes see this with web design agencies who say “we’ll not only build your website but also take care of your SEO”. Well sure, they might be good at SEO too. But in our experience, they tend to only know the basics, and we end up doing a lot of remedial work later on.
Of course, it's perfectly ok for an agency to not be experts in every digital channel. A company who are great at everything Google search-related may not be the right people to create viral videos.
Only the largest agencies can offer true ‘full stack’ marketing services – but they can be expensive and lack the personal touch. So it’s likely you may need to hire a couple of different providers for different things.
Whoever you hire, just make sure they’re genuinely experts at all the things you’re paying them to do.
If you’re forking over money to an agency every month, it should be crystal clear what success will look like. If it isn’t already clear from their proposal, ask them the following:
This actually makes life easier for the agency too! They'll want to certainty of knowing how they're tracking in getting you the results you want!
A good agency is one who is realistic and honest about what they can do for you, but will still give you a good steer on what results you should expect for your money.
If they say something like “we’ll get you 95 leads per month at $24 per lead” or “we’ll get you #1 rankings for all your keywords within 3 months”… then they’re just making up a number to keep you happy. Likewise, if they’re too vague and just say “we’ll improve your search traffic” – that’s no good either.
For each service/channel, ask what results you can expect, and how soon you’ll see those results. Note that this should be a different answer for each channel.
So for example, Google Search Ads can generate decent results pretty quickly, and even better results with 3-6 months of optimisation – but you have to keep paying. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) work, on the other hand, will take much longer for the results to kick in, but the impact can last well into the future.
One mistake we used to make with clients was not being clear enough on how much time we’ll spend on their account each month. To avoid any frustrations or arguments down the track, be sure to ask the agency:
There isn’t necessarily a ‘best practice’ level here – it all depends on how much you're willing to pay and what services they’re providing. What does matter is to know exactly what you can expect before you begin.
Knowing if they’ve worked with similar companies matters for two reasons:
You won’t want your Google Ads manager to be also running search ads for one of your competitors, for example.
But if the agency provides SEO services to one of your competitors, but all you need from them is Facebook Ads and Analytics? That’s probably ok!
Before signing on, nail down exactly what they’ll provide and what you’ll be expected to bring to the table in terms of assets and work to be done. This includes things like visual ad design, access to stock photos, video production and website copywriting.
The agency may have that capability in-house, or they may outsource it to other providers. Alternatively, they may be looking to you to provide some of those resources. Again, there’s no right or wrong approach here, but just be clear upfront as to who'll provide what.
They may also request access to your business information – including your email databases of customers and leads, access to your CMS and CRM systems etc. If so, ask them how it will be used, who will have access, and how that information will securely stored to comply with privacy requirements.
Here at Insight Online, we pride ourselves on having very close relationships with our clients. We want to be an integral part of their marketing team, not just some faceless company they outsource stuff too.
If that sounds like what you want too, then ask a potential agency the following:
A big part of the success of your partnership with the agency will come down to the working relationship you build with them - so you'll want to know who that is!
This is less common in New Zealand than overseas, but you'll want to ensure the agency you hire is using or recommending a particular product/service because it's the best tool for the job, not because they're getting a kickback.
If the agency can't or won't answer any of the questions above, treat that as a major red flag!
But if they can answer each of them confidently and to your satisfaction, you can expect a happy and fruitful partnership together.
Read more about ‘What is Digital Marketing’.
