15 Questions To Ask A Prospective Digital Marketing Agency

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Hiring a digital marketing agency is a big leap budget-wise and more importantly, results-wise. It’s a worthy investment that’s sure to take your business’s marketing game to the next level. But what is a digital marketing agency?

Let’s explore what it is and how one can help you.

A digital marketing agency is a business whose own business is to help you achieve marketing success through effective solutions that help you achieve your business goals. That’s a lot of help right there but that’s essentially what a digital marketing agency is and how it relates to your success.

What Questions Should You Ask Your Digital Marketing Agency?

Transparency is an important variable in the equation of trust, a key factor that’s essential in any business relationship. Check out these 15 questions that will help you get to know your potential digital marketing agency partner.

Q1: What are your process and strategies?

A digital marketing agency’s way of executing their proposed solutions (process) and their proposed way of solving your digital marketing pain points (strategy) will determine the campaign’s success. A clear way of getting from point A to B and achieving numbers X to XYZ with data to support the plan’s potential success should be clearly communicated to you. Continue clarifying until you completely understand their process and strategy.

Q2: What tools do you use to optimize marketing campaigns?

The tools an agency uses should be relevant and up to date with the latest technological advances. Do your own research on the tools they’re using so you’ll gain a better understanding of the campaign’s outworking through the tools they’ll be using.

Q3: How often will we communicate and how?

Communication is key in any relationship and any journey to success. Get to know the frequency of the agency’s communication with you and what possible topics/updates they’ll be sharing each time. Clarify the communication channel that will work best for both of you e.g. email, video call, or an in-person meet-up so no one misses out on important calls.

This heavily depends on the scope of work and each relationship. Agreeing on a consistent communication schedule will help hold each party accountable.

For example, at Milia Marketing, our email inbox is always open and we communicate consistently with open projects for our clients. For strategies, audits, and performance reviews, we meet face to face or over video conference calls every other week, weekly, or monthly depending on the complexity of the project, timeline and other factors.

Q4: How do you communicate with your clients?

Get to know they communicate with their customers also because this will reflect the way they’ll connect with you. Let them know if you prefer another way of communicating so you can meet in the middle.

If it’s only email, that’s concerning! Establish a schedule to talk to someone that is managing your account/campaign/project so you know what’s going on, when, and how.

Q5: How do I evaluate a digital marketing agency?

This is to gauge if the agency you’re eyeing is a good fit to partner with your business. You can do evaluate them through a solid set of criteria such as the following:

  • Competence – ask them for case studies that are closely related to yours. From those, you’ll be able to see their thought process regarding strategy and problem solving which will reflect how they’ll work on yours.
  • Promised Results – how do they envision success for their clients? Their picture of success should be a vision that’s supported by these important factors. Knowing what supports their vision will help you determine if they’re trustworthy and not overpromising.
    • A solid set of key performance indicators (KPIs) tied to goals
    • A strategy that realistically and clearly reflects how the milestones you both agreed on will be reached
  • Pricing Structure – their pricing should be commensurate to the services they’re offering. You’ll get what you pay for and they’ll also get paid fairly for the good work they’ll do for you. Some would even go the extra mile because of the high quality of their services, now that’s a keeper.
  • Blog Substance – the substance of a blog’s content shows the depth of an agency’s industry knowledge. Are they useful and therefore, valuable? The insight shared in their blog is another way to gauge their expertise on the services they offer like eCommerce and social media marketing

Q6: Who are your previous clients?

A digital marketing agency’s portfolio will show you the breadth of their experience which will help you determine if they’re the right agency to partner with. Case studies are also a good way of checking out who they’ve worked with. Just as experience is a good teacher, it’s a good determinant of an agency’s expertise as well.

Q7: How do you measure a marketing campaign’s success?

A good digital marketing agency will know that success is more than the likes, the shares, and the follows even for social media marketing. It’s all about the metrics that show how your business is growing and how the solutions are reaching the milestones you’ve set. Ask them for a template of their digital marketing reports and check out what metrics they measure.

Q8: How do you solve challenges that occur during a campaign?

A clear way of resolving a problem will show you that even when things go wrong, you’ve got a team of professionals who have the know-how and capabilities to bring things back on track.

Q9: Who will I be working with on the regular?

Identify who’ll be the point persons for each part of your work with them so you’ll know the right person to contact. This will also save you time as you communicate with the person who has the right answer. You’ll get a heads up too as to who you’ll be having meetings with and who’s in charge of the whole project.

Q10: When will I see results?

Clarify this as early as your first few meetings with them so you’d know how to pace your expectations and relax as they do the work. Milia Marketing has been ranked as one of the top Google Ads Agencies.

Q11: What is the scope of your services?

Understand what they’ll do for you and the extent that they’ll do it so it will be clear what you can expect from them. This way, you’ll get to strategize early how you can fill in the blanks with a different solution.

Q12: What will be my responsibilities in this campaign with you?

You’ll have to let go of some parts of the marketing work you used to do yourself when working with a digital marketing agency. Clearing up your own role alongside theirs will manage expectations and help you give the right amount of control to them.

Q13: Who are your team members?

Get to know the roles and specialties each team member of the agency involved in your project plays. You can gauge from here if they have the right skill set to meet your business’ marketing needs.

Q14: How do your other clients compare to me?

This is a way to understand if they have the experience and skills needed to work with a business like yours. Ask what’s worked for those other clients and what didn’t. Ask how your project measures up to theirs to see the feasibility of success. You can also ask them what their clients say about their services which can be in the form of testimonials or the case studies we previously mentioned.

Q15: What question haven’t I asked that I should have asked?

This sounds like a trick question but this will show you blind spots that only expert eyes like a digital marketing agency can see. Ask them what else you need to know to cover all bases.

These are tough questions but nonetheless essential. We hope this set of tips on what questions to ask your digital marketing agency will help you choose the right one to partner with. We hope this will also make for fruitful meetings with them. We’re always rooting for your success!

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Anthony Milia

Anthony Milia

Anthony Milia is an author of Marketing Magnifier, marketing consultant, and owner of Milia Marketing, an award-winning Marketing firm located in Cleveland, OH. Anthony helps Small and Medium-sized businesses get the best ROI for their marketing dollars by shedding light on their sales and marketing challenges.

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