If you're a business owner, marketing is your key to success. You need to use effective marketing strategies to reach your target audience, convert prospects and leads into customers, and continue growing your business.
However, many business owners do not have the time or expertise to implement successful marketing campaigns themselves. That's where a digital marketing agency comes in.
If you're considering working with a marketing team, you'll want to do your due diligence to learn how to hire a digital marketing agency, pinpoint the right agency for your needs, and identify red flags that could indicate an agency's lack of experience.
So if you're wondering, "How do I hire a marketing agency?" read on to learn everything you need to know.
Should I Hire a Digital Marketing Agency?
You may be asking yourself: "Do I need a marketing agency?"
Maybe you've implemented a few marketing strategies yourself that have proven successful. Perhaps you have a dedicated employee focused on marketing your services or products. If that's the case, is an entire marketing agency really necessary?
The answer is that it's up to you. Not every small-to-midsized business (SMB) works with a digital marketing agency. However, an agency can provide many benefits for your company, such as:
Save you time on marketing and allow you to focus more on your business
Implement effective marketing strategies that offer an excellent return on investment
Ensure ongoing support with marketing professionals
Save you money compared to hiring an in-house marketing team
Give you new content for websites and social media pages regularly
All of these benefits can help you reach new customers, bring in more business, and grow your profitability. As a result, many business owners believe hiring an agency to be worth the initial investment.
What to Look For in a Digital Marketing Agency
Just like any business, some digital marketing agencies are better than others. If you'd like to make the most of your investment in a digital marketing agency, you need to choose one that offers the best services, expertise, and strategies for the cost.
However, if you've never worked with a digital marketing agency before, you may not know the indicators of success and failure in these companies. Here are a few elements to look for in a digital marketing agency:
Industry Experience
The first factor you should examine to evaluate a marketing agency's quality is its experience. How long has it been in the marketing business? Does its team consist of highly experienced, skilled marketers or mostly newbies?
You can head to a marketing agency's website and look at its "About Us" and "Meet the Team" pages to learn more about its experience. Ideally, a marketing agency you hire will have been in business for at least five years. Its main team members should also have marketing backgrounds and at least several years of experience in their roles.
Results
Of course, you should hire a digital marketing agency that can deliver results for your business. These results may include the following:
More customers
Higher profitability
More leads
More website traffic
One way to predict the results a marketing agency can provide for your business is to look at its results for other companies. Successful marketing agencies aren't afraid to share data about client performance after implementing marketing strategies. If a marketing agency does not share this data, you may have to wonder why.
Positive Reviews and Success Stories
You can also look at reviews from past and current clients to learn about a marketing agency's track record.
Reviews can help you understand what a marketing agency does well and what it can improve upon. You'll probably see a few positive reviews or case studies on a marketing agency's website, but these may not be reliable or accurate. Instead, we also recommend reading reviews on Google My Business and the Better Business Bureau. These websites offer more unbiased reviews from real clients.
Every business has at least some negative reviews, as you can't make everyone happy. However, the best digital marketing agencies have overwhelmingly positive reviews. You can read these reviews to learn more about an agency's style and how it has impressed other clients.
Specialization
One of the most important qualities a digital marketing agency can have is experience in your industry. If an agency has never worked with a business in your industry before, you'll have to suffer through a learning curve while the agency team learns about your business and becomes familiar with your services. As you know, developing expertise in your field takes time.
You can typically find two main types of digital marketing agencies out there: generalist agencies and niche agencies.
Generalist marketing agencies work with all different types of businesses. Meanwhile, specialist or niche agencies focus their client base on specific industries, like healthcare, landscaping, or roofing.
We recommend choosing a specialist agency instead of a generalist one. Niche marketing agencies already know the ins and outs of your industry, eliminating that learning curve. They can provide more tailored, expert services and give you a better ROI than a generalist agency.
However, before you hire a niche agency, you should double-check that it has worked with your specific type of business before. Some niche agencies have relatively broad specializations and may not have much experience with your business type.
ROI Tracking and Reporting
As we mentioned, your digital marketing agency should know how to deliver effective results for your business. However, your agency should also have reliable methods of tracking, reporting, and sharing those results with you.
The best digital marketing agencies use analytics tools and software to track the performance of their marketing campaigns. Then, they can adjust these campaigns as needed to improve your outcomes.
For example, when a marketing agency runs an email marketing campaign, it may send the same email with different subject lines to different people. Then, it can track the open rates of the emails with each header and adjust its subject lines in the future to match the most popular versions.
Agency Size
You should also consider an agency's size before hiring it. While the size of an agency doesn't always indicate its quality, it can play a role in its overall performance and services.
Digital marketing agencies can range in size between a few members and hundreds of members. When you work with a small agency, you may be able to receive more hands-on, focused services. You'll also come to know all of the agency members directly throughout your partnership, and this close relationship may allow the agency members to tailor your services better.
Meanwhile, when you work with a larger agency, you can feel confident that it knows its stuff. Big agencies did not start out with hundreds of members; instead, they slowly grew as they became more and more successful.
There's nothing wrong with big or small digital marketing agencies. However, we recommend considering this factor as you examine the other criteria that make up an agency.
Fair Pricing
Working with a digital marketing agency is an investment. However, the best way to get the most out of an investment is to pay a price that matches the services you'll receive.
Some digital marketing agencies charge low prices but don't provide very reliable services. Others charge steep fees and offer services you may not need.
As you look for a digital marketing agency to partner with, examine its pricing strategy and determine whether this price is fair for its services. Generally, you should avoid suspiciously low prices and look for agencies closer to the top of your budget. While you may end up paying more than you initially expected, you should receive effective services that allow you to improve your profitability by more than the cost of the marketing agency.
Best Practices When Looking For the Right Digital Marketing Agency
Now that you know a few things to look for in the best digital marketing agencies, you can begin your search process. Here are a few best practices for how to hire a digital marketing agency that meets your needs:
Determine Your Budget Limits
Before making any type of investment for your business, you need to determine your budget. As we mentioned, marketing services can come in several price ranges. If you're not clear on a budget before you begin searching, you may accidentally choose an agency you can't afford.
As you search for a marketing agency, you'll probably find options charging anywhere from $500 to $20,000 per month. However, the typical cost of a marketing service is usually between $2,500 and $5,000 monthly.
If your business is struggling, you may not have much extra revenue that you can pour into an online marketing service. We recommend thinking about dipping into other areas of your budget to afford your marketing service for the first few months. Eventually, after hiring a good agency, you'll begin to see increases in profitability and revenue that make up for these budget overflows.
Still, setting your budget limits now will help you narrow your search to an agency you can afford.
Educate Yourself on the Different Digital Marketing Services
Different marketing agencies offer different services. Some provide comprehensive marketing packages that hit every service, while others specialize in one or two marketing types, such as SEO or email marketing.
Before you search for a marketing agency that's a good fit, you should understand the different types of digital marketing services and determine which ones you need. Here's a quick overview of the general services most marketing agencies provide:
Content marketing: Creating written, video, and audio content that convinces your audience to hire your business
Web design: Crafting a high-quality website that reflects your branding
Search engine optimization (SEO): Increasing your website's rankings in search engines to bring more potential customers to your site
Pay-per-click advertising: Creating paid advertisements in places your target audience will see them
Social media marketing: Organically marketing your business through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn
Some agencies may also provide more specific services, such as link-building, local SEO, and re-targeting. 
If you see a service you're unfamiliar with listed on an agency's website, you can always reach out to the team or Google it. However, it's okay if you don't fully understand every step in a digital marketing plan. That's your agency's job.
Research and Create Your List
Once you have a list of criteria you can use to find an agency, you can begin researching agencies that meet your needs and creating a list. We recommend using the search tool on our Top Marketing Agencies site to find agencies in your industry. Then, you can review their credentials and give each agency a quick rating out of 10.
We recommend finding at least five or six agencies to add to your list. The more agencies you research, the better you can compare their credentials. For example, you may see that one agency offers a benefit you hadn't previously considered.
After creating your list, you can review your ratings and narrow your options to two or three agencies. These are the agencies you will move forward in the search process with.
Share the Required Information and Ask the Right Questions
If you're wondering, "How do you approach a digital marketing agency?" the best way is by scheduling a consultation.
Once you have narrowed your list to a few potential agencies, you can move forward with consultations. Many digital marketing agencies offer free consultations where they review your wants and needs and describe how they can help you. These consultations also allow you to vet an agency and ask any questions you may have.
The questions you ask in your consultations can provide valuable information to help you make a final decision. We recommend asking the following questions:
How many clients do you currently work with?
Have you worked with my type of business in the past?
How do you measure the success of your marketing campaigns?
What is your onboarding process?
How long after we begin working together should I expect to see results?
You can treat these consultations almost as interviews. Don't be afraid to ask tough questions to dig deeper into an agency's experience, qualifications, and processes. After all, working with a digital marketing agency is comparable to hiring a new employee for your business.
Evaluate Each Agency
We recommend holding off on any decisions until you've had consultations which each agency on your shortlist. After you have gathered information in these consultations, you can sit down and evaluate each agency against the others.
If you want to get technical with these evaluations, you can refer to your list of qualities you're looking for in an agency, then give each agency a score for every quality. Once you're done, you can add up the scores and choose the agency with the highest rating.
However, many businesses already have a hunch about their top choice at this stage. If you're already leaning toward a specific agency, you can move on to the next step — identify the red flags — before finalizing your decision.
Identify the Red Flags
Have you ever heard the saying, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is?" Unfortunately, there are a few marketing agency scams out there. You'll also come across agencies that look like they check all of your boxes but really fall short in a few ways.
As a result, we recommend keeping an eye out for red flags, especially as you get closer to hiring an agency. We list a few red flags later in this article to help you out.
Tips When Preparing to Hire Digital Marketing Agency
Once you hire a digital marketing agency, you will undergo an onboarding process that helps the agency get to know your business and develop a custom marketing strategy that meets your needs. Here are a few tips to help you prepare for this process:
Preparing the Necessary Documents
Your digital marketing agency will probably ask for a few different documents during the onboarding process. Gathering these documents and filling out any requested forms in advance can help you streamline the onboarding process and begin benefiting from your agency's services faster.
For example, your agency may request the following information:
Customer profiles illustrating your ideal or typical customer
Your brand story
The exact colors you use in your branding
Your logo, if you have one
Your services
Your website host
The current login information for your website and social media pages
The contact information to display in your content
Your agency will send you a list of all the information it needs or a form you can input this data into directly. However, if you know some of these pieces may be hard to find — such as your logins for old social media pages — you may want to start looking for them now.
Setting Goals for Your Business
We also recommend discussing a few goals with your team before you begin working with your agency. If there are specific markers you would like to meet as a business, such as a monthly revenue level or new customer goal, you should bring these up to your agency as soon as possible.
However, once you begin the onboarding process, your digital marketing agency should sit down with you to help you create goals for its marketing strategies. Once you have determined these goals, your agency can begin crafting a campaign with specific services that will help you meet them.
Red Flags When Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency
Examining the positive aspects of a digital marketing agency is essential when determining whether to hire it. However, you also need to look for red flags that could indicate an agency isn't as high-quality, professional, or experienced as you need.
Digital marketing is an investment, but wasting your investment on the wrong agency could be detrimental to your business. However, familiarizing yourself with these red flags can help you predict issues before you pour money into an agency:
Little to No Testimonials and Reviews
Reading the reviews and testimonials from past clients is an effective way to vet a digital marketing agency. However, when an agency has little to no reviews, this could indicate it isn't worth your time.
When an agency doesn't have many reviews, it probably hasn't been in business very long. It may also be deleting negative reviews from its page, which could indicate that most of its reviews have been negative.
If a company states it has been in business for several years, but it doesn't have many reviews, it may have recently changed its name and branding. Companies sometimes do this when they need a fresh start after a bad client encounter or a series of negative reviews.
Altogether, we recommend staying away from digital marketing agencies with few reviews. Instead, you'll have better luck with agencies with positive reputations among clients.
On that note, you should also keep an eye out for agencies with fake reviews. Some up-and-coming agencies falsify the reviews on their websites. If every review uses similar language, you can assume the agency wrote the testimonials itself. Meanwhile, if reviews use strange vocabulary, the agency may have used an AI tool to produce them.
Bad U/X Design on Their Website
U/X stands for user experience. When you visit a marketing agency's website, you can evaluate the user experience of its site, including the layout, content, and features.
If a digital marketing agency's website is challenging to navigate, slow, clunky, or awkward, it probably doesn't know how to create a good website for your business. Having a poor U/X design can lead users to leave a website quickly, which is not something you want for your own site.
You can view an agency's website as a first impression of its skillset. If an agency's website is poor, you may want to move on to another option.
Inactive Social Media
Social media marketing is one of the primary services digital marketing agencies offer. This service includes optimizing your social media pages, creating content to post regularly, and enhancing your interactions with your followers.
However, when a digital marketing agency itself has an inactive social media presence, this may indicate that it either doesn't know effective social media marketing strategies or does not prioritize social media in marketing campaigns. The best digital marketing agencies use their social media pages to attract new customers and show off their marketing strategies. Without this example, you can't know how an agency will improve your social media pages.
Communicates Poorly
When you work with a digital marketing agency, you will communicate closely with your account manager – especially during the first few months of your partnership. Your account manager should be available to answer any questions and keep you updated about your marketing campaigns. They may also ask for clarification throughout the team's strategy development.
Because effective communication is necessary within this partnership, your agency should prioritize strong communication during your interactions. For example, if you have trouble getting ahold of your account manager or can never seem to get a straight answer out of them before the onboarding process, you can expect your communication to be even worse once you officially hire them.
You shouldn't have to chase down a digital marketing agency to work with you. The best agencies prioritize customer experience, and if yours doesn't, you shouldn't waste any more time on it.
Does Not Blog Much or At All
Posting written content to a blog is one of the many ways digital marketing agencies improve search engine optimization for their clients. Your blog posts can contain keywords that users search for in Google and other search engines. When your posts have the right combination of keywords, word count, and other factors, they will rise to the top of search results.
If your digital marketing agency advertises content marketing or content writing, it will probably offer to write blog posts for you. However, we recommend examining an agency's blog before hiring it.
If a digital marketing agency does not have many blog posts, you won't be able to preview its writing style and professionalism before it begins creating your content. Additionally, when a marketing agency doesn't prioritize SEO for its own business, it may not have the skills to deliver SEO services for your business either.
Altogether, the best digital marketing agencies put their services to work for their own businesses before offering marketing services to others. If an agency is slacking on marketing itself, there's probably a reason.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know how to hire a digital marketing agency, you can begin your search process and pinpoint the best agency for your needs.
Our Top Marketing Agencies platform makes it easy to find digital marketing agencies with expertise in your industry. Simply enter your industry into our search bar and browse a list of the top marketing agencies within that niche.
Before you know it, you'll be launching into a profitable digital marketing campaign with an expert marketing service on your side.
