How to Choose the Right Marketing Agency for Your Business?

The complete checklist to hire a marketing agency for small businesses

Small businesses, founder-led brands and personal brands feel overwhelmed when choosing digital marketing agencies to help them market their businesses for them. From working with a founder-led fashion e-commerce brand , a startup motorsport brand, a real estate business and a founder led fitness brand, here’s what I’ve seen agencies often overlook: They don't understand what stage of the journey the brand and the customer is on try cookie cutter strategies that may have worked well for other brands or they tend to over listen to clients and set high expectations for themselves right from the get-go just so they can work on an account. The important thing here is for small businesses and founder-led brands to have a marketing plan. Hubspot quotes a study by SimpleTexting that found that 75% of small businesses have a marketing plan and those with a structured plan are 6.7 times more likely to report success than those without one.

What are some errors that you have seen marketing agencies make? An article, "Small Business Marketing 101: Getting Started", in the search engine journal (www.searchenginejournal.com), highlights that, small businesses face unique challenges with marketing that larger or enterprise brands just don’t have to deal with.

Ever since AI entered the scene, it has been proven that it can help small businesses with their marketing efforts. A hubspot article highlights how 80% of bloggers say AI enhances user experience and can help improve their SEO efforts.

Choosing the right agency at whatever stage of growth is critical for increase in ROI, growth and avoid wasteful spending. If you are small business or a founder-led brand that hasn't hired a marketing agency before to help with marketing efforts, use this checklist to guide you through your decision.

Step 1: Define your goals

An agency can best work for you when they already know what success looks like for you. Ask yourself:

• Is my first priority, brand awareness, lead generation or e-commerce sales?

• Do I want to run a short-term or a long-term campaign?

What are KPI's (website traffic, leads, conversions) that I will check after the completion of the campaigns?

Step 2: What is their expertise and services?

The second step to consider is what services will meet those goals.

Is it SEO for your website? Is it building more brand awareness by developing a social media strategy? Is it building on organic content by running PPC and Meta ads or building better communication systems like Whatsapp and email marketing or a full-stack digital marketing team to manage multiple campaigns.

Ask questions like:

• What is their area of expertise?

• Do they have expertise in your industry/niche?

Step 3: What is their social media content like?

• Does their website load quickly? What's the user experience like?

• Have they optimised their content for SEO?

• Are they active and post consistently on socials?

Step 4: What is their reporting structure?

• Do they create and share regular performance reports?

• Do they explain metrics that impact ROI( and not just impressions and clicks)?

• What tracking tools do they use?
  

Step 5: Do they have a contract and pricing document?

• Is it flexible or long-term contracts?

• Does it fit your budget?

• Check for hidden costs?
  

Step 6: What does communications and support look like?

• Is there someone you can connect with in their team?

• How often will you be updated on plans and tasks?

• Are you happy with communication from their team?

Pro tip: You will achieve poor results, if there is poor communication from their end.

Step 7: Do they have social proof?

• Do they have client testimonials or case studies featured on their site? Client testimonials or case studies published on their site.

• Does it feature google reviews or linkedIn recommendations?

Step 8: Begin with a small project before starting off on a large project

• Start with a small campaign that is not too short neither too long. One preferably that is 1-3 months long. Long enough to see some result but not too long that it is too late to change.

• During this time, evaluate their process, communication, and results.

• If they meet your expectations, move on to a longer contract period.
  

Before you start, remember to take time to choose an agency that meets your needs and expectations. These are just some general guidelines that we think should guide your decision making process. if you are looking for a transparent, results-driven marketing partner, let's talk.

What are some steps you might ignore/ include? Leave a comment

Download the checklist here