How do I know what to look for when choosing a digital marketing company?

There are thousands of digital marketing companies out there offering Google and Facebook and, as a business owner myself, I know how confusing it can be deciding on who you should spend your marketing dollars with.

When selecting a marketing company to look after your advertising, these are the things to look out for:

• Are they a Google Premier Partner?    Premier Partners are audited by Google for the performance of their campaigns. The person managing your campaign is Google certified and a master at building campaigns to give you your desired outcome such as more calls, leads, sales, brand awareness or engagement. Keeping up a high standard means you’re in good hands! They also have a direct contact within Google which means that they have access to new Google features and applications.

• What type of reporting do they offer?   You should be able to access your reports when you want to. Your marketing company should have a reporting dashboard which allows you to access the data 24/7 and transparent digital marketing companies will record and track all the calls they are delivering so you can see your true return on investment (ROI). You should be able to see all your keywords, not just the top performing ones, as well as how much you are paying per click. Be warned, some companies will add a margin to your clicks.   Make sure you ask the question!  You also need to know if you own the data. Can you have campaigns set up using your business account, not theirs? This is important because if you decide to stop using that company you may lose all the keywords and text ads that have been written. Essentially you are starting from scratch which will mean it will take up to 3 months build up momentum with the campaign again.

• Where is the work being done?   So, if you bought the campaign in Australia, the person managing the campaign should be in Australia, right? That isn’t the case for a lot of agencies who outsource to save costs. The problem with that approach is that it can take time to action changes when required and their terminology can sometimes be different to ours. I’ve seen a scrap metal wrecker coming up for used car sales even though all they do is wreck the car for scrap metal, and that’s down to a simple mistake because of a misunderstanding.

• What’s a reasonable management fee to pay to manage your advertising?   A lot of businesses will charge a management fee and take a margin on top of the clicks. Transparent digital marketing companies won’t have any hidden fees.  A good provider will charge anywhere between 20 to 35 per cent management fee and won’t take a margin. Again, make sure you ask the question.

• Can they provide case studies?   A good digital marketing company should be able to provide you with examples of results from other businesses in your industry, to give you an idea of the results you could expect for a certain advertising spend.

• Negotiating the contract term.   Many business owners want flexible month-to-month contracts, while digital marketing companies will want you to sign a contract. Before signing any contract, you should clearly understand the pricing, contract length, renewal status and cancellation procedure. You need to consider that many digital campaigns, particularly pay per click (Adwords) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) programs, take several months to build results.  You need at least four months for the campaigns to be optimised for Adword and SEO takes a minimum of 6 to 9 months to show real results, so longer contracts are sometimes needed to get the desired objective.

I hope that’s given you some insight on what to look out for when it comes to choosing a digital marketing company. If you would like more advise on digital marketing, please feel free to contact me directly on 0413 444 025 or tessa.tolhurst@communitynews.com.au.

Tessa Tolhurst
Digital Sales Specialist
Community News