Synchronizing your company with innovative digital marketing strategies will boost your business performance to the next level. That is why it is important to do a partnership or hire a digital marketing agency.
Before making this important decision, it is mandatory to know the service provider you want to hire before closing any deal. Here are some frequently asked digital marketing questions that you should ask digital marketing agencies, which will help you decide which one to hire.
Web Design and Development Questions
These questions will help you understand the web design and development process of the agencies you are interested in hiring.
Do You Need to Attract More Customers?
Get more customers by taking advantage of our efficient digital marketing services. Our services include SEO, PPC Management, Web Design and Development, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, and more.
Can You Design or Develop a Website That Fits My Budget?
The fee structure of website development varies with the website developing company, and you should try to find a company that offers their services for a reasonable price that fits your budget.
However, keep in mind that web development firms tend to be a little bit more expensive than other solutions like page builders or freelancers for a few reasons.
1. Expertise: The major advantage of having an agency by your side is that they are experts, this means that you won’t experience any issues or drawbacks in the whole web development process, additionally, their expertise guarantees a high-quality website that a freelance couldn’t provide otherwise.
2. Uniqueness and Custom Design: Since web development firms have access to expensive tools and a lot of experience, they can deliver unique and custom designs. Freelance or page builders often are limited to pre-made templates.
3. Guidance and Support: Finally, agencies will guide you in the whole process of designing your website, and will provide support for a certain period of time after your website is done.
What Is Your Design and Development Process?
Every digital agency claims to provide better designs and superior development process, however, you should understand this process and see if it is a good fit for your time and business.
Choosing a web design company whose designing process matches your business needs is key to getting a pleasant experience in the end.
What Do You Need From Me Before We Start the Project?
When you decide to hire an agency it becomes obvious that you will eventually have to participate to complete the project. So, you should ask what the agency will require from your end, whether it will be time, resources, or information.
But why?
Well, basically because you want to know how professional they are. Good agencies usually try to understand in depth your ideas and your vision in order to develop the website you really want and need.
Do You Have a Portfolio I Can See?
Asking about their portfolio will give you an insight into their experiences and a better sense of their effectiveness. Experience is key to creating a successful project.
This might seem not that important but if your firm’s previous experience is not related to your industry, they might encounter some roadblocks in the process due to limited industry knowledge.
The selection of an experienced partner is advantageous as it will not be that easy for an agency to provide beneficial recommendations in site architecture, content, and user experience unless they have a handy experience in your industry.
How Long Will It Take To Complete My Website?
The duration of web development differs significantly depending on the expertise, and tools that the web designer has. Also, remember that a web development project is a combination of many things that depends not only on the developer but also on the client.
Based on all this information, an avid and experienced developer can provide you with a time estimation of the project.
It is best to ask the developer about how long the project will take and based on their experience, they will give you a basic understanding of not only the time, but also the factors that may affect the schedule or create obstacles in achieving your milestone.
This knowledge will benefit you in cost estimation and release planning.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Questions
SEO or search engine optimization consists of refining your website so that its visibility increases for relevant keywords. This will help you gain more attention and attract new customers.
It is a daunting task to hire an SEO agency. The best possible outcome of partnering with an agency is to increase your website traffic as well as get more customers. On the contrary, in the worst case scenario, this partnership will result in a waste of time and money.
Here are some digital marketing questions (specifically about SEO) that you should ask an agency before hiring it to increase the chances of getting a good result in the long run.
How Long Will It Be Until We Can Expect to See Results?
Effective Search Engine Optimization takes time and it is almost impossible to guarantee results. However, an experienced agency can provide you with an estimate of the results and a list of the implementations it can deliver in a period of at least 6 months.
Keep in mind that results also depend on the health of your website. Sometimes, fixing technical errors can bring some SEO gains in a short time. But in the case of a well-managed and error-free site, you have to wait longer to see the expected results.
Sometimes, bad SEO agencies, in order to speed up the process, use spammy and outdated techniques to get the job done, this can eventually end up in unexpected penalties.
A good SEO agency will clarify reasonable expectations and try to get sustainable and lasting results over time, no matter how long it may take.
How Do You Report the Progress and What Does It Look Like?
Make sure you know what the monthly reports of the SEO agency you want to hire are like, this will help you understand how your website is progressing. This question will also serve to clarify certain doubts and concerns about the data that will be shown in the reports.
Beware of agencies that are reluctant to share progress reports or those that share incomplete reports to hide their negligence.
What Do You Need From Us to Be Effective?
An effective and experienced SEO agency does the research work before execution. Therefore, a good SEO agency usually comes up with a list of questions about detailed information about the industry, goals, KPIs, and audience.
Such information is necessary to execute a successful project, those agencies that do not pay attention to their research work sometimes make a mistake in some parts of their projects.
How Will You Improve My Search Engine Rankings?
This question is important as it will give you an idea of the strategies that will boost your ranking, it will also enlighten you with the expected time frame to achieve the company’s goals that you both agreed upon.
These are some of the implementations you can expect from a good SEO agency.
- SEO On-Page optimizations
- Technical SEO audits
- Link Building strategy
What Will the Process for Implementing Changes Look Like?
Websites are fragile, and not everyone has the ability to manipulate them correctly. In addition, when an agency suggests changes to a page, it can be difficult to imagine how the page will look after those changes are applied.
By asking what the process of applying SEO optimizations will be like, you can make sure they know how to handle your website correctly and that they won’t break anything. Also, this will help you decide whether you want to apply certain changes or not.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Questions
Pay-Per-Click or PPC is an online advertising model. It is a sort of buying traffic instead of getting organic traffic.
In this model, the one who is advertising has to pay the user whenever he clicks on the company’s ad. PPC is of different types but the most common one is a paid search ad.
Since you are actually “buying traffic” you need to be extremely careful with where and how you are investing your money, and that’s why we will give you some digital marketing questions related to PPC that will help you decide who to employ to do this delicate task.
Do You Offer Full Reporting With Your Services?
Ask your agency if they offer reports from time to time, sometimes they charge this in a management fee, so ask if it is included in your management fee or not.
Also, ask them what details they will include in these reports, whether they just cover the data or if they will also provide analysis and recommendations.
These reports will help you know how and where your money is being invested, as well as what needs to be changed to optimize its use.
What Type of Strategy Do You Recommend to Achieve Our Goals?
You can ask your agency to provide you with the strategies they are adopting to meet the decided objectives. In this regard, the agency may share some initial ideas along with some strategic approaches that will help you achieve your future goals.
Keep in mind that agencies do not usually share this kind of information before they are hired, but it is worth asking to find out whether they are reliable or not.
How Much Will I Have to Spend?
Spending on PPC strategies will vary depending on some factors such as the industry, your objectives, your strategy, and above all, your budget.
Looking for an agency that provides you with several options in the spending structure will help you optimize your money in the best way.
What if You Spend Unnecessary Money or a Mistake Happens?
Pay-Per-Click is the easiest and fastest way to attract traffic and customers but it is not that easy as there seems to be a wide margin in PPC to make mistakes.
People tend to make a lot of mistakes when diving into this. So it is better to ask the agency before hiring what will be their possible strategy against mistakes.
Some of the most common mistakes companies make are:
1. Not focusing on buyer intent: Searches are not created equal, so ignoring signals can negatively affect performance.
2. Not bidding on branded keywords: If you don’t control the appearance of ads related to your brand, it will surely benefit the rival.
3. Not doing keyword research: This will lead to spending money on searches that have no chance of generating customers.
How Does The Approval Process Work For PPC Ad Copy, Keywords, Etc?
This question is similar to others we’ve talked about in this article. Basically, you want to know how and when they will contact you to find out what keywords to use, what style of copywriting, and so on.
With this information, you will be able to choose the agency whose process best suits your likings.
Email Marketing Questions
Email marketing is one of the most effective strategies for connecting with traffic, and converting them into customers.
Therefore, when hiring a company to implement email marketing into your business strategy, you should know a few things to save time and resources. Let’s continue with these digital marketing questions related to email marketing.
How Do You Measure Email Success?
When conducting an email marketing strategy, your agency may end up with a wealth of data, but are you using this data properly to measure success?
A measurement plan for email marketing should look like this:
- Track performance on an ongoing basis
- Set goals
- See what is working and what is not.
These are some of the KPIs your agency should track to determine the success of a campaign.
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Bounce rate
- Unsubscribes
- Device statistics
- Spam score
How Will Your Strategy Align With My Business Goals?
This question is very important, since the main goal of business is always to make it grow. That is why you take risks and invest in advertising.
If no new customers or leads are coming in, it means you need to reevaluate your campaign. That’s why this question is important, because the marketing strategy must align with the business objectives.
If the agency’s strategy doesn’t align with your objectives, getting rid of it is the best course of action.
Despite having the same objectives, you should also ask them if they have worked successfully with a similar company or on similar projects, because sometimes agencies also shape their portfolio according to the employer’s demand.
What Is Your Email Creation Process Like?
Email marketing promises companies a great deal of ROI (return on investment). The email creation process plays a vital role in it if the best impact on the bottom line is to be achieved, one must first ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the agency and its process.
These are a couple of questions you should ask an agency to understand their email creation process better.
- What does their process look like?
- Do they make use of templates?
Ask your agency, before working, about their capabilities, pros, and cons regarding the email platform, and if it fits your goals. Sometimes, the agency provided the email creation process is similar to the previously used by the person.
Do You Track And Show Me Leads From Your Campaigns?
Keeping track of your leads helps you know whether you are making a profit on your investments or not, so if your marketing agency doesn’t keep track of your customers, how are you going to know your profit or loss of money?
You need to know the result in the form of leads you’ve gotten from your channels and campaigns.
Moreover, tracking leads helps you rectify problems and also points out blind spots for improvement that are essential for business growth.
Tracking leads generated by the entire campaign or by individual channels play a critical role in marketing plans.
How Long Should the Campaign Last to See Results?
Similar to other channels, in email marketing is very difficult to promise results for the following reasons.
1. It depends on the objectives of your email campaign: The objective of your email campaign has a lot to do with deciding the length of your campaign.
2. It depends on the size of your contact list: If your contact list is not large enough to meet your objectives, then work must be done to expand this list, which will increase the time to see results in terms of ROI.
Therefore, having an email marketing agency that can offer realistic estimates is extremely important to avoid frustration.
What’s Next?
Now that you know what digital marketing questions to ask an agency before you hire them, you should be prepared to avoid unnecessary expenses and a lot of frustration.
However, what if we can make your search for an agency stop now?
At Brimar Online Marketing, we provide services that help in attracting qualified traffic to your website. Contact us now to learn how we can help you.
Our Digital Marketing Services Have Helped Our Clients Increase Their Revenue!
“I highly recommend Brimar if your looking to grow your online business. You will be satisfied with the high level of expertise and high quality of services. It has helped my business grow by leaps and bounds.”
CEO
