How To Hire And Work With The Best Digital Marketing Agency

It’s every business’ and brand’s dream to find and hire the best digital marketing agency. Hiring and working with the best especially when it comes to your growth marketing is a make it or break it type of deal.

Not only this guide will help you figure out how to find the best digital marketing agency, it will give you a recipe to extract the most from your marketing agency and marketers in general.

The search for the best digital marketing agency

Like most fields where a degree or a certification doesn’t necessarily reflect one’s competency and ability to deliver on the desired outcomes, Digital Marketing is no different. We are blessed and cursed with an endless stream of digital marketers who mostly genuinely believe they understand the complex and competitive marketing landscape and have what it takes to drive your business growth, sales and profits. And like every profession, there are different levels of abilities, skill and experience. As a business owner focused on running your business, improving your product or service, you don’t have the luxury of going through the trials and tribulations of hiring and firing marketing consultants and marketing agencies. What you need instead, is a robust method to find, assess and hire the right marketing team that not only understands your industry, product and business, but also be able to take you from point A to Z in the fastest and most effective way – all whilst sticking to your brand vision and perhaps tight marketing budgets. This is what truly defines a company as the best digital marketing agency.

Is this starting to sound challenging already? It is and it isn’t. Having worked in sales and marketing functions almost all my career both on client and agency side, I’ve been part of many successful business endeavours but also seen businesses slowly deteriorate and get eaten alive by their competitors. And it’s not all because of ‘poor marketing’ but yes, a big part of it can be attributed to marketing that just didn’t move the needle.

And it’s not all because of ‘poor marketing’ but yes, a big part of it can be attributed to marketing that just didn’t move the needle.

5 must DOs and DONT’s

So, with that being said, here are my 5 must DOs and DONT’s when you are looking to hire a the best digital marketing agency or even in-house marketers.

1. Be 100% clear with them on your business goals.

There is nothing more inhibiting to your growth than not having clear goals drilled down to clear KPIs that everyone in the organisation understands and is on board with. Your marketing team needs to buy into the goals and KPIs, be comfortable yet challenged by them. If they are too comfortable with your goals, you are probably punching lower than you should and vice versa.

2. Ask them what they would precisely do to reach these goals.

There are no right or wrong answers especially when you haven’t tried a specific approach, tactic, campaign or a strategy. But you need to understand how they think on their feet, what their core capabilities are and what cards they want to play.

3. Get them to demonstrate their creative skillset

Half of the success of your marketing will come from the creative power of your organisation especially that which resides in your marketing team.

If an agency considers itself the ‘best digital marketing agency’ or one of the best, they need to be able to demonstrate their creative power.

The rise of digital marketing has led to a lot of people thinking marketing is all about performance metrics and numbers and whilst that is true a degree, the fundamentals remain the same. Marketing is about ‘creatively and effectively’ communicating with your target audience.

4. Don’t over negotiate their pay or don’t negotiate it at all

Tying into the last point, one of the biggest sins of marketing is not having a truly authentic creative direction to what you do as a business. And one of the quickest ways to do that is to try to cut, squeeze the pay of your marketing agency or team. All that does is put unnecessary stress and strain on their creative abilities that could have otherwise made your business hit the jackpot. If you believe they are overpriced and not affordable, you can move on to someone else. But if you believe in them, then they are most likely worth your investment.

5. Don’t tell them what to do

As a general rule of thumb, if you hire an expensive human resource, the last thing you want to do is to be telling them what to do. If you truly believe that you are working with the best digital marketing agency out there, then you need to give them the degree of freedom they need to transform your marketing and business.

I’ve seen many business owners and leaders make the unforgivable mistake of telling their marketing team or agency what to do and perhaps also how to do it. Again, all that does, is kill the creative power of your business. Instead, you need to give them all the space and support needed to not only think outside the box but reinvent the box. Any company that’s made leaps and bounds hasn’t got there by hard work and a good product. Creativity must have played a big role in their success. Embrace and empower the creative potential of your marketers.