It is common knowledge that the marketing department of any product or service-centric business plays a key role in driving its revenue. But how many of you are familiar with the increasingly dominant hold of digital marketing in this department? Here Are Step Guide to Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency.
Well, you’d be surprised to find that over 72% of a business’s marketing budget is spent on digital marketing alone!
No wonder hiring a digital marketing agency is a big deal for any business. If you’re willing to spend that kind of money towards the cause, you must strive to derive the highest possible ROI from it.
If your business or company is struggling to find the right digital marketing agency, this guide is created specifically for you. Stay with us as we walk you through the four essential steps involved in the process!
Step 1: Define your business needs clearly.
The most common mistake businesses make while hiring a digital marketing agency is that they start looking for prospects right away; that’s not how it works.
The first step of this process should focus on you instead; this is where you clearly define your objective behind the hire.
Based on these objectives, you should pen down the goals you want the agency to achieve. These goals should also be realistic and measurable to serve both parties involved well.
Here are some examples of realistic marketing goals to give you an idea:
- Increasing the reach and engagement of your business’s social handles.
- Driving X% more organic traffic on your business website.
- Boosting your newsletter subscription by X% in X months.
- Increasing the customer base of your newest-launched product by X%.
Clearly defining your business needs will not only give the agency you approach a clear idea of work but also help you shortlist which services you would require from them.
Every digital marketing agency offers a wide range of services, such as SEO, PPC, social media marketing, ads, and so on. By narrowing down the services you need, you also boost the chances of finding an agency that excels in them.
Step 2: Build a shortlist of agencies you want to work with.
Once you’ve outlined your requirements and expectations from a digital marketing agency, it’s time to build a shortlist of your top prospects. But how do you go about gathering the right contenders? Well, we’ve got two answers for you: referrals and matchmaking platforms.
For referrals, you’ll need to reach out to your networking circle; this could include your colleagues (present and past), employees, other non-competing business contacts, and even your social handles. You’re bound to find at least one or two prospects from them.
Bonus: For Delhi-based businesses, The Post-E is a well-established digital marketing agency that can provide you with creative digital solutions at a dream budget!
On the off-chance that you don’t, you can also leave the task to professionals – a matchmaking platform. There are various platforms available online that help clients find and partner with the right agency, and they can do the same for you.
If this sounds like a better solution for gathering a list of the digital marketing agencies you wish to hire, check out a matchmaking platform here.
Step 3: Share your brief and RFP with these agencies.
After your shortlist is ready, it’s time to reach out to all these agencies and share with them a Request for a Formal Proposal (RFP).
For those who are hearing about RFP for the first time, it’s a document that contains both the details of your project and expectations as well as the questions you want them to answer.
Here’s an outline of how you should form your RFP:
- Info about the company’s background
- The scope of the project
- Criteria and timeline for selection
- Criteria and timeline for the project post-selection
- Possible challenges
- Budget constraints
- Elements of the proposal
The last section of this outline is crucial to you, for it will contain the questions you need them to answer in their proposal. Here are some ideas for you to build upon:
- A background of the agency
- Past experience in the field (preferably with contact details of past clients)
- An estimated timeline for the aforementioned project
- Service-specific questions according to your requirement
- Pricing
Step 4: Find your ideal match.
As soon as the responses to your RFP start pouring in, it’s time for you to start shortlisting them all the way until you find the one.
While the process of finding the ideal digital marketing agency for your business needs relies heavily upon the RFP, there are other important factors that you must not ignore.
These factors include researching their online presence because how will they improve your business’s online image if they can’t maintain their own?
You’ll also find their case studies and client testimonials online, but if you want to double-check them, it’s also advisable to reach out to their past clients to learn about their working experience.
Having done all that, when you’re down to just one candidate, request an in-person meeting with the team before finalizing the work arrangements. This step is essential so that you know more about your point-of-contact in the business and are able to communicate with them seamlessly.
Getting Employed at a Digital Marketing Agency? Here’s how that’s done!
If you think hiring a digital marketing agency for your business is a challenging process, you’ll certainly be surprised to know how difficult it is to build one. And it should be; only an agency that critically recruits its employees is the one that could fetch your business the best ROI.
As long as we’re on the subject of building digital marketing agencies, what are your thoughts on doing it yourself? With the skyrocketing demand for digital marketing services in the market today, you could certainly make it big with the right effort and resources.
And while efforts are not something we can help you with – they come from within – we can certainly extend a helping hand if you’re looking for the right resources.
At Future Labs Technology, we offer three advanced digital marketing programs, along with seven separate certification courses in its narrower streams, such as PPC, Brand Design & Strategy, SEO, and more.
Check out the details of these courses here!