So, you’re ready to take the next step for your business and propel your marketing strategies to the next level? Using digital marketing services is an obvious choice.
After all, there are over 300 million internet users in North America alone! It’s no wonder that digital marketing is so effective.
With this being such a popular way to market nowadays, it’s important to make sure that you’re hiring exactly the right service for you and your business.
Keep reading for 5 must-ask questions to investigate before you make a decision.
But first…
Digital Marketing Services Explained
Before you make any investments for the good of growing your company, it’s important that you have a full understanding of exactly what you’re paying for.
Let’s break it down.
Digital marketing (a.k.a. data-driven marketing) has roots in the 1980s. A group called “SoftAd” used floppy disks (remember those?) to advertise for car companies using multimedia. It may sound old-school to us now, but back in the day, it was pretty impressive!
The term “digital marketing” was born in the 1990s, and picked up steam in the 2000s, becoming the hugely used service that we know today.
Here are a couple of examples of digital marketing strategies:
SEO
What is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a marketing strategy that uses organic visibility in search engine results to drive traffic, enhance rankings, and boost awareness. This can involve anything from reorganizing your website to help search engines understand it better, to focusing on the way other websites connect to yours on the internet through links.
Since the majority of internet traffic is driven by the biggest commercial search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.), SEO is an important and extremely effective way to facilitate more traffic to your business’s website.
PPC
Pay-per-click marketing is a type of web marketing where you pay each time your advertisement gets clicked on. So, instead of paying for advertising and hoping that it generates traffic to your website, you’re paying each time that has happened directly. An example of PPC advertising is Google Ads or Bing Ads.
Facebook Ads
If you’re online, chances are that you’re on Facebook. And if you’re on Facebook, then you’ve definitely seen Facebook ads. These ads can appear on the desktop and mobile versions of Facebook and offer a multitude of options and ways to target specific audiences.
Targeted Display Advertising
Targeted Display allows marketers to place digital advertisements in front of a specific audience while browsing publisher websites. Like traditional advertising, relevant banner ads are used to influence brand awareness, improve impressions, and generate conversion. The difference is that targeted display ads aren’t stuck in one place, but are displayed on premier websites your customers visit frequently.
Targeted display ads utilize revolutionary technologies to target audiences based on demographics, location, and other factors that influence their shopping or search behavior.
Feeling confident in your digital marketing services knowledge? Now that you know the ins and outs, you can get ready to select the right service for you.
Here are the 5 questions that you should be asking companies when making this selection:
1. Who Have You Worked with in the Past?.
Ever checked out who your significant other dated before you? This is the same idea.
Asking this question is a great opportunity to feel out what sort of clients they’ve worked within the past. Then, you can springboard into asking about their track record and the success levels with businesses similar to your own.
You can also use it as a way to investigate how long they’ve been in business. Because new digital marketing companies are appearing every day, make sure you know that the company you’ll be working with has been around for a respectable length of time.
After all, this will indicate that they’ve been doing their job well!
2. Who Will We Be Working with Directly?
If you’re swept up with the idea of a company, the actual team that you’ll be working with directly is easy to forget about… until it’s too late.
Get to know who you’ll be working with beforehand so that you can see if you’ll be a good match. Check out the team on their website before you go in, and try to meet as many of them as possible before making a decision.
This is also a great opportunity to ask about how often you’ll be meeting with them and what the meetings will be like. How involved is this company with the businesses they market for?
Transparency is also important to look for in an agency, or contract worker. Make sure that you have your own access to the reporting that your agency is using. You’ll also want to ensure you can see the conversions and actual numbers the agency is referring to.
3. What Digital Marketing Strategies Do You Use?
With so many options available, it’s important to know exactly what strategies the company will be using for you.
And now that you have some knowledge under your belt, talking intelligently about options will be a breeze! Ask about what strategies they specialize in, and see if they seem like the right fit for your business.
4. How Can I Gauge My Results?
The last thing you want to feel is like you’re shelling out tons of cash for digital marketing services, and you’re in the dark about where it’s going.
KPI’s, or Key Performance Indicators, are elements of your campaign that can be measured. Ask which of these they will be reporting to you.
In the spirit of arming ourselves with knowledge, here are the top 5:
- Traffic: how many people are visiting your site
- Traffic sources: where these visitors are coming from
- Conversions: how many of these visitors become a lead
- Cost per Lead: how much it costs to bring in a new lead based on the source
- Revenue per Lead: how much money you’re making from each successful lead
5. How Long Will It Take to See These Results?
Results from your digital marketing services won’t happen overnight; the service provider will need some time to work their magic. Patience is key, but you should still know exactly what you’re getting and in what timeframe.
Different services have different lengthed contracts because of this. Service providers want to make sure that they have enough time to show you what they can do without you bailing on them too soon.
Ask about the length of your potential contract, and what is included every month. When you know what to expect, you won’t encounter any surprises.
Want to Know More?
Feeling super knowledgeable, revved up, and ready to learn more? Good!
There’s plenty more where that came from. Browse around for more info, or shoot us an email, start a chat with a live representative, or request a Local SEO Audit from our home page and we’ll get right back to you.