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Every business needs an online presence of some sort these days. The larger your business, the more you’ll likely want to invest in digital marketing. Those truisms contain quite a bit of complexity when you unpack them. For example, how much should budget for digital marketing? What kind of digital marketing? Who will do the work? If you are looking for a digital marketing firm to take on search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, pay-per-click advertising, or other online marketing work, consider four main subjects you want to investigate before hiring someone.

1. Your Digital Marketing Objectives

Consider the costs and benefits of keeping in-house talent, hiring freelancers as needed, or using a digital marketing agency to support your strategy. A firm with a simple marketing strategy and a modest budget might outsource search engine optimization (SEO) work on its site. Another company might get better results by turning over most of their digital strategy – keyword research, SEO, ghost blogs, link building, and so on.

The key question to ask here is whether you want to develop the needed expertise or oversee a team of freelancers or hire a digital marketing agency. The advantages of outsourcing come down to faster results at a lower cost. If you don’t already have people who understand keyword research, writing for the web, on-site SEO, and similar strategies, outsourcing will probably pay off. However, as with outsourcing anything, you need to ask some questions about the digital marketing agency before you sign that contract.

2. Company Expertise and Experience

Do ask for referrals and read online reviews. Make some time to research the answers to several experience-related questions:   

• How long have they been in business?
• How much experience do they have in your industry?
• How do they communicate with you about results?
• Do they have a record of success with the relevant marketing tactics?
• Who will manage the campaign(s)?
• Who will be doing the work?

You can glean some of the answers from online research and reviews but you’ll want to schedule initial calls with two or three top contenders.

Because digital marketing requires certain technical training and knowledge that copywriters and branding specialists won’t pick up from doing offline marketing work. For example, keyword research is one of the most important elements of digital marketing. You need a professional-looking site but the site alone is of little value unless the content targets the right search terms. If you want to succeed in content marketing, you need to have a deep understanding of not only what your target customer wants to know, but how they search for that information. You may have heard of “long-tail keywords” before. These specific terms might be more valuable if used correctly.

3. The Process

Digital marketing companies use various project management techniques to keep the work moving along, ensure timely communication with clients, and track results. As a consumer of those marketing services, you’ll probably be most interested in how they track and report results. This is how you know what kind of ROI you get from, for example, paid Google ads versus your Google Business Profile updates or your blog.

And, will they break down the results in a way that you can understand without technical knowledge of Google Analytics 4 or whatever tools they use? Anyone with the relevant account password can go look at the numbers, but turning them into business insights might not be so easy. This is another good reason to have an experienced digital marketer or agency.

4. The Digital Marketing Staff

Training and experience count so do check out the people who would be doing your SEO work, ghost blogging, or whatever fits your online strategy. If your company has complex accounting needs, you won’t turn your books over to someone who took bookkeeping classes a couple of years ago. If you want to overhaul your e-commerce site, you need someone with real experience, not a Web developer who took some classes and worked on a couple of projects.

The logic is the same as in any other important business activity. If you want to outsource a multipronged campaign involving blogs, social media posting, and paid ads, along with a new and better website, you want to be sure the team handling that work has deep experience.

How to Outsource Smartly

Outsourcing some of your digital marketing can be a smart move, in terms of ROI, but outsourcing has to be done right. The best digital marketing agency will understand your industry and the tactics they need to use to attract potential customers or keep existing customers. If your business needs some expert help being found online, whether through ads, blog posts, or search engine optimization, DevDigital has the expertise you want. Contact us to set up a short call about your digital marketing needs.