How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency in 2021

Digital marketing is more important than ever.

Did you know that the average person spends around 2 hours and 22 minutes per day on social media?

That’s an amazing opportunity for any type of business to reach their ideal audience with the help of digital marketing.

To get the best results from your digital marketing campaign you need the right partner that will get you the results.

And that’s where digital marketing agencies come in!

But there are thousands of agencies out there, all of which promise to deliver amazing results.

So how do you know which one is going to deliver and which one is the best fit for YOUR business?

In this guide, we’re going to teach you just that!

Here’s what we’re going to cover:

• Why Work With a Digital Marketing Agency?
• What Do Digital Marketing Agencies Do?
• How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency - 5+ Questions to Ask
• Work With Apollo Digital

Let’s get started!

Why Work With a Digital Marketing Agency?

Digital marketing is a very broad field.

If you’ve ever tried marketing your business online yourself you know that it can get overwhelming sometimes. There are hundreds of different channels, strategies, and tactics you can be using.

So, how do you know which of these tactics are effective, and more importantly, which ones are going to work for YOUR business?

With digital marketing, you’ll see that a lot of tactics that work for one business might not work at all for another.

For example, Facebook ads might be very successful with consumer products (e.g. fashion brands), but they won’t be as effective for B2B SaaS products. Or on the other hand, an integrated SEO strategy might work for a B2B SaaS company but yield zero results for a fashion brand.

And unless you’re a digital marketing expert with a decade’s of experience behind your back, you probably don’t know which of these channels will be the right fit for your business.

And that’s where digital marketing agencies come in - they have vast experience in applying digital marketing techniques in several industries and fields. They will know which approach will work best for you and will get you better results, without you having to waste time and money on testing.

What Do Digital Marketing Agencies Do?

Digital marketing agencies can either help you with all digital marketing channels or specialize only in a handful of them.

These channels include:

#1. Google Search Ads

Google Search Ads is a great way to reach an audience that’s already looking to buy your product, or something similar.

The way this works is, you pick keywords that your potential customers use to look for your product, and bid for each click you get.

Depending on the number of businesses advertising on a given keyword, the cost per click will be higher or lower.

For example, let’s say you have a project management SaaS solution and you’re looking to get new users. What you could do is run ads on a keyword like “project management tool”.

If you Google this keyword, you’ll see that this is exactly what most project management software companies do...

This digital marketing channel is perfect for:

• Companies that have inbound demand (i.e. people are already looking to buy their products).
• Local businesses looking to drive store traffic.

#2. SEO

SEO helps you get on top of organic search results.

Let’s say, for example, you want to pop #1 when someone looks up “what is digital marketing” - SEO is how you’d achieve it.

SEO is more of a long-term marketing strategy and can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years and beyond for you to get results, depending on how competitive your niche is.

SEO is perfect for just about any type of organization that has inbound traffic, including (but not limited to) local businesses, SaaS, and B2B companies.

At Apollo Digital, we’ve got some amazing SEO results for our clients, including:

• BPM company - from 0 to 200,000 monthly organic traffic (Learn more with our SEO case study)
• Resume builder - from 1 million to 1.8 million monthly organic traffic

#3. Facebook Ads

The average Facebook user spends around 58 minutes per day on Facebook, which is the highest spend-time compared to any other social media.

And on top of that, Facebook comes with a LOT of targeting options. For example, you can target by:

• Interests
• Demographics
• Location
• Behavior Online
• And more!

...Which is why Facebook is one of the most popular online advertising platforms.

Usually, Facebook ads are very effective for commercial products like clothing, physical goods, courses, etc.

It usually doesn’t work as well for B2B or SaaS companies.

#4. LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn comprises mostly business professionals and with the LinkedIn ads, you can target by profession, company, and years of experience.

The most common use-cases are to:

• Target decision-makers in organizations
• Source talent

This makes LinkedIn the perfect ad platform for B2B or recruitment companies.

#5. Content Marketing

Content marketing can have a very serious impact on a company’s bottom line, even with zero ad spend.

Here’s how it usually works:

• You create authority content that helps your target audience solve a problem
• You promote it to your followers or your target audience online
• Your targets, impressed by your know-how, reach out to you for your product or services

If you want a more practical break-down of content marketing, check out our content marketing case study, where we cover how we generated $50,000+ in revenue through a SINGLE article.

#6. Email Marketing

Another popular marketing channel is email marketing.

Usually, email marketing is used for:

• Link-building outreach. Reaching out to other blogs and asking them for backlinks to help improve your SEO
• Sales outreach. Reaching out to prospects at scale, and trying to sell your product
• Connecting with your audience. Reaching out to your email list, and upselling new products

Email marketing is popular for pretty much any type of company, whether it’s SaaS, B2B, e-commerce, or whatever else.

How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency - 5+ Questions to Ask

When deciding which digital marketing agency to work with, ask the following questions:

#1. How Does The Agency Run Their Own Marketing?

Look for a digital marketing agency that’s very successful at marketing themselves.

After all, if the marketing agency’s own marketing isn’t impressive, why do you think they’ll do a better job with YOUR marketing?

To see how the agency markets themselves, check if:

• They have a strong social media presence
• They have an active blog for content marketing and SEO
• They’re ranking on Google for desired keywords

#2. What Are Their Previous Results?

Ask the agency what kind of results they’ve delivered in the past.

You don’t want to work with someone who just took an online course on “how to do digital marketing,” and now they’re pretending to be an agency.

You also don't want someone who can’t showcase any significant results, as that would indicate a bad track record.

So, check with the agency:

• What kind of marketing channels they’ve worked with?
• What kind of results they’ve gotten, and over what time frame?
• Do they have any digital marketing case studies?

#3. What Results Do They Promise You?

What kind of results does the agency think they can deliver, and within what timeframe?

And most importantly, does this timeframe/results seem reasonable?

For context, here are the type of results you should expect by channel:

• SEO - You should expect results within 6 months to 2 years (depending on how competitive your industry is).
• Online Advertising - If an advertising channel works for your niche, you should be able to reach profitability within 3 months of testing.
• Content Marketing - You should be able to see an ROI within 1-2 months of work, as each article should be tailored to generating you leads.
• Email Marketing - Again, you should be able to see an ROI within the first month, or at least after you’ve sent more than 200 - 500 emails.

#4. Does Their Roadmap Make Sense?

When choosing a digital marketing agency, always ask for a roadmap. Make sure you’re aware of what they’re doing over the first few months, and that it aligns with your business goals.

#5. Is Their Proposal Solid?

If the agency already submitted a proposal, is it solid?

Does it look like a copy-paste of a generic document, or is it 100% tailored to your business?

At Apollo Digital, we always create a tailored, personalized proposal for every single client. We outline EXACTLY what we’re going to do within the first 3 months of work, as well as the results we can (approximately) reach within a year.

#6. Do They Understand Your Business?

This one’s very important - does the agency REALLY understand your business, or are they telling YOU how your business works?

A good agency will either have experience with your niche and a good understanding of how it works, or if they don’t, they’ll ask you a lot of questions to get a better understanding.

Work With Apollo Digital

Don’t want to spend weeks or months choosing from 100s of digital marketing agencies?

Try Apollo Digital, a full-stack digital marketing agency that puts their money where their mouth is. Why AD?

• We Work With You Only If We Believe We Can Help. We don’t lead you on and promise results we can’t achieve - we’ll only work with you if we’re 100% certain we can get you exactly where you want to be with your marketing efforts.
• We Work With Our Clients in Real-Time. We’re online 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week. Do you need help with something urgent or have a quick question? We’ll get back to you within the hour!
• We Offer Industry Expertise. We have experience with clients in all sorts of niches - HR tech, resume SaaS, travel tech, e-commerce, and VPS hosting to name a few.
• We Strive to Understand Your Product or Service In-depth. The key to successful marketing is understanding what you’re selling. Too many agencies focus on just marketing. At AD, we start by learning as much as possible about your company and your product. Once we’ve got that covered, we start with the marketing.
• We Focus on REAL Marketing. We’re not just specialists in SEO, copywriting, or PPC - we’re marketers at heart. We think outside the box and come up with creative solutions that work.

Get in touch for a free consultation now!

Further Readings

At AD, we document all the work we do and interesting experiments we conduct as blog posts and share them with the internet!

So, while you’re here, you might also check out some of our other top resources:

• Startup Launch Checklist
• SaaS Marketing Bible
• Our SEO Process For Getting Our Clients 200,000+ Monthly Organic Traffic