Many ways to market your business in the online arena: Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, PPC, Advertisements, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, and the list goes on…

Confused? A Digital marketing agency will solve this challenge for you, giving you a full scope to focus on the work you are best at. However, choosing the right digital marketing agency is no little than a task.

If you are having a business in India, you might know that there are literally thousands of online marketing agencies you could work with. So how as a business owner you could decide on?

No need to worry, we are going to answer your questions in this guide. Let’s dive in.

Why work with a Digital Marketing agency?

Marketing is all about targeting your audience at the right time and with the right methods. For instance, if you are targeting business executives, then you might need to get seen on LinkedIn. If you are targeting millennials, then Instagram and Snapchat are the places to be. And with Facebook’s 2.27 billion monthly users who are spending an average of 45 minutes every day on the site or app, virtually every business can see ROI through Ads.

Because there are new marketing methods popping up every day, it can be difficult for busy entrepreneurs to stay on the top of the latest trends, find out the most effective way to use the different platforms available, and become a master in every area of digital marketing.

This is where; hiring an agency will help your business.

Hiring a team of experts to manage the technical sides of your marketing strategy permits you to focus on other areas of your business that you enjoy and do the best, rather than weeks or months trying to find the right person to hire and train.

In this article, we will go over how to evaluate a marketing agency, and how to decide between hiring an agency and handling your marketing by yourself.

When you find an agency after rigorous search or references, for your digital operations, start asking them some questions, these questions may be asked on a phone or a direct meet up.

The first question, you need to ask yourself:

What are your requirements?

The first step in selecting an expert digital agency is to work out your own company’s marketing needs.

Do you wish website design? PPC? SEO? Analytics? And take a tough look at your team — will you/they really strategize, implement and optimize the most effective marketing strategy?

If you have already got an in-house marketing team, what will your team have the skills (and time) for? What are the marketing techniques that you just know you “should” do but haven’t gotten around to yet? These kinds of queries can shed some light on what you can outsource to an agency to get more accurate results.

How does the Digital Marketing agency run their own business?

If an agency can generate marketing results for themselves, that’s a decent sign they’ll be ready to help you do the same.

So if you’re considering hiring an agency for blog management, how do they run their own blog? If you’re considering hiring them for social media promotion, how do they handle their own social media accounts? If you wish to hire them for SEO, how do they rank in search for terms in their industry?

You can verify these details on your own, and additionally ask the agency. Case studies and client testimonials also are a decent sign, however, you must always counter check on your own instead of trusting them at face value.

If the marketing company doesn’t “practice what they preach” for their own business, then it might be a red flag that they don’t really believe or aren’t very capable of the services that they provide.

What are the KPIs they are offering?

Most businesses track self-importance or vanity metric – numbers that may look like they matter but don’t have any real correlation to generating revenue for the business. For instance, the quantity of “likes” you get on a post may be thought-about vanity metric as a result of it doesn’t continuously translate on to sales.

The final thing you wish is for an agency to charge you premium rates every month and only deliver more likes on your posts, but no boost in sales. How can they measure your success? Are they choosing the metrics that truly show ROI?

What results do they promise?

When you’re in a business that includes a low barrier to entry, you’ll inevitably have to manage people who claim to know what they’re doing, however actually, have no plan. Marketing is one of those industries.

There are many marketing agencies and freelance online marketers that promise the world to customers just to shut the deal, however, lack the staff and the skills to deliver. In the worst cases, they keep charging you money every month and say that it will take more time to envision organic traffic results, even though they know that their actions can never deliver results.

Agencies should also not guarantee bottom-of-the-funnel results because there are simply too many factors involved, that are specific to every company, which may lead to differing ROI. For instance, you may make all the proper moves when it involves your marketing, however, results can take longer if you’re in a more competitive market.

Putting it all at once

Before you land upon a thought whether to hire an internet marketing agency or do your marketing in-house, make sure you understand what goes into launching successful inward marketing campaigns.

For this, you should:

• Make sure you know your target market at a deep level
• Understand the tools you wish to use to keep things efficient
• Stay consistent with your marketing efforts, and understand that you’ll have to wait many months to see results
• Produce high-quality content that your audience finds helpful
• Have experience running inward campaigns that generate ROI

Cheers!