3 Things To Look For When Hiring An Internet Marketing Agency
Posted by Eric Baum on Thu, Jan 12, 2012
The internet has changed the way we live, they way interact with eachother, and the way we do business. Traditional ways of advertising and marketing have become ineffective and if you want your business to survive you have to shift your marketing dollars to the internet. That being said, there are numerous marketing channels on the internet that you can utilize: pay-per-click, search engine optimization, social media, email marketing, content marketing, etc. This is why it is so critical to find an Internet Marketing Agency that can manage all the pieces of the puzzle for you and provide a positive return-on-investment on your marketing dollars.
The question then becomes "how do you choose the right internet marketing agency", because let's face it there are a lot of snake oil salesman out there especially in the "SEO" market. The most important factor when evaluating an internet marketing agency is trust. You are entrusting them with your hard earned marketing dollars and you have to have faith in them that they will make the right decisions on your behalf. This sounds scary but there are some things you can look for when hiring an internet marketing agency that will mitigate that fear and make sure you are hiring the right firm.
Do They Offer a Full Range of Internet Marketing Services?
When selecting an internet marketing agency to work with make sure they have experience with the areas of internet marketing that you feel would benefit your company the most. Some examples of internet marketing areas they should have expertise in are:
In today's internet marketing world, now referred to as Inbound Marketing, you need to be doing it all. For example your website should be professionally designed, optimized for search engines, have strong calls-to-action, include landing pages for visit to lead conversion, and integrate automatic lead nurturing campaigns. An internet marketing agency must be proficient in all of these areas to be able to drive traffic to your website, convert those visitors to leads, and then help you convert those leads into customers.
Do They Have a Game Plan or Proven Process?
Proper planning is the key to success in internet marketing. The agency you hire should implement a proven Inbound Marketing process to methodically increase your traffic, leads, and customers and hit the revenue targets you have set. Without a process it is easy to get distracted by the tactics and lose site of the overall picture. A good internet marketing game plan will help you stay on track, on budget and make sure that you reach your goals.
Do They Have Knowledge of Your Industry?
While it is true that a good internet marketing agency can research your industry and provide you with excellent service and results, it helps if they already have experience in your particular industry. If they are currently servicing clients in your industy, the learning curve is cut down dramatically. Thus, they are poised to show results much quicker than starting from scratch.
An example of this would be in keyword research. If you are a plumber and working with an agency that has other plumbers as clients, they should already have an extensive data base of targeted keywords for your industry. They already know which keywords have been unsuccessful and which ones are gold mines. In essence you are getting all of the experience that the agency has accumulated while working for others in your industry.
