How to Shortlist a Best Digital Marketing Agency for Your Brand

"India is the second-largest online market in the world with 650 million users expected to go online by 2023."

One of the major agendas of marketing is to grab customer attention but the buck does not stop there! The attention has to be leveraged for building brand awareness and growing the business. Though the traditional way (or offline mode) of marketing still exists, it can generate results when complemented with a fool-proof digital marketing strategy.

The entire gamut of marketing has changed with the advent of growing digitization. Irrespective of the type and scale of business, digital marketing should be a prominent feature of your game plan.

To give wings to your plan, it is essential to choose the best-suited (or ideal) digital marketing agency that can handle everything related to:

• Inbound Marketing – Web design, SEO, SEM, hyperlocal marketing, etc.
• Outbound Marketing – Email marketing, search, etc.

In this blog, we unlock the mechanism that will help you find the best digital marketing agency to achieve the key digital marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators):

1. Set Your Goals

Online marketing is no different from any other activity you do for the marketing your product (or services). The major advantage of online marketing is that it is ‘more measurable’. Before you set the budget, it is important to set the goals you intend to achieve through this activity.

Goals could be creating brand awareness, improving page views, generating sales, improving conversions, and more. Your team could divide them into short-term goals and long-term goals. For example, a short term (or a continual) goal could be improving the search engine ranking by devising a fool-proof SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy.

Once you have outdone your competition on the SEO front, its time to fulfill your long-term goal of converting those ‘views’ into ‘conversions’. On the whole, it important to set the right KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) so that it becomes easy to track progress.

2. Determine Your Budget

You need to set budget requirements that will help in meeting the decided goals. Mention the acceptable ROI basis the amount you are willing to invest in digital marketing.

Your firm might already have web presence and you might be looking out for a digital marketing agency that can give the ‘much needed boost’ to the online presence. The prospective digital marketing agency should have enormous expertise in funnel marketing (i.e. TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU) so that budget can be wisely allocated in growing the right avenues of the funnel.

That’s not all. If you are into B2B business (e.g. SaaS), make sure to check if the digital marketing agency has expertise in B2B marketing as B2B is altogether a different ball game than B2C marketing.

3. Umbrella of Services

Before you set out to look for the best-suited digital marketing agency, it’s important to set the ‘expectations right’! You should have a crystal clear answer to the question ‘What expert services you need from the agency’?

Is it content distribution or social media marketing or social media optimization or website optimization or content generation (e.g. blogs, case studies, etc.)? There is a possibility that your team might need all (or a part of) these services. Depending on the requirements, you should choose a digital marketing agency that specializes in providing certain services or a boutique digital agency that can provide all web services under a single umbrella.

Outsource the services to a digital marketing agency that helps realize all the necessary requirements.

4. Expertise and Credibility of the Agency

We are living in a fast-paced world where things (good or bad) spread like wild fire. The same principle applies when judging the credibility of the agency. The credibility factor only comes in the picture if the digital marketing agency has the expertise that you are looking out for.

Assume that an agency is promising you an elevation of your company’s online presence. It is said that ‘practice before you preach’; the learnings of this age-old adage perfectly fits here. The agency promising you uplift in online presence should be doing exceptionally well themselves. If their web presence is not great, you should strike them off immediately.

The agency should rank well on Google, which essentially means that they have expertise in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Search for ‘best digital marketing agencies in India’ using different search combinations (i.e. short-tail and long-tail keywords).

The credibility of the digital marketing agency can be judged based on the online reviews and recommendations provided by their clientele. Reputed and proven digital marketing agencies like The Adroit proudly flaunt their clientele on their website as it says a lot about the credibility and expertise of the agency.

5. Transparency and Long Term Vision

A great marketing agency is lead by a team that understands that ‘Business is all about people and relationships’. They are transparent in all aspects – pricing, delivery timeline, and communications. As a business owner (or a decision maker) in your organization, you would do what it takes to save extra bucks for the company. However, the savings should not come at the cost of quality.

There are a number of digital marketing agencies in India that offer premium services at super-cheap rates. Though the deal might sound lucrative in the first instance, the experience might turn nightmarish once you get into a contract. The bottom line is that ‘A great digital marketing agency will not promise to deliver premium services at wafer-thin rates’!

Does that mean that you should opt for an agency that has exuberant pricing? Definitely not! Evaluate the pricing with the services being provided and perform a thorough research online about their expertise and credibility. Genuine digital marketing agencies will follow a ‘transparent pricing model’, which means that there would ‘no hidden charges’ in their service model.

You should also check out their social media reputation, along with the comments left on the posts. Lastly, team behind awesome digital marketing agencies believe that digital (or non-digital), business is done with ‘real people’. Such agencies leave no stone unturned to create a WOW impression on their clients. Needless to mention that the team behind such agencies work relentlessly in building long-term rapport with their current as well as past clientele.

Such agencies are preferred when it comes to website design, UI/UX, app development, content strategy, social media management, and other important aspects related to digital marketing.

Conclusion

Online presence has become an absolute must for businesses, irrespective of their size and scale of operations. This is where digital (or online) marketing plays a pivotal role in improving the presence and reputation of your brand on the big, bad web.

Shortlisting the best digital marketing agency is a daunting task since there are a plethora of digital marketing companies in India (and abroad). The tips or pointers discussed in this blog would be super helpful in shortlisting the best agency that meets your budget & requirements.