Hiring a marketing agency can make your life better, your business greater and be the difference between success and failure as a company. But, only if you choose the right one. With so many new agencies popping onto the scene every year, figuring out which ones can legitimately produce the results you need may seem impossible. Selecting a marketing partner is a huge decision and you deserve to be empowered during the process. It’s you who will be investing time and money into this new initiative, and it’s you and your people who must interact with the agency team week in and out. You want to make sure you actually like them, right? You don’t want to be fooled by surface-level results or unrealistic promises of ROI, do you?
If you fall into any of the following categories, this is a blog you should keep handy at all times:
- You’re unhappy with your current marketing agency and want to hire a new one
- You don’t understand why the “agency of your dreams” turned out to be such a disappointment
- You’ve never worked with a marketing agency before but think now is the time to start
- You’re in the process of interviewing/vetting agencies and starting to feel overwhelmed or hesitant
Full disclosure here - we’re a full service digital marketing agency and believe the benefits of working with a marketing partner are truly significant for most companies. With that being said however, the following advice is unbiased, honest and what we actually tell our prospects and clients to think about while they’re in the process of making a decision. We hope this insight will help make your next steps easier, more productive and even enjoyable!
The Ugly Truth No Agency Wants You to Know
Any agency worth vetting can showcase success stories. Whether they’re in the form of case studies, analytics or client references, if an agency can’t provide you with proof of success, run the other way and cross them off the list for good. Assuming however an agency can produce some decent examples of past and present client happiness, you need to take the conversation a few steps further to understand if the agency is likely and capable of generating such a success story for your company.
Agencies are notorious for promising results and that’s just not possible. You need to understand this as a truth to make an informed decision.
In the modern digital age, the practice of marketing has veered from deep branding initiatives and large scale brand-awareness ad campaigns to strategies designed to increase website visitors, generate qualified leads and convert leads to customers. Unless you’re a well established brand like Nike, Pepsi or McDonald's, you probably don’t have the luxury or budget for brand awareness activities alone. For most companies, marketing needs to generate ROI in the form of increased sales.
It’s tempting for an agency to guarantee lead generation ROI because they know it’s what companies need. Many agencies, maybe because of ego, over-confidence, naivety or hey, even solid expertise, feel justified in promising ROI. But it just isn’t possible. There’s no magical crystal ball that lets a marketing team know whether or not they’ll actually be able to get you results. Think about it - if an agency could predict the future and guarantee success, they’d probably be doing much greater things in the world than marketing. Or, they’d have every multi-billion dollar enterprise company drooling on their doorstep and begging for representation. No, this isn’t reality and the truth is that success boils down to a few unarguable marketing necessities:
- ample experience achieving marketing success
- a team with deep expertise and ability in their respective crafts
- representation of a product or offering that’s actually marketable
- doggedness and determination
- data-driven program piloting and experimentation
- an integrated approach
- primarily in-house (not outsourced) talent/capabilities
- agility and team bandwidth to accommodate urgent, one-off or unexpected needs
- capacity to hone in (not dilute) on the most opportunistic marketing channels for YOU
The list goes on and on but at the highest level, possessing the ability to deliver on these areas equips an agency to make you successful. If you’re not asking questions that help you understand whether a potential marketing partner can hit on each of these points, you’re doing yourself a disservice. It’s like jumping off a 5-story building without a padded landing awaiting your fall. Maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones who survives, but maybe you won’t. Is that a risk you’re willing to take?
How to Make Sure You Choose the Right Agency
While your needs, goals and company are unique and deserve a customized marketing plan, the process by which you interview and select a marketing partner should be standardized and objective. A subjective, emotional or haphazard approach to choosing an agency is risky territory and really, do you have the time or patience to take uncalculated risks with your business? Based on our experience helping clients through this process and understanding the challenges involved in finding a marketing agency who can do what they say they will, we’ve assembled a list of 7 tips and questions to ask when going through the partner selection process. You can download it for free and use it as a guide anytime you’re talking with a potential agency. And, while this guide isn’t fool-proof, it will help. Good luck and please let us know if we can assist you in any way as you make this momentous decision!
