The recent covid-19 pandemic has forced businesses to relook their business strategies, digital specifically. Businesses that are yet online are tempted or forced to go online fast. Those who are already online probably have a leading advantage compared to those who have not. Be it a simple website to e-commerce or selling on a marketplace such as Lazada and Shopee, you would require a person championing it in the organization either with an internal digital team or working with a digital marketing agency. Considering there are several skill sets that are required in a functioning digital team such as graphic design, video editor, copywriter, and digital marketer, maintaining an entire team could be quite costly. The cost for a fully functional team can be estimated to be at least RM180,000 and above just for the people cost. Very likely, your organization would be working with a digital marketing agency to be cost-effective. However, there are many digital marketing agencies in the market, ranging from one-person shows to a highly established organisations with more than 80 people workforce. How do you choose a digital marketing agency to work with? It doesn’t mean that they are big; they are good. I believe these could be the few considering factors in choosing a good digital marketing agency to work with.
1. Background
An immediate telltale would be their company background. You can look into their number of years of establishment, their client portfolio, and the work that they have done. You could even do another credential check based on their association. If they are associated with some big names such as Google Partner, and Facebook Blueprint, these are the immediate credentials to prove that they have the technical knowledge.
2. Their Approach Towards Digital Marketing; Strength
There isn’t one person that could master all the skills in digital marketing. Digital marketing is a very broad topic. Someone could be good at developing websites but does not understand business strategies that can be applied to a good website. Another could be good in managing ads on Google and Facebook but lack the knowledge of creating good landing pages. Hence is good to know their team. Do they have the ability to master digital marketing as a holistic approach or just a master of a specific area such as creating beautiful websites?
3. Understands Your Business
I believe the next most important factor would be the ability of the agency to understand your business in terms of your goals and strategies. If the agency does not understand your business or your objectives they are merely selling you some services that you may not even need. Hence having business acumen is one key criterion that one agency has to have.
4. Ability To Translate Into Strategies
Having the business acumen or understanding of your business and goals is the agency able to translate them into strategies (digital). Does the agency able to map out a digital strategy roadmap for your business. Having this ability will make collaboration between your marketing leader and a business owner a progressive one. In other words, this particular digital marketing agency can help you in filling the marketing gap in the aspects of digital.
5. Communication
I may mention this as the last factor but I strongly believe a good collaboration or partnership begins with good and seamless communication. I believe you have worked with somebody with that you somehow felt that you know what each other is thinking, and probably understands immediately what the other party is trying to pitch or to say. Hence you would like to work with someone that can communicate with and be accessible. When mentioning communication, it need not mean telephone or face to face. Just keeping the other party in the loop of an update via email communication is also considered good communication. And there you go, these are my five factors in considering a digital marketing agency to work with. I hope this sharing can help you in your journey to finding a digital marketing agency partner to work with. To start with, you can probably look into Innovative Hub, a digital marketing agency that helps businesses in establishing and executing digital strategies. Innovative Hub is a full-service digital marketing agency; meaning they have services ranging from website development, SEO, SEM, e-commerce and management services. For more information, you can visit www.innovativehub.com.my.
