How To Choose The Right Marketing Agency
Have you been stuck in a rut? Do you have a business that you just can’t seem to push? Choosing the right digital marketing agency is just as important as having outstanding products or services.
In a digital-oriented world, how you approach marketing can either make or break your brand. The key to getting results is selecting an agency that aligns with your goals, values and approaches marketing in an innovative way to stay ahead of the curve; but, how do you choose which agency is right for you?
Step 1: Define Your Goals
Before reaching out to any agency, clearly define your goals. What do you want to achieve? It’s important that you find a brand that meets all your criteria.
Goals are the compass for your marketing activity — without them, you’ll waste time and budget on unfocused marketing. Goals are more than just "I want more followers." They are long-term achievements that your marketing strategy should drive towards, and can include:
Brand Awareness: Making your brand recognisable and memorable within your target audience. This could include a complete rebrand/brand refresh, consistent storytelling across channels and community engagement.
Conversions: Turning interest into action. This includes purchases, sign-ups or any other action you want a user to take, it doesn’t just have to be eCommerce purchases.
Lead Generation: Capturing interest from potential customers, often in the form of emails, demo requests or contact forms. This is especially important for B2B marketing, which requires a mix of targeted outreach, content strategy and lead magnets.
Increased Traffic: Driving qualified leads to your site through SEO, paid marketing, content marketing and/or social media campaigns. It’s not just about getting traffic, but attracting high-intent traffic from users who are likely to convert.
Social Media Presence: Creating or building on a loyal and engaged community across social media platforms. This can increase the quality of followers, engagement rates and even partnerships with brand ambassadors who already know and love your brand.
Take the time to outline SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely) and understand your customer journey. The clearer your goals, the easier it is to find an agency whose strengths align with your ambitions.
Step 2: Identify Your Required Services
Now that you’ve defined your goals, think about which type of services you might need from the marketing agency to achieve these goals. Many full-service marketing agencies have experienced in-house specialists across disciplines like website design, graphic design, web development, SEO, paid ads, social media, email marketing and more.
It’s easy to assume that you only need a single specialist to achieve your marketing goal, but in practice, that goal may require multiple service specialists. For example, if you hired an agency specialising in design to redesign your brand logo, you would need a developer to add it to your site, a social media team to update your social media profile images and an SEO specialist to update directories.
A full-service agency handles all of that under one roof, ensuring cohesion and reducing the risk of disjointed execution. If you’re unsure which services align with your goals, or you don’t know if you’ll require multiple services, it’s worth speaking to a full-service agency to clarify what services you need.
Step 3: Research Potential Agencies
Now you know what marketing services you might need, it’s time to look at which marketing agencies are best-suited to your business and how reputable they are as an agency. There are several ways to research potential marketing agencies:
Recommendations/Reviews: Word of mouth, either by conversations at business events or online reviews, are often the most credible as they’ve worked with the agency first-hand.
Google Search: A simple Google search like ‘marketing agency in [your city]’ will help identify reputable marketing agencies in your local area.
Agency Recognition: Awards, nominations or badges displayed on the website show that the agency may be more qualified and credible.
Experience
Of course, the agency must know what they are doing. Your brand, as well as how people see it, is highly important and shouldn’t be handed over to just anyone in the marketing industry. Experience matters when choosing who will represent you, so always research the marketing agency's client portfolio and marketing campaigns they’ve worked on.
It might also be worth considering if the agency has worked in multiple industries. While this isn’t a dealbreaker, it shows flexibility, and you can rest assured that the agency is familiar with seasonal trends and common opportunities or challenges associated with those industries.
Values
The right marketing agency aligns with your brand values. Not only is this important for your brand image, but also for the agency's principles. Misaligned values can result in mixed messaging or brand confusion.
Consider whether the agency works with brands you respect. The better the alignment, the more seamless and effective your collaboration will be.
Communication
Communication is also a key aspect to working together, especially in marketing. The agency must be transparent, proactive in getting you results and easy to reach. Consider things like monthly reporting and regular check-ins either by email, phone or face-to-face.
It’s also worth asking about the tools they use for project management and reporting to ensure you stay informed. Do they use custom GA4 reports, Slack, Asana or other reputable tools? Poor communication is a common reason that agency relationships can break down, so it’s important to understand how the agency will handle your queries and whether you’re kept up to date with marketing plans and performance.
Creativity & Innovation
By this point, you might have a list of marketing agencies that tick all the right boxes, all providing similar services, expertise and communication. Something that might set the right marketing agency apart from the others is their creativity and innovation, both in terms of visuals and marketing techniques.
Successful marketing stands out and breaks the mould, while still following best practices. Consider an agency that breaks boundaries, providing new and creative solutions to reach your marketing goals.
Why Choose Disruptive Agency?
Choosing the right marketing agency is more than finding a team that will excel your online performance; it’s also about finding a team that understands trends and your brand. That’s where Disruptive comes in.
Disruptive (also known as Disr.) is a digital eCommerce and marketing agency based in Stoke-on-Trent that caters to every client’s individual needs. Whether it’s email marketing, SEO, brand designs, social media or B2B marketing, Disruptive has you covered.
We aren’t just a marketing service; we’re the full package. We’re here to build bold, effective, personality-driven brands that don’t blend in. Need a design? A website upgrade? Or a content creator? Leave it to our experienced team.
At Disr. we value strategy and personality. We offer refinement and impact from our services, getting you the very best results you could get.
Be bold, be different - let’s create together.
