Whether you’re looking for innovative ways to enhance your existing marketing plan or you’re trying to get your marketing strategy up and running, an Edmonton marketing company can provide you with invaluable advantages. There is no shortage of digital marketing agencies, so how do you identify the best marketing company for your needs? Here are seven questions you should be asking before hiring an Edmonton Marketing Company.
7 Questions to Ask Before You Hire an Edmonton Marketing Company
1. Who Will Manage My Account and Execute the Work?
One of the first questions you should ask when evaluating the best Edmonton marketing company is who will manage your account and who will execute the work. While some agencies have an in-house team with decades of experience to manage the marketing, less reputable agencies will simply outsource a contract to “offshore” workers. Look for a company that performs the work themselves. You will get more consistency and much better results from people who actually know your local situation.
2. How Do We Compare to Your Other Clients Regarding Budget and Production Requirements?
Some business owners don’t feel comfortable with their business being the smallest or largest client for an Edmonton marketing company in terms of production requirements and marketing budget. Small business owners worry that they may not receive the same level of customer service that larger agency clients receive.
At Digital Marketing Company, we value every business and provide the same level of service to small businesses with a limited marketing budget and large businesses requiring web analytics, web development, content management, SEO services, and more.
Besides feeling comfortable with the level of customer service you’ll receive, make sure the agency you choose has the technical skills and tools in place to execute the projects you anticipate needing. Regardless of the size of projects you anticipate, take the time during your initial consultation to understand a potential agency’s processes to manage ongoing client relationships and fulfill all your current and future needs as your business continues to grow.
3. What Strategy and Planning Exercises Are Necessary to Get Up to Speed?
Once you’ve found the best marketing company in Edmonton, you’ll need to spend some time cultivating a relationship with your new marketing partner. Make sure you understand what type of communication the agency expects from you, how work will be managed, what the approval process is like, and what to expect regarding standard onboarding timelines and deliverables. The most reputable agencies will have a clear, articulable process in place to quickly get both the client and agency teams up to speed.
Before the onboarding process, make sure the agency’s team that will be handling your account has the necessary knowledge to help your business increase its market share within its industry. The knowledge the team should have includes familiarity with benchmarking and key performance indicators for your industry, as well as advertising and marketing strategies that speak to your buyer personas.
4. What Processes Are in Place for Client Communication and Collaboration?
One of the biggest red flags that a digital marketing agency is not right for you is they don’t have a solid standard operating procedure in place for how the agency manages communication and collaboration with the client. You are investing your hard-earned money into this new business relationship. You should be confident that your money is going into real work rather than administration and project management. No digital marketing agency worth your money will allocate over 10% of your budget for project management.
The best digital marketing agency has implemented solid processes and platforms to manage client communication, collaboration, reporting, billing, and project management. This means valuable time and money are not wasted on managing client relationships and business operations. Therefore, it allows for far more time to be spent actually getting work done.
How sophisticated a set-up an agency demonstrates in these non-core areas is often a great indication of their level of expertise in handling clients of your size and necessities. Before picking the best digital marketing agency, you should understand and feel confident in that agency’s procedures for setting timelines, completing projects, collecting feedback, analyzing results, and continuing to develop optimization.
5. What Are You Looking for in a Client?
Every agency has a different idea of what makes a good or bad client. To determine if you are a good fit for the agency and if the agency is a good fit for you, ask them what they are looking for in a potential client. Follow up by asking what they see as red flags when evaluating a potential client. Interviewing a potential agency is much like interviewing a new hire. The culture and organizational fit of the potential agency must be compatible with your business values and methods. This ensures your working relationship is smooth and enjoyable for both parties.
6. Which KPIs Do You Find to Be the Most Important? How Do You Report Progress?
Monthly marketing analytics reports can be incredibly frustrating if you don’t find them relevant to your business. Even worse, they may be presented as so many numbers that you can’t draw a single reasonable conclusion from the reports. Analysis should be presented in a manner that is easy to understand. Moreover, it should be clear how and why certain metrics are being measured.
For example, what does an increase in social media follows, and website traffic actually mean for your business? Are these increases large enough to justify what you are spending on paid ad impressions? The marketing agency you work with should report their results in black and white numbers that stakeholders outside the marketing department can understand easily. The reports should explain changes to qualified leads, paying customers, and increases in revenue.
If your potential agency is truly sales oriented, it will focus on reporting the number of leads generated, the quality of the leads, statistics on how the leads flowed through each sales funnel stage, the number of new customers each month and how effective the marketing tactics implemented are in generating traffic, leads and customers.
7. What Can I Expect During the First 90 Days?
One of the most compelling benefits of working with a reputable Edmonton marketing company is you can truly hit the ground running. You don’t need to spend valuable hours writing job descriptions, recruiting, onboarding, and training new hires. You have a dedicated team with years of experience implementing digital marketing plans for businesses of your size in your industry.
When evaluating the quality of a digital marketing agency, ask what the first 90 days of collaboration will look like. Ideally, they can tell you precisely what needs to be done to drive early results and when those deliverables should be executed. If the list of potential to-dos far exceeds the work that can actually be executed, there is a strong chance that the agency will take great strides to forge a long-term working relationship rather than simply taking direction and delivering only your specific requests.
Contact the Best Digital Marketing Company Today
If you don’t currently have a marketing plan in place, or you’re not satisfied with the performance of your current marketing plan, a digital marketing agency can be invaluable. The best Edmonton Marketing Company has results-driven strategies, performs their own work, knows how to achieve maximum visibility for your brand, and offers one-on-one consulting. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, contact Digital Marketing Company based in Calgary, Alberta today to discover what we can do for you.
