\n[\/sg_epic_intro]\n[sg_epic_focus title=”Challenge”]\n[sg_epic_focus_left]\nFor example, if you\u2019re targeting business executives, then you might want to get seen on LinkedIn<\/a>. \u00a0If your social media marketing is targeting younger people, then Snapchat<\/a> and Instagram<\/a> are the places to be.\u00a0And with Facebook\u2019s 1.65 billion<\/a> monthly active users who are spending on average 50\u00a0minutes each day on the site, virtually every business can\u00a0see ROI through Facebook ads.<\/p>\n
There are new marketing tactics popping up every day. It can be tough for busy entrepreneurs to stay on top of the latest trends, figure out the best ways to use different platforms, and become\u00a0a master in every area of digital marketing overnight.
\n[\/sg_epic_focus_left]\n[sg_epic_focus_right]\nThat\u2019s where hiring a digital marketing company can really help your business.<\/p>\n
Hiring a team of experts\u00a0to manage the more technical aspects\u00a0of your marketing strategy\u00a0allows you to\u00a0focus on other areas of your business that you enjoy and do best rather\u00a0than spend weeks or months trying to find the right person to hire and train.<\/p>\n
In this article, we\u2019ll go over how to evaluate digital marketing companies, the questions you should ask, and how to decide\u00a0between hiring an agency or handling your marketing in-house.
\n[\/sg_epic_focus_right]\n[\/sg_epic_focus]\n[sg_epic_section_gray title=”What Marketing Agencies Do”]\nThe best digital marketing firms help you get more sales by leveraging different marketing tactics to attract your ideal customer. The services that agencies offer tend to vary a lot, but in general, you can expect to get these:<\/p>\n
Google Ads<\/h3>\n
Google Ads is a great way to capture the attention of potential customers right at the moment when they’re aware that they have a problem. Most people turn to Google to find solutions to their pain points, so running an Ads campaign that targets those prospects can be highly profitable.<\/p>\n
SEO<\/h3>\n
Getting your articles to rank high in search isn\u2019t just about building \u201cbrand awareness\u201d or getting more page views. There\u2019s more to it than that. By getting your content to rank high in search, you\u2019ll be able to capture potential customers at the perfect stage in the buyer\u2019s journey\u00a0\u2014 right when they realize they have a problem and need your solution!<\/p>\n
Facebook advertising<\/h3>\n
Facebook\u2019s targeting features<\/a> combined with their massive user base makes it a fantastic platform for virtually any business to see a healthy ROI. You can target by gender, education level, income, location, interests, status updates and even major life events.<\/p>\n YouTube<\/a> reaches more 18-49 year olds than the top 10 primetime TV shows\u00a0in the U.S. The massive audience combined with increased engagement that comes with video marketing also makes video ads a great place to see ROI. Video ads can be targeted by demographic, online behavior, location, interest, YouTube channel, and more.<\/p>\n Over 50% of mobile searches<\/a> lead to purchase. When that search is related to a local business, that number is even higher: 78% of local mobile searches<\/a> result in offline purchases, and search terms indicate high intent to purchase as well. There are a variety of options that agencies have when it comes to mobile advertising, such as\u00a0mobile YouTube ads, in-app advertising, and campaigns to boost mobile app installs.<\/p>\n Source: Search Engine Land<\/a><\/p>\n Content marketing is the fuel that built many multi-million dollar businesses. Most companies think creating content is about writing a few blog posts every week and slapping them up on a website. But those who care about sales over vanity metrics realize that it\u2019s more complicated than that. Digital marketing services that agencies might offer within content marketing include blog post generation, infographic creation, SEO writing, content analysis, and social media promotion. Email still generates the most ROI for marketers, even with all the new social networks popping up. In fact, for every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in return<\/a>. Agencies might offer services like list building, engaging with your list so that it doesn\u2019t go cold, segmentation or autoresponder sequence optimization.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, there\u2019s one main factor that determines whether your site gets sales or not: Are your visitors taking the action that you want them to take? That means having the right site UX, form design and other elements to boost your lead generation and conversions. Agency services in this area could include conversion path analysis, CRO goal setting, identification of conversion metrics, and collecting data from website visitors.<\/p>\n Some performance marketing agencies are more specialized than others, but in general, they offer some variation of the services listed above.<\/p>\n But before you can pick the right digital marketing agency with the right services for your business, you have to ask yourself and your potential agencies a few questions. Get a Free Marketing Consultation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n[\/sg_epic_section_gray]\n[sg_epic_section title=”Asking the Right Questions”]\n The first step is to figure out your own company\u2019s marketing requirements before looking for a recommended digital marketing agency.<\/p>\n Do you need website design? Email marketing? SEO? Analytics?<\/p>\n If you already have an in-house\u00a0marketing team, ask yourself which marketing strategies does your team have the skills for?\u00a0What are the marketing tactics that\u00a0you know\u00a0you \u201cshould” do but haven\u2019t gotten around to yet?<\/p>\n These are the sorts of questions that will\u00a0shed some light on what you can\u00a0outsource to an agency to get more efficient results.<\/p>\n One of the best\u00a0signs about an agency that will indicate what they can do for your\u00a0business are the results they\u2019ve generated for themselves.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re thinking about hiring an agency for blog management, how do they run their own blog?<\/p>\n If you\u2019re thinking about hiring them for social media promotion, how do they handle their own social media accounts?<\/p>\n If you want to hire them for SEO, how do they rank in search for terms in their industry?<\/p>\n We rank highly on Google for our target keywords, including “marketing funnel” and “SEO techniques.” \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n You can verify these details on your own, and also ask the digital marketing service provider.<\/p>\n If they don\u2019t \u201cpractice what they preach\u201d for their own business, then it could be a red flag that they don\u2019t really believe in or are capable of the services that they offer.<\/p>\n Most businesses track vanity metrics<\/a>, numbers that might seem like they matter but have no real correlation to generating revenue for the business. For example, the number of \u201clikes\u201d you get on a post can be considered a vanity metric because it doesn\u2019t always translate directly to sales.<\/p>\n The last thing you want is for an agency to charge you premium rates every month and only deliver\u00a0more likes on your posts but\u00a0no boosts in sales. How will they measure your success? Be sure to ask the agency this as you\u2019re looking through your options.<\/p>\n Here are some\u00a0important metrics<\/a> in digital marketing:<\/p>\n Depending on how solid the rest of your marketing funnel<\/a> is, a boost in traffic could be directly correlated with a boost in conversions. But if you\u2019re not sure exactly who your target market is, generating massive traffic to your site and measuring their interaction with your site could be a great, quick way of figuring that out.<\/p>\n The number of minutes users spend on your site is data that shows how interesting and relevant your content is. If your content is highly relevant to their specific situation, then visitors will\u00a0spend a relatively long\u00a0time on your site. If not, then your content could probably be more targeted. Google loves using this metric when ranking content in search because it shows how valuable your website or blog\u00a0is to a reader who searched for your keywords.<\/p>\n Other factors could influence time on your website as well, such as page speed<\/a>. You can track your average time on site through the \u201caverage visit duration\u201d statistic in Google Analytics. <\/p>\n Source: Engage the CROwd It\u2019s important to find out which\u00a0channels users are visiting your site from. For example, if you find that most of your traffic is coming through a particular article that ranks high in search, then you’ll want\u00a0to produce more content similar to that one. In addition to that, it\u2019s important to measure what what type of traffic you\u2019re getting. Are most of your visitors\u00a0referral traffic from other websites? Are you getting most of your traffic from specific marketing campaigns? Are you getting organic traffic from search?<\/p>\n Bounce rate shows the percentage of visitors that\u00a0leave your site after they land on it. High bounce rate could indicate that the content on your site is not relevant or valuable.<\/p>\n Cost per click is a purchasing model for paid ads where you pay each time your ad is clicked.<\/p>\n Click through rate measures the number of times your ad has been clicked versus\u00a0the number of impressions it received. This helps analyze how targeted your ad copy is.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re hiring a digital marketing consultancy for social media management, then you\u2019ll want to identify some KPIs in this area. Social interaction KPIs can help measure the extent to which your social media efforts help generate conversions.<\/p>\n If you or your agency use a tool like KISSmetrics<\/a>, you\u2019ll be able to track the entire customer journey of people who\u00a0come to your site through social media. That way, you can track exactly how many buyers your social media posts are generating, not just likes or shares.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re in an industry that has a low barrier to entry, you\u2019ll inevitably have to deal with people who claim to know what they\u2019re doing, but actually have no idea.<\/p>\n Marketing is one of those industries.<\/p>\n There are plenty of marketing agencies that promise the world to customers just to close the deal, but lack the staff\u00a0and the skills to deliver. In the worst cases, they keep charging you\u00a0money every month\u00a0and say that it will take a long time to see organic traffic results, even though they know that their actions will never deliver results.<\/p>\n Agencies also should not guarantee bottom-of-the-funnel results<\/a> because there are just too many factors involved which\u00a0are specific to each company that might result in differing ROI. For example, you could make all the right moves when it comes to your marketing, but results will\u00a0take longer if you\u2019re in a more competitive market.<\/p>\n You can filter out scammy or low-quality agencies by asking them for their \u201csecret sauce.\u201d What makes them different? What\u2019s their strategy for getting you results?<\/p>\n For example, according to\u00a0Social Media Examiner<\/a>, a good\u00a0question to ask at this stage\u00a0is: \u201cHow are you going to help with content creation?<\/b>\u201d A\u00a0good answer might go something like this:<\/p>\n First we\u2019ll start by creating a publishing schedule. This is a list of keyword rich headlines which gives us a framework for the types of content we want to produce. Ideally, the content comes from within your organization, but if you don\u2019t have the resources, we can help procure a professional writer who has experience with your industry.<\/p>\n Either way, we will have our SEO experts review and optimize the content before it\u2019s posted to your website.<\/p>\n Additionally, we can leverage the content you\u2019re already producing (whitepapers, case studies, webinars, emails, sales presentations, etc.). These assets can be transcribed, organized, and optimized to draw relevant traffic from the search engines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n According to Neil Patel<\/a>, here are some common red flags\u00a0to watch out for when hiring a marketing agency:<\/p>\n You tend to get what you pay for. If you find agencies that charge low prices, you might think you\u2019re getting a great deal, but in reality you\u2019ll likely have to deal with poor service.<\/p>\n Look up agencies on the Better Business Bureau<\/a> website to see their ratings.<\/p>\n You can easily filter out low-quality agencies through price. Many businesses want to save money, so price is usually the first thing they ask about. However, if you find an agency that charges low prices, then chances are they deliver low-quality results too.<\/p>\n Think about it from their perspective: if an agency prices itself too low, then they make lower margins on their services. In addition to that, they\u2019re less likely to go the extra mile for your business because there\u2019s not much incentive. Top digital marketing agencies that charge higher prices tend to treat their clients with more generosity because they can afford to do so. Don\u2019t cut corners when finding the right agency for the job.<\/p>\n Learn more about the various agency pricing models<\/a> that you\u2019ll come across. Get a Free Marketing Consultation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n[\/sg_epic_section]\n[sg_epic_section_gray title=”Should You Go In-House or Hire an Agency?”]\nIf you run a small or mid-sized business, chances are you\u2019re asking yourself this question. Should you hire a marketing agency, or go in-house?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start by thinking about what it takes to run a successful marketing campaign. Here\u2019s a general list<\/a>:<\/p>\n Before running a successful marketing campaign, you need to have deep insight into your customer\u2019s behavior<\/a>. Most marketing messages end up sounding generic because most companies don\u2019t take the time to truly\u00a0understand their customers and the stories behind their problems.<\/p>\n Scaling anything requires proper documentation of systems, processes, and workflows that go into completing a specific task. That means having a structured system to follow when you create a blog post, run a PR campaign, run social media promotions or paid ads, etc.<\/p>\n Inbound marketing campaigns require a variety of tools from start to finish. For example, you might need email marketing tools (like MailChimp<\/a> or Drip<\/a>), analytics tools (like Google Analytics<\/a> or KISSmetrics<\/a>), communication tools like Slack<\/a>, and more. These tools help you accomplish your key tasks and hit your goals more efficiently.<\/p>\n One of the most important skills when it comes to inbound marketing is patience. Typically, noticeable results only come in after several months\u00a0and some of the most successful companies have been consistently putting in effort<\/a> over the course of many years.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to write random blog posts, but can you write quality content<\/a> that your specific target audience will love to read? That\u2019s what separates decent blogs from truly great ones.<\/p>\n Lastly, you should make sure that you have experience designing and running some portion of inbound marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n Hitting these different criteria takes time. It\u2019s not easy to publish high-quality content that your audience values\u00a0consistently, or document rock-solid processes that keep your systems on track. Hiring an agency\u00a0can help you avoid the cost of getting yourself and your team up to speed\u00a0as well as\u00a0avoid getting sidetracked from other important things you have to do in business (like closing deals or getting investors).<\/p>\n If you hire the best digital marketing firm, you\u2019ll get a team of skilled and certified experts who work for you every single month. You won\u2019t have to worry about assembling your own content team. In fact, you\u2019ll have more <\/i>people working for you to get results, which can\u00a0help accelerate your results.<\/p>\n However, the downside is that you won\u2019t be able to oversee every detail of what the agency does on a day-to-day basis for your company. Because of that, there is a risk of the relationship not working out, which is why it\u2019s important to choose an agency that also vets you as a client to ensure that the relationship will be a successful one.<\/p>\n Since entrepreneurs tend\u00a0to crave control, that might be be more difficult than it sounds for some people.<\/p>\n Also, although you may\u00a0think<\/em> that the expense of hiring an agency is a downside, it can often be more expensive to hire and train a team in-house to fill necessary roles. If you have doubts about your ability to generate ROI through a marketing campaign, then you may find it easier to hire an agency to take care of\u00a0everything for you. Digital marketing agencies can\u00a0handle the systems, processes, and workflows that go into running campaigns from beginning to end. They have a structured process to follow when they create blog posts, run social promotions, etc.<\/p>\n When you start looking for an agency, here are some things to keep in mind:<\/p>\n The best digital marketing companies could generate millions of dollars in revenue for your business, give you peace of mind by handling everything for you, and allow you to avoid the cost of setting up a team in-house. That way, you can focus your time on your strengths, and perfect what you\u2019re already good at instead of worrying about your weaknesses. Get a Free Marketing Consultation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n[\/sg_epic_section_green]\nVideo advertising<\/h3>\n
Mobile marketing<\/h3>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/local-search-breakdown.png\")
<\/p>\nContent marketing<\/h3>\n
\n<\/p>\nEmail marketing<\/h3>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Highest-ROI-1.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nWhat are your company\u2019s marketing requirements?<\/h3>\n
How do they run their own business?<\/h3>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Marketing-Funnel-Strategy.png\")
<\/p>\nWhat are their KPIs?<\/h3>\n
Number of unique visitors<\/h4>\n
Time spent on site<\/h4>\n
\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/How-to-Choose-the-Best-Digital-Marketing-Agencies5.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\nTraffic source numbers<\/h4>\n
Bounce rate<\/h4>\n
Cost per click<\/h4>\n
Click-through rate<\/h4>\n
Social interactions<\/h4>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/How-to-Choose-the-Best-Digital-Marketing-Agencies6-1024x592.png\")
<\/p>\nWhat results do they promise?<\/h3>\n
Be extra careful with hiring marketing agencies from overseas.<\/h4>\n
What do they charge?<\/h3>\n
\nUnderstanding<\/h3>\n
Processes<\/h3>\n
Tools<\/h3>\n
Consistency<\/h3>\n
Quality<\/h3>\n
Experience<\/h3>\n
\n[\/sg_epic_section_gray]\n[sg_epic_section_green title=”Putting It All Together”]\nBefore deciding on whether you should hire a marketing agency or do your marketing in-house, make sure that you understand what goes into launching successful inbound marketing campaigns<\/a>. You should:<\/p>\n\n
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