Questions To Ask Your Digital Marketing Agency

If you’re looking into hiring a digital marketing agency, there are probably a lot of questions going through your head and it can be difficult to know who’s the best fit for your organisation. We’ve compiled a list questions you might want to consider asking, to make sure you are investing your money in the right agency.

General

How will you help improve my site’s conversion rate?

When you’re deciding which digital marketing agency to go for, it’s important to ask about how they will actually generate you more enquires and ultimately conversions, so that your investment in them pays off. Many agencies may talk to you about increased visibility and traffic – but drill down into the tangible benefits this brings to your business.

How will you communicate?

It will be important to find out how often you will be looking to communicate with your agency. You may be the type of organisation who is looking for very regular communication, or perhaps less regularly but with more detailed updates. It very much depends on how you as an organisation prefers to communicate, and the processes you have in place.

How will progress be reported?

Will you be receiving a monthly report in a format that’s easy to understand, and that details actions carried out over the course of the month and the implications of this? Perhaps there will be a meeting in line with this to run over this in greater detail. Make sure progress is reported in a way that is most relatable to you.

How long should my contract be?

This is something you will have to discuss with your agency, as it depends on your business goals and what you are really hoping to achieve; naturally, this will differ from organisation to organisation.

How many hours worth of work should I expect each month?

This is again will need to be agreed between you and your agency prior to partnering with them. It will highly depend on what you want to achieve, the strategy put in place and how this will be executed.

SEO

How will you improve our search engine rankings?

You should get the agency to run through the SEO strategy they plan to use, as it should be suited to your business – and the results that you can expect from putting this strategy in place. Watch out for any black hat strategies that could get you blacklisted (which you can read more about here). Make sure to get the agency to talk you through things like local SEO, e-commerce SEO, conversion optimisation and link building.

Can you guarantee results?

The answer from a good agency should be no, you can’t outright guarantee results that will have a long-term positive impact. But an agency should be able to be confident that the methods they are using are suited to your business, and will positively impact your site going forward.

See how we can help you with SEO here.

PPC

Do you offer paid advertising across multiple platforms?

Whilst Google Adwords is the most popular platform of choice, it is worth talking through which platform is best suited to your business with the agency. Your organisation may benefit from using Bing Ads for example, and you want to make sure you go with an agency that has experience in this area and is well equipped to use multiple platforms confidently. We’ve put a blog post together around this here.

Will you be able to see spend on AdWords?

We think it’s important to remain transparent throughout the process, it’s your money, therefore, you should be able to see where it is being spent. Be wary of agencies that are less open about this.

Take a look how we can help you with paid advertising here.

Social

Which social channels should your organisation be on?

Social media can be used as a really effective marketing tool, and your agency should walk through a social media strategy with you beforehand to discuss how best to achieve your business goals. From this, they can then select which platforms are best for your organisation and can focus their efforts on the ones that really matter.

How will the social media presence reflect your brand?

Making sure the social media presence reflects your brand is something that should be factored into the strategy and should be bespoke to your business so that is can effectively portray your brand values and personality.

We’ve got some more information on our approach to social media here.

Content

What information do you need to provide to the agency?

Find out what information the agency requires from you beforehand, so that they can make any content as effective and bespoke to your business as possible. Make sure they know how to write as your brand, so consider the terminology you would use and how you would use it, your brand’s tone of voice and how you address the users.

What previous work have you done?

Ask to see previous examples of content they have created so that you can gauge how competent they would be in this area, and if you think they would be suited to your needs.

Email Marketing

How will this be kept on brand?

Discuss with the agency how they will ensure the template they use will be in line with your brand guidelines? How will they be sure to encompass, your brand personality and tone of your content within the copy of this?

How will the success of this be measured?

Will the agency measure the success of these in line with your own organisational goals, rather than looking at the data and analytics in isolation? Make sure you know what the agency will be reporting on, and what they really mean.

Are you looking for some help with your email marketing? We can help.

Don’t be scared of asking the questions – drill down into what you really want to know. If you’re looking to hire a digital marketing agency, we’d love to chat about what we can do for you – get in touch today!