Digital Marketing Agency

How to choose the right digital marketing agency? There are indeed many factors that contribute to your website ranking and traffic. When it comes to digital marketing, it all depends on the mercy of the god of search engines.

 

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is predictable, so it’s digital marketing. However, millions of other factors are not predictable, which can cause dismay.

Why is this a concern? It’s simple. You may end up losing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have critical prospective clients. This is the very reason you need a digital marketing agency to monitor and continually improve performance, fix the sources that cause you to lose your placement, increase links, and advocate on your behalf to promote and market your website nonstop.

Search Engine Optimization SEO

When it comes to digital marketing or SEO, there is nothing magical about it and there are no shortcuts. It’s all about tedious behind-the-scenes work that you’ll not understand, see, or feel. Ultimately, this hard work will be fruitful and will improve your website. Steady investment is the golden key to future success.

As a professional digital marketing consultant, my advice is simple. As a business owner or social media manager, you will need to learn as much as you can. For example, building a website, learning and understanding basic SEO tools, and understanding a content delivery network are critical. Next, you can hire a digital marketing agency to work on all the details and technical aspects, even coding. Working together with a professional expert will provide a great boost to your website performance.

Finding the Right Digital Marketing Agency

How do I find the right digital marketing agency when there are so many of them out there? Every one of them promises the best results, for instance, a front-page placement in Google. You will only learn by trial and error. Every time I speak to a business owner, they tell me the same things: “I tried that before.” “I spent so much money on them, but it doesn’t work.” “What kind of promise can you give?” “Why are you different from the previous digital marketing person I used for one year?” “I still don’t have my front-page placement on Google.” I know many of you have been there and done that! Many business owners have already given up or at least concluded it’s not worth it.

Learn and Familiarize Before Hiring a Professional

Actually, the reason those business owners ask those questions is because they have no clue about the world of digital marketing or how it works. Otherwise, they would not be asking such questions. This is why my best suggestion is to learn and familiarize yourself before hiring a digital marketing agency.

For instance, if you have no knowledge or understanding of coffee, most likely, you will not be able to build a successful coffee shop business. Likewise, you will not be successful in digital marketing if you have no knowledge or understanding of the subject, unless you luckily and coincidently find a successful digital marketing agency. Then, of course, you would not be reading this article.

How do I find the right digital marketing agency? As I mentioned earlier, I have the best solution to your concerns. Let me explain it again. It requires your time, more than anything else.

You may say, “I am too old to do this stuff.” Then hopefully, you’ll find the right digital marketing agency. Only this time, use my suggestions below. Otherwise, invest your time to learn them first and then follow the advice below when hiring a professional.

Choosing a Digital Marketing Agency

Choosing a design marketing agency

When hiring a professional, consider the following attributes:

 

Transparency

Since all work is done digitally and behind the scenes, you most likely will not understand or know what your agency did or did not do. Hiring an agency that offers much transparency and some sort of daily report mechanism is an important attribute. Not only is it important in building a long-term relationship with your agency, but it will help to build successful digital marketing.

Some digital marketing tasks take days, if not weeks or months, without any evidence. For example, link building takes a tremendous amount of work without immediate results. This is the why you will need long-term plans with your agency. Without transparency, all parties involved will be frustrated and disappointed, even resulting in a unpleasant relationship with your digital marketing agency.

Experience and Qualifications

A million agencies claim to know about digital marketing, even providing you a long list of experiences and qualifications, but it all comes down to quality, not quantity. Even a few good ranking websites, national-level experiences, and qualifications count more than hundreds of mediocre websites or years of experience. Again, if you do not have much knowledge of SEO, you are in no position to determine who is the right agency for your business.

Until 1990, most business owners thought they did not need to learn the computer. They thought they ran their business successfully in the past, so there was no need to join the sophisticated computer world. Many of those who refused to learn the computer at that time were forced to retire or are no longer in business. Since about ten years ago, digital marketing is no longer a luxury but a necessity for all businesses. For instance, our beloved stores in shopping malls are closing. Either they are closing their business altogether or going online, offering their products as e-commerce. You may not understand the need for digital marketing, but like the computer in the 1990s, you may have to retire or learn new digital marketing skills.

Operating a company or running a business continually requires learning a new set of skills and technology.

Maybe this is digital marketing to you. Take your business to the future world of digital or e-commerce. It’s still not too late, but it could be too late next year.

The familiarity of Your Business by a Digital Marketing Agency

Understand your business practice and your customer-based network. If the agency you chose does not understand anything about your company or your customers, your agency may be spending your resources on the wrong audience.

For instance, when you want to sell a million-dollar house, do you prefer to attract a few right potential buyers in the market for a million-dollar house, or would you rather have 100 buyers looking for homes under 250k?

  • First, you want to filter out unqualified house buyers from touring your house with their kids and even enjoying all your cookies and drinks.
  • Second, you want to attract a few prospective buyers, possibly getting multiple offers.
  • Lastly, you can enjoy doing business while spending quality time with a few potential buyers. Thus, not only will it increase the value of your house, but you will enjoy doing business with your customers.

Quality Network

If at all possible, find a digital marketing agency with someone who has already developed a professional network with the same type of business. They are in a much better position to be effective than someone with no connection. In digital marketing, a network connection is a tedious and time-consuming effort. Therefore, someone who already has experience or has networked in your business niche is in a much better position to serve you. In addition, it will save you the costs and time related to building a network connection at your expense.

Bottom Line

When you need professional help for your digital marketing, searching for the right digital marketing agency is a burdensome, even exhausting task. There are so many so-called digital marketing agencies in the United States. The last thing you want to do is hire someone hastily. There is no need to rush. Please be aware of digital marketing agencies outside of the United States. There are millions of overseas companies; some even have US phone numbers and addresses and pretend they are US based. Not only do they not understand your business, but they don’t understand your customers. In addition, they are not available when you need them. They may even present you with an impressive rate. Unfortunately, the old saying “you get what you pay for” applies to digital marketing.

If you are in a rush, educate yourself first while searching for a digital marketing agency. If not, you can build a website yourself to practice. Even if you already have a website, it does not hurt your business to have a second or even a third website.

Magic Word: Traffic

If you were granted three genie wishes for a digital marketing consultant, one of them should surely be website traffic. A website without traffic is just as good as an undressed mannequin in an apparel store. We even dream of having quality traffic.

You want to spend your resources where they can reap the most benefits. In the digital marketing realm, this is “keyword strategies.” In other words, if you own a small convenience store, you do not want to compete with a nearby Target store. In fact, understanding your limitations and difficulties is essential to where you need to invest. 

True, the more traffic your website receives, the better it is. Besides, heavy traffic to your website helps with your placement — IF you can do this without spending a lot of money. Otherwise, concentrate and focus on spending your resources more effectively and productively by searching your niche keywords. You can either learn how to do this using one of the SEO tools, or your digital marketing agency can do it for you.

Digital Marketing Keyword Strategy

For example, in order to attract more customers to their stores, many giant retail stores such as Costco, Walmart, Target, etc., offer deals and promotions. If you ask them, they may even lose profit on their promotional products. Yet, they still promote them cheaper to attract more customers to their store. In fact, they know that when customers come in the store to buy the promotional products, they will pick up other stuff here and there. That is the strategy of offering their products even at the loss of a profit.

You can apply this marketing strategy to digital marketing. Use less competitive keywords to increase traffic to your website, even if that particular keyword is not important to your business. Since it will increase traffic to your website, you will have a higher ranking, better performance, and more visitors to your website. Ultimately, your business performance will increase in the long run.

AdWords PPC

You may ask, “Why even bother with organic when I can do PPC much easier?”

PPC or AdWords

Most business owners do not understand how to get organic placements. In fact, it’s too complicated for most people to understand. Therefore, they may not be in a position to hire a qualified digital marketing agency or even try to understand. As a matter of fact, they thought the easiest way to get a placement is by pay per click (PPC) or AdWords strategy.

What’s PPC?

You will see AdWords when you search Google. A small icon “Ad” appears before their website. Every time someone clicks that website, the owner of the website has to pay for it; thus, pay per click (or PPC or AdWords).

How effective is PPC?

As a digital marketing consultant, PPC can be useful for some businesses if they have done it correctly. Again, it may not be suitable for all businesses. You should consult with your digital marketing agency. In my experience, PPC does not understand your business or your prospective customers. This is the reason the PPC AdWords bounce rate is higher than organic. Since they don’t understand your business, they most likely will use your competitors’ keywords. Not only is it too competitive and expensive, it may not be relevant to your business or your customers. This is assuming that you have 24/7/365 visibility with PPC AdWords, and your daily budget never expires.

The organic approach can help you spend your resources more effectively, optimizing your website to be found by not only the Google market but 100% of the digital market with 24/7/365 visibility.

In Conclusion

Studies show that most younger generations use the Internet or smartphone to search for your company. If you have no online visibility when your potential customers are looking for your products and services, they will likely go elsewhere. If they can’t find you, directing them to your competitors, may result in your losing not only one customer but ultimately all your future potential customers. It might even force you to close your business just because you have no online presence. Your products or services might be a hundred times better than your competitors, but you are not there without a digital presence. In the modern world, it’s not about products or services. It’s all about marketing strategies. Why not starting using a free website builder today.

Register your brand domain before it’s too late.

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