5 Things You Should Do before Engaging a Digital Marketing Agency

Are you really ready to engage a digital marketing agency?

The business model of the world have changed.

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online platforms.

Consumers have embraced online channels for products and services, and businesses have responded in turn.

However, many business owners are also wary of engaging digital marketing services to grow their business due to the influx of such services on the market.

The truth is, before we even start to look into the capabilities and competencies of a digital marketing agency, it is more important to plan and prepare your business beforehand in order to reap its full benefits.

Here are 3 crucial things you should look into before engaging a digital marketing agency.

What to Take Note before Engaging a Digital Marketing Agency

1. Understanding Your Business
2. Digital Marketing is More ‘Marketing’ than ‘Digital’
3. Setting Realistic Expectations
4. Repairing Leaking Pipes
5. Backtracking Your Journey

1. Understanding Your Business

If you dont understand numbers, you don’t understand your business.

Before you engage a digital marketing agency to grow your business, it is more important to understand the current situation though analytics so you can compare the performance prior the engagement.

A good start would be understanding the several of the following aspects.

• Where is your website traffic coming from?
• Which platform does your leads come from?
• What is your cost per lead for each platform?
• Which platform provides the best conversion?
• What is your cost per acquisition for each platform?

If you have not tracked any performance, we recommend having a conversation with your digital marketing consultant before any engagements.

2. Digital Marketing is More ‘Marketing’ than ‘Digital’

Some business owners have a misunderstanding that digital marketing involves only on technical aspects of the marketing spectrum such as optimizing SEO signals or boosting Facebook posts.

Unfortunately, digital marketing is not a miracle pill that boosts your business immediately to greater heights. Often, these business owners usually lack in several other aspects of the marketing spectrum such branding, communications and product placement.

Taking for an example, Google ads is often the top choice for lead generation campaigns since it is probably one of the most effective platforms on the market.

However, if you are unable to craft a good sales funnel through your landing page such as identifying your customers’ needs, solving their pain points or creating a bait, chances are your campaign is not going to perform well.

3. Setting Realistic Expectations

While it is essential to set goals on what you want to achieve, it is also important to set realistic ones instead of pulling figures out of nowhere.

Focusing on advanced statistics may give you a better overall picture instead of over-emphasizing on basic statistics.

For instance, you shouldn’t compare cost per lead with another industry or even another competitor in the same industry. It is not feasible to compare the cost per lead for a Toyota to a cost per lead of a Lamborghini since they are vastly different products for different audiences even if they are in the same industry.

A better metric you should be focusing on is Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). In short, ROAS tells you how much revenue you earned for every dollar spent.

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) = Revenue Due to Ad / Ad Spend

For instance, assuming you spend $5,000 monthly on Google Ads and generate $22,000 monthly, your ROAS would be 4.4 or 440%. This means for every $1 you spend on Google Ads, you earn $4.40 in profit. Depending on your overall expenses, a healthy ROAS should be between 400% to 800%.

Many business owners also have a misconception of Facebook marketing. Having more ‘likes’ does not necessarily translate to a strong brand or its ability to generate more sales to your business.

4. Repairing Leaking Pipes

Before you invest in a good digital marketing agency, it is best to prime your business so you can reap the maximum yield of digital marketing implementation. Most of the time, there are many other cavities in your business processes that could potentially bleed your revenue.

Here are two examples we would like to share from our past clients.

a) Sales Processes

It is not common for sales team to complain about the lack of sales leads or poor lead quality. However, the problem could also arises from poor sales process such as slow lead response, inconsistent follow up and poor business intelligence.

Slow lead response – Slow responses kill your business especially if you are running Google Ads campaigns where people are urgently searching for a solution to their problem.

Inconsistent Follow Up – Depending on your product or service, some prospects require a longer time for decision making. If you do not have a consistent follow up schedule or system, you will most probably fail to close the lead when it matures.

Poor Business Intelligence – It is important to keep track of your prospect’s journey. In a real estate business for example, you want to know how many times your prospect visit each location or when is the last time he contact you. Without business intelligence, it is difficult to curate a customized sales funnel to improve closing rate. We recommend using a powerful CRM system such as Hubspot.

b) Membership / Subscription Model

If you are running a membership or subscription business model, the overall revenue you can milk from an existing customer depends on the length of time he or she subscribes to your service.

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) = Revenue Due to Ad / Ad Spend

Based on the formula above, the shorter the period your customer subscribe to your business, the the lower your ROAS becomes. In that case, it really doesn’t matter how well you perform for your digital campaign, you are going to bleed.

That is where customer retention strategies became extremely important. Some of the ways you can improve customer retention rates are

• Consistently improving customer service and satisfaction
• Leverage customer feedback surveys to make consistent improvements
• Continually deliver value to your customers

There are many other ways you can repair your ‘leaking pipes’. We recommend re-looking within your business model so you can reap the maximum yield of digital marketing implementation.

5. Backtracking Your Journey

Before you decide to work with a specific digital marketing agency, recall how the agency reached out to you.

After all, you are a part of their digital sales funnel.

You have progressed stage by stage in the agency’s digital funnel, from a targeted audience into a qualified lead. This is perhaps the best testimonial of their competencies, since you have first hand experience how they do digital marketing for their own business.

That said, it is hard to take any digital marketing agency seriously if they can’t even generate leads for their business.

Overall Takeaway

Engaging a digital marketing agency is akin to visiting a doctor. It is best to highlight your pain points as well as your key performance metrics so they have a better understanding of your situation to work with.

Most important of all, it is essential to work with someone whom you can trust.

Feel free to pick our brains or you can engage our lead generation services so you can focus on the core aspects of your business.