5 Great Questions to Ask a Digital Marketing Agency Before You Hire Them

Written By Brittni Castilaw When it comes to hiring a digital marketing agency partner, there are several things to consider. If you’ve interviewed a potential agency, you probably have certain questions you’d like answered. We’ve outlined a few to add to your list to ensure you find the right fit for your business. How Long Has Your Digital Marketing Agency Been in Business? Learn more about the agency’s background by asking about their history. While there isn’t a magic number of years that gives you a hard yes/no during your interviewing process – what you’re looking for is expertise in the digital marketing field. Even agencies that are newer have the potential to bolster your business. Use this question to learn about the expertise of those who will be working on your project and what they can bring to the table. What Type of Clients Does Your Digital Marketing Agency Work With? Most often, digital marketing agencies work with specific niches. It is important to understand if this partner has experience in your business area. This can give you assurance they will be able to meet the objectives of your campaign. This question also opens the conversation to allow the agency partner to expand on what type of results they have garnered for businesses like yours. How Quickly Can Our Project Get Started? There is likely lead time for most digital marketing projects. This will depend heavily on what type of project (website, SEO, Social Media, Etc.), how quickly contracts are signed and access is given to the agency. Lead time could be 1-2 days or a couple of months. Understanding the timeline helps keep everyone on the same page and under the same expectation. Digital marketing agencies work with several clients so understanding how your project aligns with their timeline is important when deciding.

Do you have any case studies? We like to call it “the proof is in the pudding” – because that is exactly what this is. Ask them for previous work results. You want to see that they have delivered results for their clients in the past. This will build trust between you and the digital agency partner which is essential prior to jumping into a business relationship. How Often will I see Results? If an agency does not provide any type of reporting, this should be a red flag. Having monthly reporting should be the minimum. What’s better is when a client offers technology that delivers 24/7 digital marketing reporting for their clients.

Backstage Digital’s client dashboard giving you 24/7 access to your digital marketing results.

Transparency in your digital marketing spend is a factor when seeing results. Having a digital marketing agency partner that delivers results and timely reporting is an important factor. Learn more about how to track ROI for your digital marketing efforts here. Digital marketing agency partners provide valuable strategies, deliver impeccable results and can serve as a right hand to your business. Selecting the best fit is essential to having a successful partnership. Contact us to see if we can help propel your business forward with digital marketing solution.

About Backstage Digital

Backstage Digital is a full service digital marketing agency based out The Woodlands, TX serving clients across the US. Our goal is to be an extension of your business while delivering leads utilizing online marketing channels like social media marketing, SEO, paid advertising (Google Adwords, YouTube and Social Media Advertising) and Content Marketing. If you are interested in partnering with our team, fill out the form here and we can jump on a quick call to see if we should work together.

September 28, 2020June 2, 2021

Email Marketing: 4 Tips to Launch Successful Email Campaigns

Email Marketing: 4 Tips to Launch Successful Email Campaigns

Did you know that 49% of consumers would like to receive promotional email marketing from their favorite brands? _(Oberlo.com)

Sometimes you might wonder, “what do I have to say to my list of contact?” There are so many things that are email worthy when it comes to your business like:

Product / Services Updates
Sales, Promotions or Specials
Upcoming Events
Educational / Helpful Content
Internal Behind the Scenes or Happenings

Here’s Why You Should Consider Email Marketing

I know what you are thinking, great…another marketing channel I need to figure out and keep updated. But let’s look at the data.

Conversion Rates

Get this, conversion rates for emails are higher than social media, direct traffic, and search _{(Smartinsights.com)}.

Wait – go back and read that one more time.

Conversion rates for your email campaigns are higher than several of your current digital channels. Meaning, investing time, resources and energy into delivering consistent and strategic email marketing campaigns will amplify your business.

Cost Effective

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to market your business. Platforms like Constant Contact and Mailchimp offer plans for SMBs that allow you to grow and won’t break the bank.

Most email providers charge based on the total number of contacts in your database, so you have the power to control your costs associated with this marketing channel.

Email Marketing Automation

You might have heard about automation and wondered if it was worth it?

It is no shocker that custom automation workflows have the highest click-through rates. _{(Omnisend.com)}

Email automation can be as simple or complicated as your business requires. Typically for an SMB, a simple 3-step email automation campaign will benefit your business. Build out campaigns that align with your customer’s journey and where they might be in the buying process.

Pro Tips for Launching Successful Email Marketing Campaigns

Make a Plan

Don’t even open your email software without already planning out your email campaign. Put your pen to paper first to plan. What are you going to say and who are you going to say it to? We recommend drafting email content in a Word Doc with the goals listed at the top for easy reference during your planning.

Take this a step further and align your email marketing plan with your other marketing channels to keep messaging consistent across social media, website, email and any direct marketing you are executing.

Pro Tip: Brainstorm a list of topics and keep it running for your email marketing campaigns.

Automate Your Email Marketing Campaigns

If a prospect from your email database opens your first email, have emails in place that send out within a few days to continue the conversation surrounding that topic.

This not only builds efficiencies with your email campaigns, it allows consumers to flow through your marketing channel from awareness to conversion with the help of educational, promotional and sales content throughout your email campaigns.

Pro Tip: Several email software platforms have this capability in place for 2 or 3-step email automation campaigns.

Video, Video, Video

Adding videos to your email can increase click rates by 300%._(Oberlo.com)

Keep video first when putting together your email marketing campaigns. In today’s digital landscape, we expect video content from the brands we purchase from. Videos can be a simple explainer video or some shots of your product “In action” – it depends on the overall message of your email campaign.

Focus your target persona at the forefront of your video strategy when combining video and email marketing for the ultimate win!

Keep it Consistent

Can you believe that your customers want to hear from you? Keeping things consistent is essential to keeping your brand at the top of their minds.

49% of consumers said they would like to receive promotional emails from their favorite brands on a weekly basis. ^_(Oberlo)

When we talk about consistency with a brand, we always recommend starting small and building from there. Starting with a monthly email campaign, then increasing to a bi-weekly might be the perfect fit for your audience.

Whatever you do, keep things consistent vs the “every-now-and-then” approach.

Email marketing can seem overwhelming because there are several factors to executing a successful email campaign. These are just a few short tips to ensure you launch a successful email campaign for your brand!

September 15, 2020September 15, 2020

Which Digital Marketing Channels Should My Business Focus On?

Facebook, YouTube, Google Search, Your Website, SEO, Paid Search, Funnels – the amount of digital channels you have the option of marketing your business on can get overwhelming, fast.

Digital marketing consists of marketing that takes place on any type of technology device. But how on earth does it apply to your business?

What channels should we consider for digital marketing?

Before answering this question, it is essential to understand who your audience is, what problem they have and how to best communicate your solution to your audience. Depending on your target persona, depends on where you should focus your digital marketing efforts. Let’s take a deep dive into several different digital channels:

Search Engine Optimization – SEO

Optimizing your website on a consistent basis generates warm, high quality traffic which converts into leads or sales for your business. SEO is a long-term digital marketing channel, meaning your results won’t happen overnight – but when you do see them, they are typically the best out of several digital marketing channels.

Social Media Marketing

As your business focuses on identifying which digital marketing channels are important for your target persona, understanding which social media marketing platforms will generate the best results for your business is essential. For example, if you are a B2B business, it is highly unlikely that your target audience will be hanging out on Pinterest.

Social media marketing is a digital channel that allows your brand to tell a story, build a community and humanize your brand across your audience. Most social media platforms also have paid advertising that you can utilize to hyper target your audience in order to generate revenue for your business.

Email Marketing

Sixty-one percent of SMBs report that more than half of their revenue comes from repeat customers, rather than new business. (Fivestars)

Building an email list is the first step to monetizing email marketing for your business. You might be thinking “what would I write about in the email campaigns?” Always provide value, educate, offer insight, show proof using testimonials and create promotions for your email campaigns.

Email marketing is also a cost effective way to jump into digital marketing. Without needing to make large investments on ads – email marketing consistently drives results while also being budget friendly for SMBs.

Search Engine Marketing

Looking for quick leads or business? Search Engine Marketing, or SEM is a great way to generate paid traffic. By bidding on keyword phrases that people type into search engines you can increase your website’s exposure using paid search. Don’t have time to wait several months to start ranking in Google search results, consider this channel to jump to the top of the rankings.

SEM also targets warm traffic, much like SEO because you are targeting keywords that are relevant to your business.

Is Digital Marketing the Same for Every Business?

Ab-so-lute-ly not! Every business is different. Goals are different. Audience is different. And digital marketing capacity and budget is different.

Therefore, take a step back and look at your business’s short term and long term goals. Then craft a digital marketing strategy that aligns with your business.

Digital marketing sounds great, but what are the benefits?

Tracking – What if you could tie a purchase to a specific marketing campaign, channel or ad dollar? Because you are marketing your business online, you can.

Cost – Typically running digital marketing campaigns you can make your total budget go much farther than traditional marketing methods like radio, billboards and print.

Faster Results – With some digital marketing channels, like SEM and paid ad campaigns, you can get faster results for your business and see a quicker ROI

Which Channels Should I Focus On?

When it comes to your business, it depends on several factors. Your audience, budget and long-term business goals impact which channels to focus on. The great thing about digital marketing is that you can start small and expand to other channels as your business continues to grow.

November 28, 2017

Should Your Business be on Social Media?

Is your audience made up of humans?

If you answered yes, then social media isn’t just an option for your business, it’s essential. However, being stretched across every social media channel to market your business isn’t what we recommend either.

Social media is a channel to communicate and educate your audience. It has extremely targeted capabilities to allow you to promote your content to those who are more likely to be interested in your products and services.

From Instagram to Pinterest to Facebook, choosing the right combination of outlets is important. Here’s what to consider:

Your Audience

Always consider your audience when choosing any marketing channel, digital or not. Certain social channels are great for reaching the 12-20 age group while others lean towards women 25-45. No social media channel will hit all of the groups, so always consider the best combination to target your efforts towards.

Bandwidth

If you are tackling your social media marketing alone – bandwidth is important. Being “present” across 15 social media channels, yet lacking consistency, powerful content or responses to comments hurts your brand more than helps it. Don’t stretch yourself thin when it comes to social media, devote the energy and resources needed to each individual channel to be successful.

Budget

The days of growing a social media audience for free are way back in our rear-view mirror. Facebook algorithms, privacy settings and changing audiences have made competing for eyeballs easier said than done.

Facebook, for example, looks at the quality of the content, the engagement after a short period and several other factors to decide if the post is worth showing to more people. Boosting posts and running ad campaigns are not only effective, they generate quality leads when done right.

The short answer to asking if your business should be present on social media is yes, but to impact your bottom line, you’ve got to be more than present on those channels. Social media gives brands a platform to tell their story, humanize their brand and engage with their audience to not only build a stronger brand, but build revenue across these platforms.

November 14, 2017

Building Content for where your Prospects are in the Buying Cycle

Your clients move through a funnel every time they look to purchase your products or services. While the acceleration can vary greatly between each person, the steps are typically the same.

So how can you meet your audience right where they are with the exact message that they need? Using content marketing, you can generate content and promote that content to specific segments of your prospects based on what stage they find themselves in.

Awareness

Prospects are just starting their journey of needing something that you provide. They go through their typical steps of finding a company to work with. They might do a Google search, post on their social media profiles or even discuss with a close friend.

The awareness stage in the buyer journey is all about high level insight into the product they are looking for. Some of the best types of content include:

Educational content – Videos, blogs, social campaigns and events are great channels to distribute your educational content to this audience.
Data – This could encapsulate several different areas of your business, but think “big-picture statistics” that you can incorporate into your content that reinforces your messaging.
Opinions and Insight – During their research, they might have stumbled across your website (thanks to great SEO) and begin digging through your resources. Keep the insights high and make it easy for this audience to find this type of content on your website.

Consider implementing these content examples in your awareness campaigns:

How-To’s
Infographics
Webinars
E-Books
Checklists
Tip Sheets

Consideration

When your audience gets to this stage, they are asking questions, looking for pricing and perhaps have already reached out to your team. This is your chance to show them your business is the best option for them, opposed to the competitors they might also be considering.

Trust – Can you do what you say that you can do? If so, how does your audience know that with just a website that lists the services? Build trust through your content that proves that you can help solve a need.

Service – During this stage, most prospects reach out for more information. How quickly did you respond and better yet, how did you respond? 9 times out of 10 a prospect reaches out to more than 1 company for the same service, you don’t want to lose the business because you took 3 days to respond or came across short and unhelpful.

Some of the best types of content to plan for this segment include:

Case studies
White papers
Testimonials
Product Demos
Fact Sheets
Samples
FAQs

Intent

One of the best stages for sales reps and business owners. A prospect found you (likely online), researched your business, might have a quote and is basically ready to move forward. Now, it’s closing time. Here is what this specific audience is looking for:

Free Trials – If you sell software, own a facility that charges a monthly fee, you can give them a taste of what they get when they purchase. This is a great time to offer this type of content because they are primed to move forward with a purchase.

Contract Negotiation – From a B2B standpoint, you might have more of a contract based business, so this is when you are able to add things on, give a cut in pricing or a slew of other things that benefit both parties to seal the deal.

PRO TIP: At this stage, your audience is talking to you, analyzing final questions and getting ready to sign. Customer service is a large part of this stage – so keep that top of your mind.

47% of customers would take their business to a competitor within a day of experiencing poor customer service (24/7)

Purchase, Loyalty and Advocacy

When your prospect becomes a client and purchases your product or service, it’s not the end. You want to generate positive word of mouth, loyalty and repeat business from that client. So what can you do? From a content standpoint, here are some ideas:

Email Campaigns – At this point, you have their email address so use it. Do you have a monthly or weekly newsletter? Stay in front of your previous buyers and offer them education, give them incentives to share and spread the word about your business.
Client Video – Shoot a short video of the client and have 3-5 short questions that they can answer. This video content is great for testimonials and building trust across your brand.
Social Campaigns – If you are a B2C business, generating social media content using the same information from the above helps nurture your followers as they move through the buyer journey.
Referral Programs – Build advocacy with a referral program for your clients. Depending on your business, you can tailor the program to benefit both your company and the client.

Make your content relevant to your audience, based on where they are in the buyer’s journey. Nurture them through the funnel and deliver timely, relevant content that converts into revenue.

Taking this a step further, delivering this content through a marketing automation platform like Marketo, Infusion Soft or Pardot gives you a wealth of control, analytics and ROI from your efforts.

November 6, 2017

The Importance of Keyword Research

The hard truth about digital marketing is your audience doesn’t use the same keywords that you do to describe your products and services. Your business offers a solution to a problem and your website has to clearly communicate how your company can solve their problems. So where does keyword research come in?

Keyword research is important in attracting new prospects. Your clients start at Google to research, analyze and understand how to solve their problem. It could be anything from cleaning to dining to finding a local pediatrician. The things that people type into Google aren’t important – unless they are typing in keyword phrases that segment them into your target audience.

TIP: Use Google’s Free Keyword Tool to Conduct Keyword Research

Let’s say you are a local dermatologist. You might offer a range of services on your website to help your audience decide what they need from you. You might offer services to treat acne or eczema or even aesthetic services like Botox and dermal fillers.

But what do your prospects type in? They might not know what service they need, and rather search with intent, questions and reviews rather than a specific service. So think of phrases like the below:

“How to get rid of forehead wrinkles”

“Acne treatments for teenagers”

“Underarm sweating treatment”

Your website has to offer quality content that answers questions your audience is asking. And your prospects do not use the same words that you do to describe the services you offer.

Quality content isn’t one paragraph describing that topic, but rather, well-thought out content that answers questions for your visitors. When you think of Google as a business, it is easier to wrap your mind around how SEO ranking work.

Google’s job (from a search perspective) is to serve up the best results for a particular search query. They are extremely good at this job because they hold the market share in search engines (opposed to Bing or Duck Duck Go). Your job, as a business owner is to create the best content for your specific search keywords that move your pages up on search results.

TIP: Shoot for 300+ words on website pages that you are working to rank for a particular keyword phrase.

This is why keyword research is important, if you use the term “hyperhidrosis” across your site regarding your underarm sweating – your audience will likely never land on your site. Your competitor (who has likely done keyword research) will outrank you and get that traffic.

Keyword research is important to your SEO strategy, not because it’s just a step in the process. It drives warm leads straight to your site. When you do it right, you can attract people who are actually looking for your products and services, what more could you ask for?

If your website isn’t bringing in quality leads and serving as a hub for your entire business – it’s not doing its job.

October 26, 2017

Should you Outsource your Social Media?

I get this quite often, social media seems like such an easy channel to manage yourself or have a high schooler manage in the afternoons.

While anyone can log onto Facebook to make a post, social media marketing requires a strategic approach if you are going to translate it into dollars. Let’s be real, if it isn’t driving revenue, it’s a waste of your time.

Let’s dive in.

Reason 1: Strategy

If you have been managing your social media profiles without a documented strategy, this is working against you. When you choose to partner with a company for your social media marketing efforts, they will document a social strategy custom to your brand that will answer questions like below.

What is the competitive landscape like on social media?
Who are the influencers in your industry and how do we communicate with them?
What are our current messaging strategies across other marketing channels and how do we integrate them into social media?
What types of content work/don’t work?

Waking up every morning and asking yourself “what am I going to post on the company’s page today?” is not a strategy, it’s putting social media last – and in this day and time, that is more detrimental to your brand than you can imagine.

Reason 2: Time

Your time is valuable. Spending hours on social media posts and content might translate to your bottom line, if done right. But is that the highest use of your time? If you met with potential investors or high-dollar prospects instead, would that generate even more?

Everything we do is a trade-off of value versus our time. If your best use of time is managing and generating content for your social channels, then don’t stop doing it. However, many business owners or higher ups can generate more money spending their time in other areas.

Always live by the highest best use of your time, and when considering your social media marketing, it is no different.

Reason 3: Knowledge

I’ve been in digital marketing for years, and social media channels come and go – while others constantly evolve. Keeping up with the latest is important, but understanding which channels would make the biggest impact for your brand is essential.

Digital marketing agencies who provide social media marketing services live and breathe this world. From blogs to events, they are extremely knowledgeable in best practices, innovative strategies and can tailor social to meet your business goals.

Don’t be fooled by a high schools graduate who knows the “ins and outs” of Instagram, because the moment you ask them about Facebook’s advertising terms and conditions, they probably won’t have a clue. (Facebook owns Instagram, just to clarify)

Reason 4: Costs

If you are looking at increasing your social media activity, or it has just become too time consuming to handle, there are costs associated to whichever direction you take.

In-house – hiring someone in-house sounds great, but the added costs of benefits, training and risks that come with them might not outweigh the reasons you chose to keep it in house. Also, if you have a small to medium sized business, a full-time employee might not have enough social media work to keep them busy for 40 hours a week.
Do It Yourself – As a business owner, you might choose to manage it yourself because “it doesn’t cost you anything”. Sure, that might seem like the case but remember that your time is valuable and always play by the highest use scenario when choosing to DIY.
Partnering – when you decide to partner with a social media agency, it’s like a burden has been lifted. You typically will have a monthly cost associated to this arrangement, but having the reassurance that you are working with a knowledgeable partner who can actually generate revenue for you allows you time to focus on your core business areas.

Reason 5: Revenue

The money that you can make using social media marketing will likely make you drop your jaw. After deciding that you want to partner with a digital marketing agency, be sure the strategy they deliver is in line with your business goals, aka revenue.

Don’t waste time inconsistently representing your brand on social media. Make a plan, work with a knowledgeable partner and see revenue, it’s that simple.

October 24, 2017October 24, 2017

How to Spot Black Hat SEO

Here’s the deal. There is no easy, fast way to get your website to rank number one in Google search. If there was, everyone would be number one.

When a marketer or an agency promises a number one spot with a “secret method” – shake their hand and walk them out.

I’m still in awe of the amount of black-hat SEO tactics that are being promoted in today’s digital marketing arena. If you are looking to hire an SEO agency and don’t know exactly what to ask, or look for – these questions will help.

What goes into your SEO strategy for my website?

For this question, you want to hear the process of how they will deliver results. There are over 200 ranking factors that Google looks at. These include meta tags, back linking, social signals and content. Focusing on one of these isn’t going to be successful. Understand their process, what goes into the planning and more importantly, how they will execute.

How would you build links for my website?

Several business owners understand that link building, or backlinks, to your website is a good thing for SEO. While backlinks are an important factor, the type of links impact your rankings. If someone will “sell” 3,000 backlinks for $50 – it’s not a deal. Don’t buy into that.

The only way to obtain credible links is by offering quality content that provides value. Once you do this, you can promote those pieces of content in order to increase your backlinks.

How do you incorporate keywords throughout my site?

This is an important question. If they mention that the keywords will be hidden or tiny to give signals to search engines…RUN! This is the furthest thing that you need for your website. Keywords should be used in a normal manner, that is beneficial to the audience. Tagging pages on the backend, incorporating keywords and phrases in the copy are great ways to include your targeted keywords on a page.

I cannot stress enough that once SEO is done wrong, it’s extremely difficult (and expensive) to go forward. Google knows what they are doing and they can see all of the black hat tactics mentioned above. They will demote your website and could possibly remove your site from their index.

Don’t fall into empty promises. Remember that SEO is a marathon – strategic and small changes are what bring you over the finish line.

October 21, 2017September 10, 2021

My Website is Live, Now What?

When you finally get your new website pushed live, it’s like a huge weight that is lifted off of your shoulders. You’ve worked back and forth with your developer, made a ton of revisions and you finally have the finished product. What could go wrong?

So many business owners find themselves in this position, they invest the resources, time and money into a website only to feel like it isn’t doing much for their business. The mentality “build it and they will come” can’t be more wrong when it comes to your website.

Don’t worry though, you’re at a good place. It’s now time to communicate to your audience about your business, whether that be a postcard, print ad campaign, social media, email marketing, SEO, or pay-per-click advertising – there are a ton of ways to reach your audience, and your website serves as a “hub” for all of these channels.

So, here is what’s next.

Google Analytics

First and foremost, make sure you have tracking setup on your website. Google Analytics is a fantastic tool that is free which will tell you which campaigns are generating revenue. Spending $5,000 on a direct mail campaign? Track it on your website and see how many leads converted into sales from that campaign. Google Analytics can help.

Digital Marketing

Back in the day, you could simply run a print ad in the local newspaper and have people visit your retail location. Those days are gone. If you aren’t present where your audience is, then you are losing them.

Digital marketing strategies have a wide span, but consider SEO (search engine optimization), social media marketing and email marketing as a few to get started. Budget, audience and so many other factors drive a digital marketing campaign so take the time to plan before executing. And remember, always track these campaigns!

Add Fresh Content

This is one of the easiest that so many businesses pass up. Adding fresh content helps in so many ways, SEO being one of them. The standard service or product page on your website is great for unknown visitors, but a targeted landing page specific to a marketing campaign and audience is more likely to drive conversions.

Companies with 40+ landing pages get 12 times more leads than those with 5 or less. Source

Test, and then test again

I can’t stress this enough. Marketers test everything. Does green convert leads at a higher rate than blue? What if we say “Talk to Us” versus “Contact Us”? The options are endless to test your website and it is essential to get the highest possible engagement across your site.
Your website is more than a “digital business card” so make it work for you. Simply put, if you aren’t generating leads on your website, something isn’t right.

Category: Digital Marketing

Email Marketing: 4 Tips to Launch Successful Email Campaigns

Email Marketing: 4 Tips to Launch Successful Email Campaigns