Business Owners: Don’t Hire a Digital Marketing Agency Until You’ve Done These 3 Things

Perhaps you’ve tried to handle all of your digital marketing in-house, or maybe you’ve relied on traditional marketing to this point but realize you need to expand to digital as well. Don’t make a quick decision when hiring a digital marketing agency or provider; there is significant long-term value to preparing ahead in order to make a well-informed, strategic choice. Here’s a time-tested process.

According to outsourcing expert Dr. Gad J. Selig, Dean for Industry Outreach and Director of the Technology Management Graduate Programs at the University of Bridgeport, the first step is gaining a clear understanding about what you want to outsource and why, and then creating a document with that information. “It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it’s an important first step,” he says.

Dr. Selig also says that having this document is important if you’re brand new to digital marketing altogether, outsourcing digital marketing to a vendor for the first time, or needing to switch vendors.

So clearly identify your needs: Do you want to outsource your web copywriting? Blogging? Search engine optimization? Social media marketing? Are you doing this because you don’t have a marketing director, or does your marketing director already have a full schedule and it doesn’t make sense financially to hire someone else? Or do you need to outsource because the digital marketing world changes so rapidly and it’s difficult to devote internal resources to keeping up with the continual evolution?

There are no wrong answers as you brainstorm the “what” and the “why.” If you skip this step, though, you will be leaving the problem definitions entirely up to your future agency partner. While capable agencies can and most likely will do their own audits of your company’s resources and processes, there is value in also doing your own brainstorming ahead of time.

When you create your list of challenges, write each one down separately—even when they are clearly connected, perhaps even inextricably linked. Dr. Selig suggests you also make a list of what techniques you are already using—organic SEO or Google AdWords, social media marketing and the like, as well as what you’d like to implement the first time.

Dr. Selig says that once you’ve created your wish list, “you’ll then have to be practical, because you typically can’t do it all, at least not all at once.” It then makes sense to rank your list by what’s most important rather than by what’s most urgent. If you find yourself too frequently distracted from your day’s priorities, it may also make sense for you to spend time organizing typical tasks into Stephen Covey’s four quadrants. Forbes.com offers a useful overview if you haven’t done this in a while.

Take a look at what you put into Quadrant 2. What items rise to the top as far as having both long-term value and providing quality return on investment? What can you outsource to a professional digital marketing agency so you can focus on your core competencies?

The answer to these questions will help you and your agency develop a strategy where challenges are addressed in a fruitful order.

Although it’s fine during early brainstorming stages to create broad goals, it’s important to refine them into specific and measurable ones. A common goal is to increase brand awareness, but what does that mean? Increasing newsletter subscribers by 20 percent within one year? Boosting your social media followers in Facebook and Twitter by that same percentage?

It’s important to create goals that can be easily measured, and be sure to include deadlines. These goals must also be realistic. Although it can briefly feel empowering to decide you are going to double your online conversations during the next quarter, disappointment will quickly set in if such a goal is unrealistic.

The bottom line: Key team members in your company should fully understand metrics being used to define success and this needs to be clearly communicated to and discussed with the vendor being considered for your digital marketing campaign. A quality agency will give feedback on these goals, perhaps helping you to further refine them or right-size expectations if they are too aggressive for the time period being measured.

Dr. Selig sums up that you must:

He also strongly encourages companies to ask for references and review testimonials provided to help ensure that the right vendor is chosen. Here are additional questions you can ask agencies before outsourcing your digital marketing.

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