A start-up’s guide to hiring the right digital marketing agency

If there is one thing that is clearly established today, it is the fact that digital marketing is no more looked at as an optional component of a larger marketing strategy.

Digital often plays a key role in more than one way – right from reaching out and engaging with the right prospects, inbound and outbound communication with them, lead generation and data collection.

The detailed statistics that it offers also plays an important part in guiding our future strategy. So it is not surprising that most start-ups today look at digital marketing as the first step in establishing their businesses.

While considering digital marketing, there is the very common confusion about whether to manage the digital marketing in-house or to hire an agency. Hiring an agency is a good option from a long-term, scalability point of view.

Given that there is so much digital chatter online today, and also the fact that there is a digital agency on every second street, it can be confusing to choose the right one for you.

As someone who has been entrenched in the digital marketing space since some time now, I’d like to share some points as a guide for all start-ups looking to hire a digital agency.

First things first, identify what you want out of digital

This is the starting point for everything else, as it will decide how you will evaluate your future digital agency. This might require some research, rework and even some soul searching for a few, but once you are clear about this, it becomes a whole lot easier to have conversations with interested digital marketing agencies.

5-point guide for hiring a digital agency

This last point is often very telling about not only about the work quality, but also the service quality of the agency in question.

While there are obvious advantages to hiring these niche experts, it will make your life a whole lot easier as a start-up head to have one accountable point of contact for all your digital needs.

This might demand a seemingly higher chunk of budget initially, but the multi-functional expertise gained will more than offset the higher costs over the longer run.

Checking out their past campaigns across different category verticals is a very good barometer for the quality that you can expect for your own needs. Here, I strongly recommend that you check out their *recent* work across the entire spectrum of digital marketing services that they offer – including Digital Strategy, Website & Apps, SEO, SEM, SMO, influencer marketing and so on.

There will be some agencies that will be better at some things than others, and depending on your digital marketing goals, you can shortlist your agency accordingly.

It might also help to keep an eye out for any work that they might have done in your category, to see how well they can understand it. But teams do keep changing, and this should not be your key decision trigger.

o The team structure currently in place

o Will your business have a dedicated team and point of contact?

o How will they manage any conflict of interest with competitor clients, if any

o Will there be more face to face meetings, or will it primarily be via online / phone communication?

o Are their reporting and review processes aligned with what you want?

However, if they are basing their remuneration and promising a certain level of performance or boost in your leads / sales, then that is the thing you want to really watch out for.

Also, they should be open to sharing actual details of how they use your digital marketing budgets, with either a daily / weekly report, or a live dashboard that you can have access to.

All said and done, choosing your digital agency is no different from choosing a long-term business partner. And like with all relationships, you need to trust your intuition on this.

So even if an agency checks all these boxes but it doesn’t feel right, then wait it out. Do not be in a hurry to on-board an agency, because choosing the right one can really be worth the wait.

•  By Kunal Shah, Director, Rank My Business