In a market as competitive as today’s you have to use all your “tools” to protect yourself and build out the best opportunities for success.
A good marketing strategy today can make the difference between one product or service another that, let’s be honest from the outside is virtually the same.
The way you see yourself in the market, and how others see you is a very important part of your brand strategy.
We talk to many businesses owners and executives who view this as ‘extra work’ that your company “doesn’t have the time, budget, or staff for”. As much as you resist you cannot leave this aside, especially if your competitors are doing it!
For example, if your customer is looking for a solution for XYZ and both you and your competitors are going to be evaluated by a potential customer, their first step is to search the internet for a solution.
If a competitor has a blog that mentions “Top 5 Reasons XYZ is Important” then they pop up first on Google (you’re already behind). Now maybe they know what they’re looking for more directly—if they search for your company and a competitor—it’s down to the two of you! You know your better than this competitor, but how is your customer supposed to know?
If you don’t have a website that looks BETTER than theirs then you’ve lost some ground already in this battle. Then they search on Twitter to see your companies thoughts and shares, your competitor might have worse clients or experience, but they share it on Twitter, and your company doesn’t… This customer just assumes you don’t have as much domain expertise and they go with your subpar competition!
This is the modern battle for a customer, and if you’re working to make sure you win when prospects are comparing Apples to Apples having a great digital marketing agency will put you in the winning position.
If you look at this as the difference between getting new customers or your competitor getting them, not only do you lose ground in the short-term but if that happens 5 times a year you’ve just lost your advantage over your competitor because they now have the better customers!
It’s a long game, and playing smart is the key to success. If you’re reading this and think “We don’t have the time, budget, or staff” but know you want to win—here are some key points to keep in mind while searching for a Digital Marketing Agency here in Los Angeles (or wherever your company is based).
1. A Business Partner
By hiring a marketing agency in Los Angeles, you have a multidisciplinary team with the necessary skills to fulfill your projects with the desired quality; they will be not only the eyes and ears of your brand but also your voice.
A digital marketing agency will work as an ally since being external to your company has the objectivity of seeing the full picture of what is happening. This allows them to propose an appropriate solution when sometimes you’re too close to know the best path forward. However, despite being external, they manage to fully immerse themselves in the identity of your brand in order to be able to communicate exactly what it represents and get connected with the right audience.
So more than employees, they are your ‘Sherpas of the Digital World’ because they follow step by step the development of your company, how digital platforms evolve and what your brand can do to evolve with them.
2. You Get A Different View Of The Digital World
It happens to most companies at one point or another, we fall so much in love with our ideas or our business that we have blind spots that prevent us from seeing beyond what we do. This is where your ‘Sherpas’ help carry the load and point out from their multiple experiences how they’ve seen success in the past. A digital marketing agency in Los Angeles has their multitudes of experience, pair that with your companies experience, together it will help you find and execute on the best opportunities.
Maybe there are factors that are going unnoticed for you, the agency can accompany you in this process to find the right path for your digital marketing strategy. They know the environment of digital platforms (front to back, it’s their 110% focus) this can help you define the channels, contents, formats, and tones more suitable for your brand.
3. Greater Profitability In Projects
By fully engaging in this a digital marketing strategy, agencies know how to make the most of the tools in the toolbox to optimize your brand’s digital efforts. One job of a digital marketing agency is to be aware of the best tools and resources available on the market to execute for each activity.
Often agencies already have the subscriptions needed to use them! This saves your company tons of money not just on buying new subscriptions, but by the efficiencies that an experienced agency brings to ‘how to best use these resources’. This saves you from having to have an internal employee take time away from their roles to learn how to use these new services. The ROI (return on investment) of hiring an agency vs trying to do it yourself is very real. You will be able to see a digital marketing agency put all their learning and resources together and significantly outperform any other options, to give you the best results.
4. A Team Dedicated To Accelerate Your Brand
Digital marketing agencies have staffs that are aware of the latest trends in digital communication: from new content formats to the changes that constantly happen on platforms such as Facebook and Google. Their job is to be an expert in this digital landscape.
Just like the Sherpas of Everest, you need someone who has done this before to help guide your efforts and ‘lighten the load’. The experts of a digital marketing agency can apply experiences learned from other fields to grow your business and differentiate it from your competition. It’s important to remember that you should look for a specialized agency in certain tactics, whether you need Facebook ads, Google Adwords, social media management, content strategies, SEO Positioning, among others.
The teams are full of experts in communication, so put at your disposal all these skills to accelerate the potential of your brand, keep it updated and always look for new ways to maintain an assertive communication with your followers and potential customers.
5. Hire Marketing Agencies That Are Commensurate With Your Business.
Most businesses think that hiring a large agency and with many accomplishments will output the best results—when in fact, this isn’t usually true… While big agencies look great from experience and size, they usually allocate their resources based on the monetary value you mean, as they will always prefer to give more importance to their “big accounts” who are paying more monthly.
A small or medium agency is often better positioned to serve you. Therefore, it is better for you to be severed by an agency, in which you are one of the “big accounts” and importance is placed on your success.
6. Understand Your Agency Recommendations
Listen actively to what your agency proposes, they can tell you that “you are going to need a new website”, “you need to participate in this social network” or “we have to focus on working SEO”. Don’t ever be afraid to ask “why?”, in fact, you should make this a point on most calls! When you ask questions, only then you will discover the reasoning for wanting to implement this new strategy both short and long-term.
Above all, investigate and if your agency has an arsenal of digital content, success stories or offers training, use them in your favor. Look at what they’ve done well in the past, and use that as the guiding of what you think your successes can be.
7. Tailor-Made Strategy
Hiring an online marketing agency in Los Angeles will help you have a strategy more appropriate to your needs, as well as having a second opinion. They will help your team to review what you have done so far, whether it is your web, social networks or positioning. It is possible that уоur website has been ‘penalized’ by Google, whether you know it or not—things like mobile compatibility, site load time, and dead links can really hurt your SEO (search engine optimization).
Often companies don’t understand the landscape you are often putting your efforts and money in the wrong focus. With your help, you will work together to set long-term goals. As no two companies are equal, neither are the actions in digital marketing to be carried out. This is one of the best resources of the right agency partner—helping roadmap and strategize based on your needs.
8. Internal Resources
Not all companies have the appropriate internal resources or time to carry out an online marketing plan. In fact, most small to medium-sized businesses don’t need to hire a full-time CMO and should look at a fractional CMO or agency as the BEST use of resources to get to the point where these hires make sense in the future.
By hiring an online marketing agency in Los Angeles you will have access to all the tools and resources they use, many of them will not know or existed but can make your life much easier, For example, Google Web Master Tools, Google Analytics, HubSpot Retargeting, MailChimp Mail Merge, and many more.
9. Experience
Learning from others is a huge plus, (back to our sherpa metaphor). You wouldn’t hire a guy or a team to lead you up Everest if this was their first time… By having an experienced team at your disposal, understand it’s an ever-evolving landscape.
The knowledge and experience of an online marketing company can give you that рuѕh you need. A good online marketing agency will study your market and your target customer; together with your help, you will establish a much stronger marketing strategy. Agencies gain experience by developing effective methods and techniques for each type of client.
Key Takeaways
it is not free to hire a specialist in marketing—whether you do it internally or find an agency to work with. Finding the right agency means you’ll identify the services needed for your business while obtaining the benefits of having a multitude of experts for a lower cost.
The main advantages when hiring a marketing agency are employees time & money saved.
One of the most time-consuming aspects of a company is to hire a service provider to perform some of the creative functions that are not part of your business; however, assuming your role within the company can take months. By hiring one of the larger digital marketing agencies Los Angeles has to offer, they can help craft the appropriate digital marketing strategy and also help your company produce and deliver the proposed digital marketing strategy. This allows your team to focus on what is most important to your business: your customers, growth, and profits!
If hiring a digital marketing agency is something you are considering, do it carefully with the necessary diligence. What you want is that this team of experts is the best size/cost for your business, they understand the aspects you want to focus on, and that you’ll work well together.
When evaluating your options, be sure to ask the right questions and be very clear what it is that you are seeking to achieve, that you want the marketing agency to resolve. Good luck!