There are many reasons a company is in the market for a new digital marketing agency. Many business owners have a solid understanding of their company’s goals, and which digital strategies can help achieve success. However, they may not have the time or resources to execute these strategies. Other owners are looking to enhance their online presence and need help translating their organizational goals into solid digital strategies. Sometimes a company is in search of a new digital marketing agency because previous interactions with an agency left a sour taste in their mouth. Regardless of the reason you’re in search of a digital marketing agency, there are some important questions you need to ask before taking the plunge.
- What are your goals?
As a business owner or marketing professional, you should already have a good idea of what you want to accomplish when engaging with a digital marketing agency. For example, you may be trying to expand your online brand awareness. Alternatively, you may want to enhance your digital presence, so you’re more easily found. Perhaps you want to transition or expand to an online sales platform to increase sales volume. Maybe you want to take an aggressive approach to rival your competition through paid advertising campaigns. You may want to take on a combination of a few of these goals. Defining your goals will help you to choose the best package for online success. At Frontline Web Consulting, we can guide you through this process to define your goals, lay out strategic plans for execution and provide measurable, data-driven results to inform future strategies.
2. What is your budget?
Budget obviously plays a role in how to proceed. Having a clearly defined budget can help to avoid scope creep and unexpected costs. You may want to accomplish many goals but may not have the initial budget to take on every strategy all at once. At Frontline Web Consulting, we can identify the most pressing areas of attention and offer a custom package that will get you closer to accomplishing your goals within your budget. For example, you may originally sign on with us for a new website build or website revamp and then follow up with ongoing SEO services, social media services, email marketing services or paid ad campaigns. Alternately, you may have a budget that permits you to take the plunge on more than one of these services at once. As your digital partner, we can create custom plans that suit your goals and budget and we’ll keep you up to date on our progress with regular reporting and progress updates.
3. When signing with an agency, who retains ownership of the content, digital assets and accounts created?
This is an important and often overlooked question that, if not asked up front, can leave a company with unexpected surprises should their relationship with the agency come to an end. Do you own your domain and do you have control of hosting? Are the social media accounts in your control? Who owns the digital assets (i.e. graphics and writing)? Once your website is built, is it your property? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you may be in for a rude awakening if you part ways with your agency. At Frontline Web Consulting, we strive to empower our clients by ensuring that they retain ownership of any accounts or digital assets, including websites, that we develop for them. We enjoy long-standing relationships with our clients but should we ever part ways, our clients can be assured that all their property will remain in their possession.
4. What is the agency’s reputation?
If you’re looking for a new favourite restaurant or buying a new vacuum, you’re more than likely going to do your research and read online reviews for the product or service. Shopping for a digital marketing agency is no different! As an owner, we know you take pride of your online reputation and at Frontline Web Consulting, we’re no different. We work hard to earn the trust of our clients and our reviews speak for themselves!
5. For paid ad campaigns, what is the pay structure for ad spend and campaign management?
If your company wants to run paid advertising campaigns on Google, Meta or another platform, how will your ad spend be charged and how will the campaigns be managed? Some digital marketing agencies run paid ad campaigns through their own accounts and have a rate per spend pay structure applied to the base ad spend. This management fee can run from 10-50 %. The industry average for this pay structure, based on a recent WordStream study, is 15-20 % of ad spend. This means that the higher your budget, the higher the management fee. At Frontline Web Consulting, we charge a flat fee for ad campaign management, and you get to own and control the ad account. This gives you full control and visibility of your campaigns and saves you money, regardless of the ad spend!
Whether you’re looking for a tune up to your existing site, an entire website rebuild, help in improving your online visibility, building out your social media profiles, a jump start to paid digital advertising or all of the above, Frontline Web Consulting offers custom-tailored packages for clients across North America. We take the time to understand your goals to design a one-of-a-kind solution to suit your needs and your budget. Contact us to start the conversation today!