What is a Digital Marketing Agency? Must-Know Information

Do you want to know exactly what a digital marketing agency is? Who are you going to hire? Is every agency the same?

There are specific tasks for very specific companies, Brimar is one of those specialized in digital solutions. Here is some information to help you clear all doubts you might have right now.

What is a Digital Marketing Agency?

Before digging into the Digital Marketing Agency meaning, let us face it: The marketing world is not what it used to be. Giving value to a certain product, raising awareness of a brand, and even making sales, is not a task done by simple voice spreading and ads on TV.

Nowadays, marketing depends on digital channels, therefore it mutated into something called Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing is the best way to use online channels to position certain products, services, or brands on top of competitors. Hence, a digital marketing agency that uses every single tool, digital or not, to change people’s minds about a brand.

If your competitor’s brand of (for example) cookies is on top of any other, the digital marketing agency’s goal is to bring as close as possible your brand to the top.

Then, if the demographic data and the digital marketing plan allow, the goal is to be the number one cookie brand (keeping the example) in the business.

Digital marketing companies also are the ones that try to predict the consumer’s behavior to foresee what people would want or where people will be. In other words, what is a digital marketing agency?

A people’s mind reader tool to let your brand continue ringing in their heads.

There must be a reason why digital marketing agencies keep existing. A reason to say they are necessary. Do you agree?

What Does a Digital Marketing Agency Do?

As said before, agencies try to read minds. As you can tell, it is not an easy job. It requires a lot of information, data, insights, and even with all this, it is not clear what people want.

Luckily, analytics needs analysts to translate from behavior to English, and that is just the first part of the work.

To help you understand what a digital marketing company can do with your brand, let us explain how digital marketing affects your business.

A Digital Marketing Agency Increases Your Profits

It is said that to win you must accept risks, consequently, your company is going to have to accept risk at some point. Nevertheless, it is better to calculate as much as possible all the risks, not only to avoid possible failures but to get the highest profits you can.

Then, a digital marketing agency will evaluate how your customers, your product, and even the business itself if needed, to know where to push all efforts and to plan accordingly. The agency will do all needed to help you to have more benefits and then more success.

A Digital Marketing Agency Enhances Your Reach

Since digital marketing offers a closer approach to customers and audiences, digital agencies tend to plan what time and the channel will bring more attention to your brand. That results in a lot of new visits to your website.

Digital marketing agencies also can adjust your website to different search algorithms to improve SEO, leading to better positions in search engines. This is a nice way to lead organic traffic to your website, which leads to more sales with less money over time.

It Can Prepare The Prospective Client For an Easy Conversion

To sell online is a matter of having the right product, but it is also essential to set the best strategy.

Let us call this strategy sales funnel, being this a path for the prospective client to follow until he clicks the purchase button. For that purpose, every single possible path should be planned.

In that sense, what is a digital marketing company preparing for you are multiple paths to reach the targeted audience.

Paths where the future customers feel allured enough to avoid hesitation in front of the purchase button. To Click buy must be the obvious choice for any possible audience.

A Marketing Company is There to Make You Look Even Better

Yes, even better. If you already have a website, and it looks good the way it is, the website can always get better if you frequently share new visuals or new elements. In some cases, all your brand needs are some elements to re-enforce the engagement with your community.

Then, specialized advertising, PR services, SEO, email marketing, social media management, and even meme creation and video production to share on some social media networks should be one of the services any digital marketing company gives.

This service will improve your digital image.

And these are just a few of the things a proficient agency can do for your brand. At the end of the day, what a digital marketing agency does is to help you reach your marketing goals easily.

8 Types of Digital Marketing Agencies (and What They Do)

You can hire two kinds of services: general services and specialized services. In digital marketing agencies matter, there are eight types. These eight encompasses the digital marketing agency description.

You can choose to do a specialized service on your brand or product by selecting one. These are:

1. Full-Service Digital Marketing Agency

What is a full-service digital marketing agency and what exactly do they do? Regardless you read before, this type of agency does not give specialized services. In this type of digital marketing agency what they do is full-service coverage.

These kinds of agencies have a team big enough to schedule and divide the job into specialized tasks.

Normally, this type of digital agency tends to have a higher price. Nevertheless, the service you are going to hire this kind of agency depends on the budget, the marketing goals, and the amount of work you want someone to do for you.

On the bright side, you may have everything done for the same company, which is good for many reasons like cohesive work.

On the other hand, you may get a better estimation and lower costs by hiring only the service you need (only if your team is working the bulk of the digital marketing jobs).

2. Inbound Marketing Agency

This type of agency is meant to create people who love what you got. Not to like, to love. The final goal of this kind of agency is to transform customers into later promoters of your brand through a series of techniques wrapped inside the inbound philosophy.

This philosophy is contained into three simple steps:

1. Attract: Consists of generating content to draw traffic to your website. To do this, the agency must create an imaginary version of the ideal buyer. The ideal buyer will help to plan approach strategies.

2. Engage: Consists of showing customers insights and solutions to their problems, so they know that you can help them.

3. Delight: This step focus on helping users have a better experience after they’ve become customers.

3. The SEO Agency

An SEO agency will help your brand to rank higher on the search engine’s search results. In other words, this type of agency has the main goal of making your brand to appear first on sites like google and yahoo. A trait of a good brand is to appear on top of any search.

To achieve this, a digital marketing agency focuses on the website’s features and the bulk of the content. To be specific, a few of the works an SEO digital agency can do on your web to make it appear first on search engines are:

1. Keyword improvement and research
2. Website and backlink audits
3. Website and blog content enrichment
4. Assessment of metadata’s quality (on text and images)
5. Optimization of video descriptions and video metadata
6. Conduct link building
7. Assessment of analytics and more

During the process, the digital SEO company should use tools like Google Analytics and Semrush to plan the course of action. Last but not least, the SEO agency should be aware of the current searching algorithm on, at least, the main search engines.

This is why hiring a digital marketing agency focused on SEO results better in terms of proficiency for some companies. Some websites are designed, regardless of how reliable and visited the site is.

A few changes can save your website and SEO agencies know how to perform this digital reanimation.

4. Digital Ad (PPC) Agency

There are two ways to generate traffic to your website: organic, and paid ads. The difference between both is the money you can spend on it. While organic visits to your website are more reliable, paying for digital advertising is proven to have better results in a short term period.

This dedicated paid ads agency tries to design a visual coherent, well-designed advertising to seduce the new public into the desired landing page. The agency should plan every move from the people who might see the ad, so they feel more like clicking on it.

After clicking on the ad, the landing page is another step the prospective lead should feel at home. If the landing page is damaged, void, out of order, or simply ugly, the bouncing rate of the site will rise. This rejection makes it impossible to achieve any marketing goal.

Google Ads is the main tool any agency will have in its arsenal. Nevertheless, there are other advertising tracker tools like Facebook Ads and many others, but regardless of the one your company uses, the agency can guide you better to know which is the best ad for your brand.

In resume, the digital ad agency is the expert who can help you not to waste your money. The agency helps to make every penny count.

So where to place the ad, and when to show the ad will depend on the agency’s research and criteria, not in the client’s guts (or at least if you want to avoid losing money).

5. Social Media Agency

It comes in the name, they are agencies that provide any type of service related to social media channels. The first job is to ensure that the brand’s social media accounts are passing the parameters to be a successful social media account.

The agency will be searching through the account for any possible lack of coherence, lack of visual identity, and any other feature that might dislike visitors, so they can remove it, edit it, or do any necessary changes.

Social media dedicated agencies usually create the content that is about to be posted, from information posts and videos to memes and more.

Agencies also plan the marketing strategy based on the social network in which they are going to focus. With the right team, they can focus on more than one social media at the same time.

Speaking of advertising, the digital company should also provide enough information to propose a successful digital ad campaign if needed.

So if your marketing goals require you to advertise on Facebook or Instagram, this is the type of agency that will allow reaching your brand’s marketing goals.

Additionally, have in mind that, the main objective of using a social media network, is to get closer to your audience to produce engagement to your brand.

In this matter, agencies provide some level of social media interaction by selecting people from their team to respond, react, or interact on your brand’s social media account.

6. Website Design Agency

The word design here is tricky because this type of agency not only works with web design. Website design agencies’ work consists of the work and rework of any website.

This means that if a company needs to do a website from zero, or change any part of the website, this can be done.

An agency specialized in website design should also be aware of web development issues. Things like web hosting, digital storage, and even domain reservation are important services this kind of agency should give.

They do it because they are interested in controlling their work environment.

The best service that a digital design agency can do for your brand comes when you are relaunching your brand.

Imagine how good it could be if you change fonts, menus, colors, landing pages, and other features if they can be improved. An entirely new identity is more adjusted to your new business goals.

Additionally, by changing the user’s experience, in a well-planned and well-executed way, your website will lead all visitors to a great experience. A great experience will lead to a new engaged customer fan of what your company does.

To summarize, the agency must put all effort and experience combined on tasks like branding, visual design, and improving the user’s experience to help the brand to perform well on the internet.

You can say that from creating a new image, to refreshing your site’s identity, these design agencies are the ultimate services to look better.

7. Email Marketing Agency

Nowadays, email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels in terms of relation to cost-benefit. Of course, it depends on the type of ideal client you have in mind, but in most cases, email marketing is a powerful marketing tool.

In this matter, email marketing agencies work is to design emails, campaigns, code subscription landing pages, copywriting newsletters, and practically anything you can think of as a marketing strategy to raise goals. In terms of revenue, it is proficient.

The cost of this service depends on the number of services the company does for you. But in terms of revenue, as said before, tends to be more efficient because each email sent is meant to reach every single person with tactical information.

This tactical information, and the image you show to present it, is previously required by the user.

By approaching customers with email marketing, the client’s retention rate of any company should reach numbers above 85%, and this is precisely one of the strong points to choose using this kind of agency.

After all, retaining customers means more future sales, new sales, and even organic recommendations from satisfied customers.

As you can imagine, an email marketing agency does not manage anything on your website’s design or your brand’s identity.

Instead, email marketing agencies will help you figure out how to make the most of every email sent. From news and offers to coupons and relevant information.

8. Performance Marketing Agency

If marketing, there are many ways to measure success. There is the return on investment (ROI), the cost per impression (CPI), conversion rate (CVR), and many other traits you can call Analytics Data.

These are numbers that, well interpreted, can tell the story of your website’s traffic.

An agency dedicated to improving analytics is called Performance Marketing Agency. Every single effort, every single metric read, and summarizing, everything these kinds of companies do are entirely focused on analytic data interpretation.

On normal conditions, performance-focused agencies tend to work based on marketing goals. To keep the staff motivated, every time a marketing goal is reached, the agency should receive a reward.

This mode of goal-rewarded work ensures the company’s quality in terms of marketing results.

While performance marketing companies focus on data and data-driven decisions, instead of growing the brand’s name and influence like normally would brand marketing agencies.

Therefore, instead of trying to improve brand awareness, performance agencies focus on the conversion rate and A-B testing to ensure the conversion data do not decay.

Some of the channels that this type of agency is meant to use, helping to reach marketing goals, are paid services like native advertising, social media advertising, search media marketing, and others.

But not only paid services are the channels to apply performance marketing.

Since the goal is to enhance the metrics of the website and other marketing tools, an agency focused on performance can also work with SEO, affiliate marketing, or app store optimization.

For a Performance Marketing Agency, all that matters is to raise and maintain analytics for the sake of the marketing goals. Brand awareness and designs are work for other types of marketing agencies. Now, are you able to respond: what is a performance marketing agency?

A Valuable Recommendation Is:

Before considering the type of agency you are going to hire, consider the budget, and if you are going to need more than one type of agency. What does a digital marketing company do? It is responsible for your results, even before they happen. To foresee is to succeed.

Digital Marketing Agency vs. Marketing Agency

This may not seem confusing to you, but if you think they are the same or do the same, let us make it clear for you. The word Digital, is not there in vain. Marketing agencies work out of the web, more than they can do online. let us start with the non-digital.

A marketing agency must be clear of the area of action they have. To start, marketing agencies have three goals: identify valuable marketing strategies, implement marketing solutions, and evaluate marketing results.

Regardless if you are planning to implement some marketing efforts online, sometimes it is good to ask for a broader opinion from companies working offline.

If the brand to work is perfectly-known for several years, you may think there is no place for digital marketing, following the reasoning of if it is not broken, why to fix it?, and some cases are right.

But in the case of a digital update, non-digital agencies are not fit to approach a fine solution.

Another thing to consider is that the offline agencies focus on (mainly) four marketing channels out of the internet. Those are:

1. Print Marketing
2. Broadcast Marketing on TV and Radio
3. Brand Management
4. Public relations

Anything different from those four marketing channels belongs to the digital world. Speaking of which, digital marketing is related to the whole digital world. It is not necessary to talk about it again because it is explained before what services digital agencies offer.

Basically the digital marketing agency description and concept.

Ok But, What is Important?

If it is well known that both marketing agencies are meant to reach one single goal (to help you reach your marketing goals), then you can assume that both can be combined to have a bigger profit. Then again, do you think it is necessary to work on both faces of marketing?

To develop both marketing channels, and to make them work in harmony, is a task worth thinking about. Of course, your brand can have the best of both to reach your marketing goals in a better way.

Who Works in a Digital Marketing Agency?

The level of commitment is high in a digital marketing agency meaning they will accomplish whatever the task is. must have all the skilled trained people, technical resources, tools, and technicians who use the data to make the best and the hardest decisions.

The staff in every digital agency must solve a little part of the whole job, so teamwork is essential.

To know in-depth what each person does in digital marketing agencies, here you have a simple explanation of each responsibility on a normal job.

Marketing Strategist 

Also known as a marketing specialist. This is the person in charge of researching the market so clients can have an idea of what they are facing. Then the specialist must develop a strategy to reach a specific goal, or simply to get more brand awareness, the best possible way.

Marketing strategists must have some skills like a degree in marketing or any related field to communication, as well as very good communication skills. Additionally, a strategist must have experience with social media networks and how they flow.

It is vital for them (marketing strategists) to know how to interpret data gathered from research and analytic insights so that they can plan the best. 

Also became handy some skills related to photo editing, copywriting, and the natural abilities to work under pressure and respect for deadlines. 

Now it is time to talk about responsibilities. The first one is the market research any strategist must do before planning.

The second most important thing the strategist must check is social media: must know what social media trends are, create content for the social media accounts, and analyze social media behavior to find usable patterns to predict trends.

By knowing the insights and the trends, the marketing specialist can connect with the team to propose marketing plans, strategies based on users behavior, and offer suggestions to the sales team.

Marketing Manager

To summarize, the duty of the marketing manager is focused on two things: brand awareness and budgets. Having control of money is not easy, but the manager has to evaluate and give a budget for the marketing department and projects in the agency.

In honor of the truth, the manager must be keeping in touch with every single department, which gives the manager almost the ultimate decision on marketing.

He or she must be in communication with departments like products, public relations, financial, and sales to coordinate proficient marketing strategies.

This figure must also be aware of all campaigns taken by the marketing department, regardless they could be promotional, advertising, or branding campaigns.

He is required to keep in touch with senior management too, so the marketing manager will have to prepare reports for the other non-marketing departments, as well as keeping them informed of marketing strategies and trends.

Many responsibilities fall upon the manager’s shoulders, but, as he is the one who should forecast the market trends for the rest of the departments to trust, it is more than reasonable.

Now, speaking of what their requirements are, the first one is a bachelor’s in marketing, business administration, or similar.

Knowing areas like branding, marketing strategies, and even a degree in a relevant field could result in handy. Having collaboration abilities, good communication skills, and leadership is mandatory, as well as time management and organizational abilities.

Last, but not least, a marketing manager needs exceptional problem-solving skills, because they need to identify a problem if there is one. 

Designers

Every visual part comes from the designers, so they are meant to sculpt the face of the company. They use elements like photography, illustration, and typography to give style to the brand they are supporting.

Therefore it is necessary for them to know and to use software (Inkscape, Photoshop) that allows them to perform satisfactorily.

What it takes to be a Designer is not a degree. The designer needs a portfolio with previous jobs, preferred as part of a design team.

He also needs impeccable communication skills, mostly to prevent grammatical failures, but also to know how to express and understand clients.

Other traits of them are creativity and confidence by equal parts. Designers need to impress clients through their designs and do it on time, so they also need a strong sense of time and deadlines. Otherwise, they are doomed, covered on pending work.

Copywriters

These are the people behind everything written on a blog, website, social media account, and so on. Copywriters, after researching enough, have the labor of informing, alluring, or just explaining with compelling and concise words anything you want to communicate.

In addition to amazing time management skills, they need to be organized, creative, and strong at researching. They need to have a collaborative spirit to do what must be done.

The average copywriter needs excellent writing and proofreading skills. Knowledge of SEO, content strategy and creation, and serious numbers of works previously done, become handy while writing for someone.

On the other hand, the copywriter’s responsibilities are simple but require a lot of focused attention. His first duty is to fully understand the job’s requirements, so he must fully comprehend the brief that explains the project.

As the title says, the bulk of the job is to write but it is mandatory to know what he is writing about, so making previous research is necessary.

Also must edit and proofread every single paragraph, and use SEO to every text he approves. It is important to keep a copy of all sources he uses in his research.

As part of the team, the last responsibility is to keep collaborating with other departments like public relations, designers, managers, and more.

Software Developers

Also known as developers, or programmers, or even coders. Someone must take care of the website, the apps, or any software the digital agency needs to solve the client’s problems. These are the developers.

Since it is affordable to learn how to code for practically anyone, there are more and more new programmers on the internet looking for a job. Nevertheless, it is better sometimes to have on your team someone who:

A, have at least 5 years of experience in software development, or B, to have on your team someone with an I.T alike degree.

The profile for the developer comes attached to the coding process, but also must know of other I.T abilities like software testing, skills managing the SDLC (software development life cycle), and a logical mind able to find flexible solutions for a variety of problems.

When a developer is asked to repair a bug, to create a program, or to develop a calculation tool, it means that the direction comes from the client, not from the digital agency’s CEO.

So the developer must be in perfect harmony with the marketing manager, or at least must know what was required in the meeting with the client.

Everyone who claims to be a programmer must know at least one programming language. To code into multiple programming languages is handy, but to know how to work under pressure and well time managed is the plus that e difference.

To summarize, the developer does a particular job to keep the whole agency running. Silent, but efficient.

Depending on the size

A marketing team might require specialized help to (for example) produce a video or to pinpoint mark a finance issue from time to time. The size of the staff depends on factors like the size of the project or the number of ongoing projects.

How Does a Digital Marketing Agency Works?

It can be summarized in a simple flow of events, where one leads to the next. It all starts when the marketing team gives an appointment for a meeting.

In this meeting, the agency will have to catch as much information about the client’s requirements. This way, the marketing team will know what to direct to do to the rest of the team.

After discussing the best strategy, the best approach and other details like the channels to use and the budget for the project, the digital marketing agency prepares a plan to propose to the client to reach their goals.

Once ready, another meeting must take place to see the insights of the client about the proposal. 

If the proposal is accepted, a contract is signed to legally state that both parties (the digital agency and the client) are meant to honor what they agreed. Then, you can say the work begins.

Now the client must provide a Single Point Of Communication, also known as S.P.O.C, and this will be the main communication channel.

Once you know what the strategies and goals are, all the digital agency team must sync efforts and finish the job in the accorded time. If everything goes well, soon the agency will help the client to meet the marketing goals on time.

Is it Something Wrong?

If goals are not met, an evaluation is suggested to find the problem. After locating the problem, it is time to set a new strategy based on the information gathered from the first. What is important, is to reach the client’s marketing goals.

The continuation of the contract depends entirely on the client’s satisfaction. If the client hires the digital agency again or not speaks clearly of the quality of service. The clients can hire the agency as many times as they want.

Now you can tell how a digital marketing agency works.

How do Digital Marketing Agencies Charge?

Regardless, many digital services are mostly charged hourly-rate and rendered services terms, a digital marketing agency charges differently depending on what is offered to the client. Here is one of the most common examples of what a digital agency charges for its services.

Packaged Pricing

Here the digital agency offers a package of services and the client must decide if he loves it, or leave it. This way prospective clients know upfront what they are getting and how much it costs. Transparent and reliable.

Public Pricing

If in the previous kind of charge the digital agency set packages, in this one they offer services. The price of any service the agency offers is public and everybody can see how much they pay without even getting in touch with the agency. Practical and easy.

Price Quote Calculator

This is a mix of the previous two modes of pricing. The prices are public, the agency allows us to hire more than one service, so it is easy to calculate how much the complete service works. The formula is the following:

Price = ( Service selected + Extra service + Extra service ) * Quantity

Hourly Pricing

As the name says, you pay the service in an hourly-rated manner. This type of charge is less common because it gives less importance to effectiveness and more to working hours.

Regardless of how hard it could be to identify what is a payable hour, it is a good way to charge if the parties do not know how long the whole work is going to take.

Project-Based Pricing

Forget about the price for the worked hours, never mind the costs for each service, this type of charge is based on the final result. If the digital marketing agency, and the client, pact to charge an amount to reach a specific goal or an entire project, so be it.

This type of charge is ideal for goal-based projects, so the agency and the client have a good cost-profit relationship.

How do digital marketing agencies charge is important? It is more important to see if their service matches the costs. What is a digital marketing company charging you for? This is another subject.

What Services do Digital Marketing Agencies Offer?

Nowadays, most digital marketing agencies standardized something called Full-Service which contains all the basic services an agency must offer. The services that belong to this list are:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Pay Per Click (PPC)
3. Email Marketing
4. Content Marketing
5. Social Media Marketing
6. Social Media Advertising
7. Video Marketing
8. Web Design and Web Redesign

Nevertheless, depending on the agency’s experience and their team, they offer specialized services. Services like Account-Based Marketing Services, Voice Search Optimization, and marketing focused on some platforms like ads on Amazon.

What is an online marketing agency going to do for your brand? It is up to your needs.

Why Hire Digital Marketing Agency?

Now that you know what services do digital marketing agencies offer, let us dig into the why to choose digital marketing agency.

If it is true that you can do almost everything you can do it yourself, there are a bunch of reasons not to do it all by yourself. To start, the time you use learning is the time that your product delays its launch. This might result in a late presentation of your product.

Also, by hiring experts, the job will have the desired impact on the right audience. The experts can foresee many possible mistakes before they happen.

The results the agencies show are completely measurable by marketing and analytics tools, so you can track your marketing strategy on time to change if necessary.

On top of that, by letting a digital agency take care of the marketing efforts, you can dedicate yourself to your business without distractions.

Make your service better, make your product better, develop new products and services. Let the digital marketing agency keep your brand relevant and fresh, and dedicate it to running your company.

What is an online marketing agency doing on your behalf? It summarizes in the phrase It is better to work smart than to work hard.

At Brimar Online Marketing We Offer a Full-Service Digital Marketing

We do not sell services, we solve your marketing issues. Our team has a staff capable of giving solutions to almost anything you can think of. Our prices go from 500 dollars and are paired by halves so your budget is safe with Brimar’s affordable estimations.

Brimar’s palette of services goes from software development and web design to graphic design and online marketing. Count on us to help you reach your marketing goals, while our quality is proven by you. That is what an online marketing agency is all about.