our insight: the whys, whens and hows of appointing a digital agency

In this blog post, we lift the lid on everything businesses need to know when choosing a marketing agency. 

Navigating the digital landscape can be daunting for many, and choosing between agency and in-house hires can be a difficult decision. When choosing a digital agency, it’s important you pick a team of people that you trust to look after certain elements of your company, but why, when and how should you go about choosing your digital marketing agency?

 What Is A Digital Agency?

Starting with the basics, a digital marketing agency is a business that you hire to help grow your business, offer advice and expertise, and overcome all of your digital marketing challenges. A marketing agency can provide you with a whole host of digital solutions with a wide range of specialists right at your fingertips to help you hit your specific marketing goals, which is why so many businesses prefer to work with an agency rather than choosing to hire in-house specialists.

Why Hire A Digital Agency?

In most cases, the decision to hire a digital agency is based largely on the fact that you’re wanting to grow your business and probably want to invest in a range of marketing disciplines to help identify which channels drive the best results. Hiring an agency means that you can begin your marketing campaigns almost immediately, which means you’re likely to see those all-important results quickly. There are many advantages to hiring a digital agency, such as:

Expert Knowledge All In One Place

When you hire a digital agency, you will be getting access to a full team of experts at your fingertips. If you have your own internal marketing team, a digital agency will basically form an extension to this team. So, while you may not have the budgets to hire your own SEO, PR or PPC specialists in house, hiring a digital agency will fill those knowledge gaps.

You Can Get Your Time Back

If you’re doing everything yourself, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and overworked. When you hire a digital agency, you not only get some of your valuable time back, but you also can rest easy knowing that your business is being looked after by highly-skilled professionals. Agencies like ourselves are known to go above and beyond, too, so when you pick a good’un you have peace of mind your agency team is working hard on your behalf to drive those results.

A Competitive Strategy

A digital agency will delve into researching all areas of your business, coming up with creating ideas off the back of trends while considering competitor activity too. Your agency experts can then build a strategy tailored to your needs that will drive your business forward. If you’re not a marketing whiz kid, don’t worry – trust an agency to come up with a personalised strategy for your brand.

New And Innovative Ideas At Your Fingertips

Creative ideas almost always come from a team working together and bouncing ideas around. With a digital agency, you have a whole team of creative minds working together with the aim of achieving fantastic results. Yep, that includes cross-departmental convos too – so you’ll get extra insight from several different department experts that you just couldn’t get from a one man band. Also, as industry experts, your agency team is more likely to know the ideas that will and won’t work.

It’s Measured By Data

A great digital agency will not only tell you that you’re getting great results, but be able to show and prove to you that the strategy is working. You will be able to receive a whole host of analysed results based on your brand’s performance, all gathered from the range of tools that a digital agency has access to.

When Is The Right Time To Appoint A Digital Agency?

Whether you’re just starting out with a new business or you’re looking to grow your brand further, we share the signs it’s time to appoint a digital agency.

You’re Trying To Juggle Everything

If you’re trying to handle everything yourself, from website updates to creative social media posts, this may suggest that you are spreading yourself too thin. Working to your strengths will help your business perform in the best possible way, while hiring in a digital agency to take over the digital aspects you’re not so up to date on will free up your time to concentrate on other areas.

Your Results Have Taken a Nosedive

If you’ve noticed a drop in sales or website traffic, this may be a sign that it’s time to hire a digital agency. They will create a strategy that is competitive, will reach the right audiences and put your main business goals at the centre of their plan.

Hiring An In-House Team Isn’t For You

One person is unlikely to be a specialist in every single area of marketing yet often brands don’t have the resources or the requirement for a full in-house marketing team. Hiring, onboarding, training and upskilling a full team takes significant time and investment compared to hiring an agency who have a ready-made team of marketers lined up and raring to go.

You Aren’t Tracking Your Progress

If you aren’t tracking data from your website, this makes it more difficult to track improvements across your business. A digital agency will be able to help you track everything from the number of visitors to your website to how your website is performing for a range of key search terms. This means that they will be able to tailor your strategy further to hit your goals.

You’re In Need Of Fresh Ideas

You can often become stuck in a rut when thinking about new ideas for your business – especially when you live and breathe the brand every day. Whether this is fresh content or new ideas for your website, digital agencies will hold a whole range of internal meetings, alongside undertaking vast research on niche topics to come up with fresh creative ideas. Agency workers feel the benefit of no two days being the same, so we’re always kept on our toes and up to date with the latest trends.

How To Choose The Right Digital Agency

Hiring a digital agency over a team of in-house specialists can often be cost-effective, especially for brands just starting to dip their toes into the world of digital or bigger businesses looking to for an extension to their already brilliant team. But what should you consider when choosing the perfect digital agency for your business?

Understand Your Needs & Budget

When you begin the search for a digital marketing agency, it’s important to understand your own needs as a business. Knowing exactly what you’re hoping to achieve and the budget you’re wanting to spend will help you when you’re speaking to different digital agencies to find the perfect fit.

Investigate Case Studies

Doing some research into different digital marketing agencies to find out the results they have produced is a great way to find the right fit. Take note of your agency’s website – if they’re pitching content marketing to you, how do they run their own blog? If they’re suggesting website development, is their website user friendly? Case studies and personal recommendations are also a great way to find out what value the agency’s services have added to their other clients’ businesses.

Get To Know The Specialists

From the CEO of the business, to the individuals who will be running day-to-day tasks, getting to know the team you’ll be potentially working with will help your decision when trying to choose a digital agency. Choosing a team of people that you get on with and will enjoy working with will often help you achieve the best results as you’ll both enjoy a more collaborative way of working.

Ask The Right Questions

As we’ve previously mentioned, knowing exactly what an agency can offer will help you choose the right fit for your business. Therefore asking to see campaign examples, knowing exactly who will be completing the work and finding out how the results will be measured will not only help you choose the right agency, but will also help build your relationship and trust with the people you will be working with.

Transparency

Following on from our previous point, ensuring that your agency is transparent with their clients will help to build a trustworthy relationship. Here at Flaunt Digital, our core values are integral to the way we work, ensuring that we are always transparent with clients and offering support when needed.

For more digital marketing tips and advice on choosing the right agency, follow Flaunt Digital on LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter.