How to Hire a Digital Marketing Agency

Whether you own a small, medium, or large business, you can benefit from hiring a specialist digital marketing agency. But when do you know you need one? Where do you look? What do you look for? We’ll tell you how to hire a digital marketing agency.

Digital marketing is a specialised business and one that is constantly evolving. A marketing agency with digital specialists on staff will help you cut through the murky waters of digital marketing and help your brand shine.

A good digital marketing agency will work with you to achieve your objectives. It will enhance your brand with performance marketing – marketing that you pay for based on results.

It’s recommended that you look for an agency that will complement your existing strengths and fill in the deficiencies – one that will work with your team and leverage their strengths, rather than act in place of your staff.

1. Bring strategies up to date

Ask yourself, how out of date are your company’s marketing strategies? It can be alarming how quickly you can fall behind. It’s possible you are not even aware of how far behind you are in digital marketing resources and strategies.

Many companies coast along on their success, but it can almost be guaranteed that one day they will need to do some internal soul searching and realise they have some catching up to do. There are countless examples of that in the marketing world, particularly as a result of the upheaval caused by COVID. Discussing your current marketing strategies with a digital marketing company will give you an idea of where you stand.

2. Supplement a skills deficiency

Do you understand the digital space and how it works? It’s not easy keeping up with social media trends, marketing techniques and email strategies.

What about interpreting your website’s data? Where does your current traffic come from? Where do your leads come from?

A digital marketing agency can give you all the answers. They can read First Party Data and interpret it to your advantage.

3. Relieve your frustration

Perhaps you want to achieve something but are frustrated with your team or with the marketing agency you currently use. It’s time to look for an injection of energy, fresh ideas, and new approaches.

A digital marketing agency should be able to provide strategies to reach your objectives and will work within your brand guidelines and marketing team’s parameters to make it happen. They will be experienced in the execution of marketing plans, which should overcome your frustration.

4. Catch up to competitors

What are your competitors doing? Are they growing while you’re treading water? They might have some digital marketing know-how that you don’t.

Have a word with us at Icon. We can recognise where and how to improve your digital marketing and have your competitors looking over their shoulder at you in no time.

5. Embrace new strategies

Much has changed since COVID turned the world upside down. Marketing strategies changed significantly, with the need to ‘re-connect’ after the enforced lull. This is the time to re-connect and thrive.

It might be re-connecting with lost customers, contractors or even your staff. Marketing agencies know how to help you re-connect, even if it means using innovative strategies.

Here's a great 4-minute read on marketing in the new age: Social Selling

6. Set new business goals

What are your business goals? Have they changed since COVID lockdowns have ended? There’s every chance they have – or should have. It might be time to re-assess your business goals.

If you currently use a marketing agency and they aren’t kicking goals for you, it’s time for a change.

7. Have more time to shine

We understand you’re busy. A digital marketing agency can relieve the pressure and do the marketing legwork while you focus on other areas of the business. It’s good to know that a good digital marketing agency will carry on with its work without having to soak up too much of your time.

How to hire a digital marketing agency

Some agencies specialise in servicing large brands with big budgets while others prefer to work with small to medium-sized businesses. So, you should look for an agency that will care for your business.

When searching for a digital marketing agency, you could ask for referrals, or you could simply research via a search engine.

Many of the clients we get at Icon Digital Marketing come by word of mouth. There’s no better way to gain business than by referrals. It means our existing clients are so happy with us that they would recommend us to their business associates.

Do they have the team that can do the work you need? Do they have the experience? Ask for profiles of the marketing team. And you can also check the company and individuals on LinkedIn.



Icon Visual Marketing offers a complete range of digital marketing services:

• Digital strategy
• Search advertising
• Social media advertising
• Programmatic display advertising
• SEO
• Content creation
• Web design
  

Look for a marketing agency that is an accredited Google Partner. Icon is an accredited Google Partner, which means our Digital Marketing Specialists are Google certified, and continuously meet Google’s performance standards by showing growth in our client base and participating in ongoing training.

They should have a website that you can relate to. Chances are their website will reflect what they do for you. Do they produce regular blogs? It’s an easy way to see if they keep their own website up to date. And what about the content of their blogs? The topics of their blogs will focus on a core part of their business. So, it’s a great place to see if they do the work that your brand needs.  

What about their social media? If your goal is to improve your brand’s social media presence, the marketing agency’s own socials should be active and top-notch.

Is their digital team Australian-based? If not, you could be dealing with different time zones, which might affect your deadlines. They also might not have the local knowledge that you need.

And finally, they should be people you can relate to, who you can trust and with whom you will be comfortable in a business relationship.

Check out some of the great work that Icon has completed for our clients.

Advantages of hiring an agency rather than in-house staff

Can hiring a person in-house have all the digital marketing specialties that you need? That’s highly unlikely. Hiring the right marketing agency will give you everything you need under one roof. You’ll have a single person touchpoint, i.e. a business manager who will look after your account and filter the work through to the appropriate people in their team.

Using an agency instead of in-house staff makes it easier to ride the highs and lows. You won’t have staff under pressure in busy times and you won’t be paying for unproductive staff during lulls. Plus, you don’t need to worry about sick leave, annual leave, parental leave, Superannuation, etc.

A digital marketing agency will work with you to create a clear plan. If it’s social media, they will create a social media calendar and can publish posts for you that will be seen, liked and shared, and will promote click-throughs to your website.

It’s good to go with a full-service agency. You might need part of their services now and more in the future. You’ll avoid using multiple companies.

They will be experts in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO is an intricate skill that constantly evolves. It’s easier to have a digital marketing agency to take care of it for you as they will have SEO specialists who can consistently get your website pages high on the search results organically (ie. without having to pay the search engine for it).

Read how we helped a tyre manufacturer achieve a page one position on Google organically.

If you have decided that it’s time to give your digital marketing a new lease on life and hire a marketing agency, well done. We hope you find the right one and of course, the team at Icon Visual Marketing will always be happy to chat with you to discuss how we can help your brand. Or connect with us on our socials.