Most small business owners are wary of hiring a digital marketing agency and with some of the tactics being used, it is hard to blame them.
For small business owners that have tried digital marketing in the past, many have horror stories of not receiving what they paid for or spending money to target users in states on the other side of the country. And for small business owners that have not tried digital marketing, they have likely heard the stories of the small businesses that have.
So, the question becomes, how do you know when the internet marketing services they are offered, are being offered by a trustworthy digital marketing agency?
Here are three things you should look out for.
1. You've received a "Free Customized Digital Analysis" email from the company
As a digital marketing professional, I've received countless "analysis" emails from digital marketing agencies. This is especially true for SEO companies.
These emails and analyses are not created by a person. They are reports spit out by automated tools that simply crawl a website or pull estimates for spends. While they may be passed off as "customized reports", they are created in less than 5 minutes and no real analysis goes into them.
In order to truly do a digital needs analysis, you need direct access to data. This can only happen if you provide the agency with login credentials to your website, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, etc. If you haven't done this, then there is no way for a digital marketing agency to do a real analysis of your current digital marketing needs.
That is not to say that you can't draw insights without direct access. You certainly can. The problem is when digital marketing agencies use these automated reports to create a problem when there may not be one to begin with.
2. They insist on creating new accounts for all platforms when you already have accounts created
This is a very common practice by digital marketing agencies and I have to admit, I do understand why they do it. The honest truth is that while continuous optimization and analysis are important, much of the work that goes into a digital marketing campaign is in the set-up. Digital marketing companies know this. That is why they try to control the accounts to prohibit small businesses from leaving with all of the hard work after just a month or two.
The problem with this, though, is that for honest small business owners, you are forced to stay with the digital marketing agency forever or risk losing all of the data and having to start from scratch.
Whenever you sign on with a new digital marketing agency, you should ensure that you maintain control of any and all accounts that are created. This includes Facebook, Google Ads and most importantly, your website (more on that below). If you allow the accounts to be created with the agencies email addresses, you will likely not be able to take them with you if you decide to leave.
3. They tell you they have to build you a completely new website to produce results
The truth is digital marketing agencies work on very small margins for the most part, just like any other small business. The problem is that for most internet marketing services (SEO, PPC, Social Media, Display, etc.) there are agencies out there that provide services for very little money. The exception to this, however, is website design services.
There are few, if any, website design companies that will build a new website for less than a few thousand dollars. So, for digital marketing agencies, this is where you can fatten your margins, which is why many agencies make it a requirement. They will say that without a brand new website, the campaign will not produce results or that they can't generate any traffic without a new site.
New websites can definitely increase results. There are also some websites that do fall into this category where a campaign simply won't work because of how poorly designed it is. These are outliers, though.
If you've had a website built in the last five years, there is absolutely no reason why a campaign cannot be successful. A website can definitely impact what campaigns should be run or how a budget should be divided, but it should never determine whether or not you can actually use internet marketing services.
There are a lot of tricks digital marketing agencies use to get you to sign up or to force you to stay with them. It is a serious problem that has created an air of suspicion for many small business owners. With these tips, though, you should be able to better identify how trustworthy a digital marketing agency really is before you get locked into a year-long contract.
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