If you have a business, you already understand that you are going to need marketing in order to generate more leads and sales. However, you may be like most companies and be unsure of the best way to go about doing that. No matter what industry you’re in and what product or service you have, you’re going to need marketing to be front and center of your growth strategy. After all, it’s through marketing that you increase brand awareness, boost sales, and attract new customers. Where is your target market? What do they respond to in the best way? These are questions that a great digital marketing agency knows the answers to. These days, the digital landscape is far more complex when it comes to advertising than the traditional advertising landscape was. It’s not enough to throw money into ads to drive leads and sales. There is a lot of noise on the internet. Every business is vying for the attention of consumers. That is why an experienced digital marketing agency is essential if you want to reach the right audience and enjoy the highest sales conversion rates you can.

What Does a Digital Marketing Agency Do?

So, what sort of things does a digital marketing agency get involved in? At their core, they help you to gain more sales thanks to leveraging various kinds of marketing strategies that attract your ideal customers. There is a wide range of services digital marketing agencies offer, so we will go over each one of them individually.

Google AdWords

Google is a massive company that is the undisputed king of search engines. That means they have a treasure trove of valuable data regarding what people search for. If you want a surefire way to grab the attention of your potential customers when they are looking for a solution to a problem, then Google AdWords is perfect. Whenever someone searches for something on Google, they are looking to gain information about something. If your ad using AdWords, you will benefit from having a highly-targeted ad campaign that will become very profitable for you.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization, also called SEO for short, is a strategy for ranking organically in search results for specific keywords related to your business. When the content on your website ranks high up in the search engine results pages (SERPs), you will have a higher chance of capturing potential buyers at the ideal time. If they’re searching for something, they are probably looking for a solution to a problem they have. If you can offer a working solution, you will gain a new customer.

Facebook Ads

Facebook is one of the largest advertising companies in the world. Thanks to it doubling as a social network, it has amassed a tremendous wealth of data about billions of people. All of the data is stored in complex databases that Facebook uses for the most highly-targeted ads you can make. It’s possible to target ads so specifically that you will be speaking to a handful of people. However, that’s not a recipe for success, but it does show you how extraordinary Facebook’s data mining is. You will enjoy a healthy ROI when you use Facebook Ads. It’s possible to target by gender, education, income, location, interests, status, and significant life events.

Video Ads

Any digital marketing agency worth their salt will be hip to knowing how to use video ads to boost leads and sales. After all, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world after Google. This enormous potential audience stays on YouTube for a significant amount of time and remains highly engaged. That means video ads can lead to an impressive ROI. You can target your video ads by demographics, location, interests, and many other metrics.

Mobile Marketing

Did you know that more than half of all mobile searches result in a sale? That’s right! What’s even more impressive is that when that search is for a local business, over three-quarters of searches end with an offline purchase being made. There are several options digital marketing agencies have for effective mobile advertising. There are mobile YouTube ads, in-app ads, and others that have all been proven to deliver impressive results.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is king today. This involves things like writing blog posts regularly on your website and making them optimized for search engines. In fact, this is how many businesses have gone from being small single-person operations to becoming multi-million dollar companies. It’s not easy churning out useful and engaging content regularly, but a digital marketing agency knows how to get it done. Besides writing blog posts, content marketing can also include creating infographics, content analysis, and social media posts.

Email Marketing

Believe it or not, but email still enjoys the highest engagement rates and ROI for businesses. A solid email list is more valuable than having a massive social media presence. This is due to algorithms on those social media platforms reducing the reach of your posts, sometimes significantly. Email, on the other hand, has been proven to deliver $38 in returns for every $1 spent on marketing methods that use it. A great marketing agency will know how to conduct safe and effective link building and keep engagement rates high, so that emails actually get opened. There are also segmentation and autoresponder sequence optimizations that are used as part of an email marketing strategy.

How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Agency

The best digital marketing agency for your business should be an expert in the services mentioned earlier. The best ones have different kinds of experts on board who contribute to the success of every one of their business clients. That means they may have an SEO guru and a Google AdWords whiz. These are two different areas of marketing that require two completely different approaches. The best digital marketing agency will provide options for both paid advertising and organic marketing. They will also be able to cross services over from one to another. A professional and experienced digital marketing agency will do extensive research so that it understands what your objectives are. They will find out exactly who your target audience is. Also, they will look toward developing a long-lasting relationship with you so that you can continue your success far into the future.

Ask the Right Questions

To make sure you choose the right marketing agency for your business, you want to understand what your business’ needs are. For example, do you need help with increasing your email list? Are you looking to get more organic traffic with SEO content? Find out what your needs are first. What skills does your team possess? What are they unable to do? Asking the right questions will help you get clear on who to hire. Here are some basic questions that you should get the answers to when considering hiring a marketing agency:

Do They Lead By Example?

Perhaps the best indicator of a great marketing agency is how they run their own business. After all, if they’re in the business of helping other businesses with their marketing, are they leading by example? How does their own blog look? Is it optimized for SEO? Is it easy to read? How is their social media game? Are they on top of the best social media marketing tactics? How are they ranking on search engines for keywords related to their business? Some of these are details you can find out on your own, while others you can ask them about. If they aren’t demonstrating that they are using effective digital marketing strategies, then this could be a sign that they don’t really know what they are doing.

What Are Their Key Performance Indicators?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the kind of metrics that directly correlate with how well a business is doing. You want to make sure that you understand the difference between vanity metrics and KPIs. Something like getting a lot of likes on a social media post is a vanity metric because there is no direct connection to higher sales. If a marketing agency is promising you that they will ensure you have a certain amount of likes every month, you’re not going to see that translate into more sales. Measuring true business success involves these KPIs:

• Number of Unique Visitors – Usually, the more traffic you get, the more sales conversions you will have. The caveat here is that the traffic has to be targeted, so you’re getting visitors who are already interested in what you are selling.
• Time Spent on Your Website – The more time visitors spend on your website, the more likely they are to become convinced to buy something from you. If your content is very relevant to their needs and wants, you will see longer amounts of time spent by them on your site. This is one of the metrics Google uses in order to rank content on the SERPs. Making sure your site’s web pages load quickly will also be a factor in how long someone sticks around on your website. The quicker your website loads, the less likely you are to have people leave prematurely.
• Traffic Source Totals – Where are people who visit your website coming from? What web pages are seeing the most traffic? If you find out that one type of external website is bringing in a whole lot of traffic, you can focus your marketing efforts there. If a particular blog post is getting a lot of traffic, you may want to use it as a template for future articles. Is most of your traffic coming from organic search results, social media platforms, or certain websites? Are specific marketing campaigns delivering a great deal of traffic?
• Bounce Rate – The bounce rate indicates how many visitors to your website are leaving soon after getting to it. When you have a high bounce rate, it could mean that the content visitors are seeing is not relevant or valuable to them.
• Cost-Per-Click – The cost-per-click (CPC) is a metric used in relation to paid ads, where you only pay when your ad is clicked on. A high CPC may mean that your ad is performing well.
• Clickthrough Rate – The clickthrough rate (CTR) is a metric that measures how many times your ad is clicked on in relation to how many impressions it gets. Impressions usually mean the number of times your ad was seen. You can use this to figure out how targeted your ad copy is.
• Social Interactions – When it comes to social media marketing, there are different kinds of KPIs that a marketing agency will be keeping track of. A social interaction KPI assists in measuring how well your social media campaigns are doing. Ideally, a tool will be used to track the entirety of a customer’s journey, from the moment they see an ad on social media to the moment they purchase something from you. Social interactions can help you identify just how many customers you’re getting thanks to your social media ads.

If you have narrowed down your search to a few quality digital marketing agencies, then reach out and ask for a consultation. These will sometimes be free while other times may cost a little bit. Once you have made up your mind and chosen the right digital marketing agency for you, it’s upward and onward to higher leads and sales!

Wrapping Up

The marketing mixologists at Lounge Lizard have extensive experience with crafting successful digital marketing campaigns for businesses of all sizes. If you are looking to skyrocket your leads, phone called, and email transactions, while delivering high-converting traffic that engages and converts, we can help.     About the author: Lounge Lizard’s digital marketing mixologists are always serving up crafty marketing cocktails. Feel free to reach out to us and ask about our receiving a FREE digital marketing strategy proposal. If you like what you see, you can tap into Lounge Lizard when you are ready to see results that drive more business to you.