Does your company need a marketing agency? You won’t have trouble finding one. Nowadays, there are ad agencies, interactive marketing agencies, email marketing agencies, and more. These categories represent countless companies from all over the world. From this, thanks to the Internet, most of them could serve you from just about anywhere. But that doesn’t mean they should. Before you go putting your eggs in the wrong marketing agency basket, think about the following when considering your options.
Business Acumen
This might seem like a no-brainer, but look for this in any marketing agency you interview and you’ll soon see why this is so important. Nowadays, interactive marketing agencies are a hot choice. What a lot of people don’t know, though, is that many of them started out as web design firms. While that can be a huge advantage, it can also mean that while they understand SEO, SEM, analytics, and web design. Also, they may not know how to use these tools to best serve your purposes.
When interviewing options, expect that they’ll show up with a solid grasp of your company. Also of your market and how they’ll help the two connect. This is all very key.
Design Abilities
Like we just covered, a lot of interactive marketing agencies will already have design chops because that used to be their bread and butter. This is something you should look for from just about any marketing agency. Having an agency that can both handle marketing and knows how to get your web design on the same page is invaluable. Otherwise, you’re stuck with the challenge of syncing the two up on your own.
Proven Success
No matter what kind of company or individual you’re interviewing, you obviously want to make sure they can prove they’ve succeeded in the past. You probably don’t want to be the first client for your agency, after all.
Overall
However, one interesting place to check their abilities is their own web presence. If they’re experts at SEO, you should expect that they’ll show up pretty early in terms of page rank. If they’ve boasted about their social media talents, you should expect that their Twitter account is updated. See if it has an enviable amount of followers.
Marketing agencies are in a pretty dense market to be sure, but this is still worth considering. If you’re unimpressed by what they’ve done on their own behalves, feel free to bring it up to them for an explanation.
