As a business owner, you will undoubtedly have found yourself pondering the question: “Should I invest in a marketing agency?”. It’s a way to get expert knowledge and develop your understanding of an area you may not be familiar with. Although there’s a selection of standard services most people expect, marketing agencies should be doing a number of things for you.
Industry and Competitor Analysis
Crucial details are imperative to create brand awareness, making it important for a marketing agency to have sufficient knowledge. It’s vital that they understand your particular industry and everything surrounding it. There’s a multitude of things they can do to achieve this:
- Target audience personas: To fully understand what an audience members wants and needs are, it’s essential to get into their head. By analysing them and creating documents on wants and needs, the work you will receive is likely to be tailored to your sector and target audience.
- Research reports: Keeping up to date with all the goings on within an industry is vital when it comes to ensuring that any work completed is relevant. Creating weekly or monthly reports that are filled with sector news and competitor blogs can help keep you a step ahead.
Regular Meetings
When it comes to meetings, it may be much easier to simply call them on the phone or use Skype. Yet it’s worth remembering that a face to face visit can prove invaluable. Instead of just a voice, you can actually get to know a person and build a professional relationship. Building a trusted network is essential and will hopefully lead to long term partnerships.
Transparent Reporting
Your agency should be completely transparent in its working methods. You should be provided with regular updates and detailed reports. Every action taken on your account should be explained in depth and its results quantified. Don’t accept a brief analysis, instead expect reasons why something has been done.
Information that should always be mentioned is:
- What has been done
- Why it has been done
- What the expected effect is
- What the effect was
This can be done via content or in graphs and charts; it’s entirely up to the marketing agencies discretion.
Thinking Outside The Box
The world of marketing isn’t straight forward. With large and small businesses all going for the same customers, it can be tough to stand out, even more so in highly competitive markets.
To make themselves known, a marketing agency should come up with ideas that are unconventional. Whether it be unique content, interesting social campaigns or anything else, the more creative they are, the better.
Adaptability
Due to the evolving nature of marketing, certain things may need changing in a matter of seconds which requires agencies to be able to adapt.
These new avenues can vary from covering a certain subject to taking advantage of a social trend. If agencies are stubborn and refuse to embrace these opportunities, you won’t be marketed strongly enough to make an impact.
Go The Extra Mile
It’s your hard earned money that’s being spent, so only expect the best in service. Marketing agencies should go the extra mile by doing all the things mentioned in this blog, to allowing a good quality of service.
From travelling to wherever you are based for meetings, to doing extra research to fully understand a specific sector, a marketing agency should work hard to really get to know your company in order to leave you satisfied with the service.
Neil Walker Digital Group are a content marketing agency that believes that the customers satisfaction is of the utmost importance. We give more than we ask, and create search engine optimised content that helps clients rank better. For more information join the conversation on Twitter: @theukseo