Digital Marketing Agency Checklist

This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation” blog series.

If you’re considering hiring a digital marketing agency to help you grow your business, you’ll have plenty of options to choose from. Finding the right partner can be challenging, and sometimes it’s just a matter of comfort and cultural fit, not specific capabilities. But it is critical know that an agency has the right people, processes and experience in place to give what you need to succeed. Here is a checklist that can help you compare agencies.

1. What is the agency’s pricing structure? You’ll want pricing to be as transparent as possible. Some agencies offer pre-packaged services (4 blogs and 1 white paper per month, for example), while others provide proposals with no detail on how the money is spent. Transparent pricing process like the Agile point system gives the client more visibility and power to choose how to best invest its marketing budget.
2. Does the agency focus on tactics or strategy? Tactics without strategy can be dangerous. A good firm should be able to benchmark where you are at, work with you to set goals, and build a strategy to reach or exceed those goals.
3. Does the agency have experience in your industry? Domain experience can help agencies be more effective, faster. But it is not always necessary. A track record of success in disparate industries might mean that the team is great a quickly understanding your business and how to grow it.
4. Does the firm have talent and experience in the areas you need? Ask about experience with the following:
   
   
   1. SEO
   2. Keyword research
   3. Web design
   4. PR
   5. Advertising (digital and traditional)
   6. Graphic design
   7. Media buying
   8. Inbound marketing
   9. Content marketing
   10. E-commerce
   11. Analytics
   12. Lead generation
   13. Marketing automation

Not all of these services will be relevant to every business, but all of these services should be in the agency’s realm of experience because they are all critical to digital marketing success. It is possible that agencies may work with dedicated partners–it can be a good thing if a firm admits that it can’t excel in every aspect of digital marketing–but these relationships should be mostly invisible to you, the client, and the partners will form a virtual team.

1. Does the agency have references on hand, case studies of success, and is it successful with its own digital marketing? Use them all!
2. What is the agency’s project management process? Marketing projects like website design and inbound marketing campaigns can quickly get off-schedule and over-budget. Good agencies have rock-solid project management process in place to make sure this doesn’t happen.
3. Does the firm have analytics services? You can’t be successful without goals, and you can’t tell if you’ve reached your goals without ongoing measurement and analytics.

In today’s world of online research and shopping, digital marketing is critical to the success of almost every business. Engaging people as the search for products and services online is simply how most business gets done. Having a digital marketing agency partner can get you up and running, and winning, faster. Finding the right partner can be challenging but asking the right questions can make comparing firms easier, and increase your odds of success.

This blog post is part of “The Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation” blog series.