As the digital landscape changes, so do marketing strategies and practices. What worked in the past doesn’t guarantee success in the present or the future. If you’re looking for a change in your marketing agency, you need to know what you’re getting into. Are you ready to know what questions to ask? There’s no better way to discover the right agency for you than asking some questions. Read on to find out what you should be asking your next marketing agency.
What is your approach?
You want to understand how your marketing agency plans to approach your business. What are your core values? What are the critical areas of focus? Why does your company choose to focus on those? What is your approach to leadership and management, accounting, and other business areas? These are especially important for small business marketing approaches as you need quantifiable results and specific reasons for following different marketing approaches.
How will you measure success?
Marketing is a fluid process that is constantly shifting. The definition of success can change based on your industry, company, and goals. Ask your agency to define success for you in terms of your goals. If you’re looking for an increase in leads or an increase in revenue, you need to know how they plan to measure success. You also want to know how often they plan to track their metrics so you can follow their progress.
What makes you different?
You want to pick a marketing agency that stands out from the rest. You want a partner that is different from the rest. You want a marketing agency that will be different from each meeting to the next. You want a marketing agency that will be a differentiator for your company.
How do you see the future for my company?
Ideally, the marketing agency you choose will have looked into your company and have an idea of what will and won’t work for you and the best approaches to take along with various other insights, thanks to their unique skills and knowledge. You want to know what partnering with them looks like and what you can expect from them. After all, you are paying them for results, and to get the most ROI; you want to partner with a company that sees your company and its potential and can market it correctly.
Ask them how they see the future of your company and the type of results you can expect to see long term.
What are your specialisms?
What are the main areas of focus of your marketing agency? Will your agency focus on digital marketing, SEO, SMO, content marketing, or brand building? You need to know the significant areas of focus to decide if you’re a good fit with a particular agency. You also need to make sure that they have the experience to handle the areas you focus on. You need to make sure that they know their strengths, weaknesses, and focus areas. You also need to make sure that they have the expertise to handle the areas you focus on.
What other services do you provide?
Let’s say you’re looking for an agency that offers marketing automation. You want to know that they offer marketing automation to decide if you’re going to work with them. You may also want them to help you with email marketing, advertising, social media management, etc. You need to make sure that they have the experience to handle the areas you want to focus on. Doing this and asking the right questions can help you to make sure you know their strengths, weaknesses, and areas of focus.
Do you outsource any work?
This is yet another important question to ask every marketing agency. Do you want to pick a marketing agency that outsources any work? Outsourcing is common practice in the industry, and not all services are offered in-house, even if they are presented to clients. If you know exactly what they are undertaking themselves and what they outsource, you will better understand what to expect.
Who are your past clients?
This is an important question to ask every marketing agency. You want to pick a marketing agency that works with many different companies. You want a marketing agency with experience in your industry and who knows how to get proven results. Reviews and testimonials from current or previous clients will give you a better idea of what they can offer you. And reputable agencies will have no issue providing you with such reviews or evidence.
Be wary of agencies who don’t have to share their clients or offer up examples of previous work; this can indicate something amiss; either they aren’t being truthful, they have skewed figures, or it wasn’t a productive relationship.
How long have you been in business?
You want to know how long your new marketing agency has been in business. This can help you gauge how successful they are and how much experience they have with the type of clients they work with. While the length of the agency can have no direct bearing on the results they can produce, it is more an indicator of their experience in proving results and will give you an idea of how they are likely to work; more established agencies can offer you a deeper insight in what does and doesn’t work as well as an idea of how things have changed over the years and what will provide you with the best results.
Conclusion
Choosing a marketing agency needs to be something you put a lot of thought and effort into and not just be impressed by the use of buzzwords and technology that seems impressive but has no relation to your business.
Be methodical, prepare yourself with questions and research, and put all of these to the marketing companies you are looking to work with. While it can be tempting to get results fast, you need to get the right results for an ongoing successful marketing campaign to do what you need it to do when you need the results.