As an Edinburgh business, choosing the right digital marketing agency to partner with is hard. You want to do the best research you can to help you to find the company that best fits your Edinburgh business.
You want to be sure that you are making the right choice. But where do you start? What do you need to look out for? And how do you find one that’s good?
All of these questions I aim to answer in this post. Hopefully you will go away with a better understanding of what makes a good Edinburgh digital marketing company. Edinburgh is a wonderful city with wonderful people and luckily for you it has some wonderful agencies.
Now let’s see how you can find them.
Offers the right digital marketing services
The agency you choose needs to offer end to end services and if a company just offers you social media or SEO then this may be a cause for concern. You need services that generate traffic with SEO, blogging and social media sharing.
They should know how to convert this traffic into leads with call-to-actions, landing pages and premium offers.
They need to understand and demonstrate skills to convert leads into sales by using lead nurturing programmes with email marketing.
They need to be looking at the whole customer journey, as you need more customers, sales or patients and they need to work towards that goal.
Have an easy to understand delivery process
They should know you and your business and they should have a proven plan of attack. They should be able to build on your goals and outline what their approach would be using the four core services: generating traffic, lead generation, conversion of leads to sales and analysis.
Focused on your goals
They should begin by asking you about your goals and their plan should be focused around achieving your business goals. Expect them to talk about who they are and what they do but the conversation should start with your goals.
They will also need to discuss the metrics that are most important to you. By asking these questions they can create a strategy to achieve your goals.
Their website reflects an inbound website
The agency you hire should be their own best case study. So check their website to see if they do for themselves what they say they will do for you.
Do they blog frequently? Are they active on social media sites? Does their website demonstrate thought leadership?
Be wary of agencies that don’t make the service they offer a priority for their own business.
Great case studies
I’m sure you will be asking yourself at some point:
Have they done this before?
They should be able to demonstrate to you that what they plan to do works and has worked for other businesses like yours. Like I said earlier, they are their own best case study. Challenge them to show you their own success using these services.
The best ones will have no problem being this transparent.
Do they have areas of particular focus?
Do they have an area that they have particular experience in? It could be an industry vertical or a geographic location. Ask them and see if they align with what your goals are.
They are willing to teach
The best agencies will want to teach you and build up your knowledge of digital. They should offer to train your team as a lot of digital marketing needs your input and the expertise of your staff to execute.
They should be willing to do workshops on content creation and social media to help you to manage some of these important things yourself, if you have the resources to do so.
In house talent and trusted partners
Not all agencies have the resources or talent in house to execute your strategy. Digital marketing is made up of lots of different pieces that require different talent and expertise.
Probe agencies to tell you who is going to be doing what and what people or companies they partner with.
Project management skills
Digital marketing does require commitment from you. Does the agency respect your time and give you realistic expectations of what they require from you? When they create content, they need to work with you and your team to create content that will resonate with your customers.
A good agency will make your life easier.
They measure everything
You can’t improve on what you don’t track. Does the agency have a large focus on measurement? The ones that do succeed faster for you.
Everything needs to be trackable.
In order for the agency to give you real goals and expectations of results, they need to know what works and the only way to do that is by analysing your data.
Values transparency
The agency you hire should be totally transparent in everything they do; the process they use, how much things cost and how much time things will take.
A good sign of this is that the agency will invite you to participate in their project management software where you can see who is doing what and at what time.
Three ways you can tell if they are transparent or not are:
- They outline regular meetings with you, they don’t leave you in the dark.
- They are keen to train you.
- They insist on you having access to the online marketing software they use to do your campaigns
Key take aways
I hope this article has helped you to understand how to spot a good Edinburgh digital marketing company and has given you some questions that you could ask them.
There are many things that you can look at to decide which one is best for you but one thing that I have not yet mentioned is the relationship you have with them. You need to feel that you can work with them, as much as they need to feel that they can work with you.
The biggest thing for me is transparency and trust, you must ensure that you have these two things to ensure success for your business.
For more in-depth guidance on how to successfully find a digital marketing agency in Edinburgh, then click here to learn about our free ebook: “The Ultimate Guide to hiring an Edinburgh digital marketing agency”.
Now it’s your turn
I would really like to know your thoughts. What success have you had with researching digital marketing agencies in Edinburgh? What are the biggest challenges that you have faced?