How Do Mid-Size Businesses Hire a Digital Marketing Agency?

Digital marketing has evolved significantly in recent years. Today, marketing is highly specialized. It involves more than social media posts, monthly newsletters, and keyword-stuffed blogs to successfully get your business seen by consumers.

Businesses of all sizes must implement comprehensive marketing plans to be competitive and stand out from other businesses offering similar services.

Digital marketing is key to engaging with customers and maintaining relevance as a brand. With customers spending more time on social media and the internet, digital marketing efforts are essential for the growth and profitability of your mid-size business.

Benefits of Hiring a Marketing Agency

While large corporations often have in-house marketing teams, this is not financially viable for all businesses. Mid-size and small businesses often outsource by hiring a digital marketing agency to handle their online customer engagement and promotions.

If you’re weighing the pros and cons of working with a digital agency, consider the following benefits:

Improves your online presence

Modern businesses must have a strong online presence across multiple platforms. Marketing agencies help mid-size businesses develop their digital audience through optimized web pages (SEO), high-quality content marketing, improved customer relationship management (CRM) software, targeted social media strategies, and data-driven decision-making.

While your business may handle some of these tasks internally, growing your online presence is time-consuming. A marketing agency helps you strategize using market insights, experience, and resources to increase your online visibility and appeal to your target demographic.

Increases customer base

Marketing agencies combine traditional and digital marketing tools to expand your customer base. They may use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Google and social media sites to make your business visible to potential customers. Digital marketing agencies manage the customer life cycle (CLC), using scalable techniques to attract, sell to, and re-engage with the target audience.

Allows you to focus on core aspects of your business

Focusing time and effort on marketing campaigns can be detrimental to the core aspects of a business. Rather than keeping up with the latest search engine optimization (SEO) trends or social media marketing strategies, you can focus on the core areas where your strengths lie.

Technology and resources

As specialist service providers, marketing agencies invest in the latest technologies, software, and resources. This enables them to carry out more sophisticated marketing strategies and detailed research and analysis.

When you hire a marketing agency, you gain access to their resources. Some helpful tools for marketing your business online include web development tools, digital plug-ins, research and analysis software, competitor analysis tools, and SEO optimizers.

How to Hire an Agency

When hiring a marketing agency, there are several important factors to consider. This helps ensure you find the right match for your business and specific goals.

Find a reputable company with a proven track record
When looking for a top-class digital marketing agency, confirm they are good at what they do by checking out their own marketing activity. If their website isn’t up to scratch or their social media posts aren’t generating much engagement, there is a good chance this is a red flag that their work won’t meet your standards.

Clear communication is essential for a cohesive relationship and strong marketing performance. At a minimum, an agency should respond promptly and follow up on messages, emails, and calls.

An agency representative should be clear and transparent with you about how they can help market your mid-size business. Be wary of representatives who try to confuse you with industry lingo and complex language.

Determine what metrics they focus on
After confirming an organization has relevant experience and exhibits professionalism, businesses should focus on more precise details, like what metrics they use to measure success.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable values used to determine how effectively a business meets its goals. A marketing agency typically has a proven KPI framework to help businesses accurately measure and assess their marketing strategy.

Many marketing agencies focus on building clicks, views, likes, and shares, without paying enough attention to factors that drive revenue and increase conversions. Likes, shares, and social media interactions are vanity metrics unless they are accompanied by proof they increase sales and improve the bottom line.

Some of the most important KPIs for your business include:

Average visit duration
Web traffic sources
Bounce rate
Cost-per-click advertising (CPC)
Click-through rate
Social interactions

Decide on your indicators by establishing whether they meet the SMART KPI criteria:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-specific

Businesses can get SMART-ER with their KPIs by continuously:

Evaluating
Reevaluating

To successfully evaluate or reevaluate your KPIs, there must be a clear objective in mind that you are tracking your progress against using these indicators. KPIs must be actionable with short and long-term targets so you can review them weekly or monthly and see tangible results. When you monitor your KPIs regularly, you can decide if you’re on track or if they need to change based on how your business is performing.

Look for specialist services

If you know your business needs help in a specific aspect of online marketing, hire a marketing agency specializing in that area. Whether you need assistance with SEO, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, website design, branding, eCommerce design, UX design, or platform migration, choose a marketing agency with proven success in that field.

Hiring a specialist digital marketing agency enables mid-size businesses to grow and compete with much larger corporations. High-level SEO and a well-executed pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign get a smaller business noticed among top competitors.

Some key specialist services that can promote steady growth and help retain customers are SEO-based content, analytical technologies, and budget management software.

These services attract customers, boost sales, and help you identify areas to focus and invest in. These may include popular digital communication channels like social media advertising or email marketing.

What is the Predicted Return On Investment (ROI)?

After discussing your business and marketing goals with various agencies, businesses must request forecasts and projections for ROI. While other KPIs and performance metrics help you track progress toward various business objectives, ROI is typically the main indicator of success.

Analyzing ROI potential and knowing the expected return for a particular campaign allow businesses to be more precise with their goals. By requesting ROI projections and studying the previous work of an agency, you can get a better idea of how they can help grow your business.

Consider All Your Options
Deciding to hire a digital marketing agency is just the first step. Mid-size businesses must consider all available options and interview multiple service providers before hiring a marketing company.

Searching for a “digital marketing agency near me” can alert you to the top-ranking agencies in your immediate area. This is a good indicator of how reputable an agency is and demonstrates they know how to navigate SEO. Ensure their specialist services, previous experience, and overall approach align with your goals before making a final decision.