Navigating through the millions of internet marketing firms out there can be so overwhelming that you might feel inclined to just avoid it altogether. However, finding a great marketing firm can do wonders putting together a good web design for your business, driving traffic to your website, and increasing your brand awareness.
We are confident that you are awesome at whatever product or service you provide. But unless you actually are a professional from on to the best internet marketing firms in the industry (and if this is the case, we’re now wondering why you are reading this article at all), your business stands to benefit from the help of the expertise of a marketing firm.
Finding an internet marketing firm to work with is not as hard as it seems, you just need give yourself a little time to understand what your needs are, and what you are looking for. Once you understand this, you are prepared to identify a marketing agency who will actually save you time and money in the long-run.
Develop a first-cut list of companies that you are interested in working with. A few ways to do that include:
- Start with Good ol’ Google and its good ol’ endless wealth of information. You could search “internet marketing firms for [insert your type of business]” to get a first draft of marketing agencies who have experience in your industry already.
- Ask on community message boards, such as it Reddit or on social media. You could even pose the question on Twitter with strategic hashtags to get advice from people who have great referrals, or to make connections with proactive agencies themselves.
- When you find a website that you love the look and feel of, or you like the marketing campaign, look at their site footer for the internet marketing firm who represents them.
Use these methods to narrow down your list to five to seven marketing agencies to work with. Once you have a short list, compare the agencies that you were considering with our list of five characteristics that all great internet marketing firms share:
- Great internet marketing firms have great internet marketing themselves. Look at each internet marketing agency’s website, their online branding, their search engine ranking, and their social media presence to gauge how successful they are at marketing their own business.
- Great internet marketing firms can be trusted. You should consider it a red flag if the agency will not tell you the methods that they use for improving your online presence. You want to work with an internet marketing firm that is honest and transparent about their approach, and willing to help educate you on how to be more successful yourself.
- Good online marketing firms can show tangible results. Ask for examples of what they’ve done for other clients, and success they’ve had in increasing site traffic and search engine optimization. This could give you a good sense of what they can do for you.
- Good online marketing firms will steer your marketing strategy. You don’t want to use a marketing agency who just takes your orders. You want to use their expertise in online marketing to help develop strategies that will grow your business. You can usually get a gauge of the level of direction that an online marketing firm will provide in an initial consultation.
- A good online marketing firm doesn’t make promises. This goes back to being trustworthy. If the online marketing firm you are considering is promising to get you ranked number one in Google’s search results, run — don’t walk — in the opposite direction. Making guarantees for key performance indicators such as your search engine optimization ranking is either an empty promise that you’ll never see fulfilled, or they’re doing something underhanded that you don’t want to be part of. In fact, if they are “tricking the system” to get you results that are too good to be true, it could result in Google removing your site from their index altogether. Again, you don’t want to be part of it.
Once you have identified the marketing firms on your short list who have these five characteristics, you only have to figure out who meshes with your personality and style best!