How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Agency for Small Business

Not every digital marketing agency will be a good fit for your business. Let's discuss what you should look for when choosing an agency.

Not every digital marketing agency will be a good fit for your business. Let’s discuss what you should look for when choosing an agency.

You need visibility if you’re a small business or startup with a great product or service. That means you need a great digital strategy.

Digital technologies constantly change. Add in artificial intelligence (AI). Gets pretty complicated. With countless choices available, small business owners and managers can easily feel intimidated and decide to look for help from a digital marketing agency.

Choosing the right partner will boost your business upward and forward. But the wrong one could waste your precious time and money and steal valuable market share and time-to-market opportunity.

Let’s discuss how you can choose the right agency for your business.

Understanding the Needs of a Small Business

Try to answer these questions before looking for a digital marketing company:

What’s my mission and vision? You need to know what you’re all about before hiring an agency. Even if they’re talented, if the agency doesn’t mesh with what your company is all about, you’ll have issues.
What are your key objectives? Every small business – from the boutique clothing seller to the local coffee shop – has unique operations with distinct and timely needs. Digital marketing isn’t a generic suit-all proposition like it is for larger corporations with million-dollar marketing budgets.
Do I need to corner a specialized piece of the market? While digital agencies may be catch-alls and able to put together and implement holistic plans, they probably do one thing better than the others. We have talented teams across disciplines, but our bread and butter is content marketing. For whatever reason, we’ve morphed into excelling in driving lead generation through organic content marketing efforts like blogging and case studies.

Assessing Your Marketing Goals

Do you need more leads? Higher brand awareness? Increase online sales? These are all valid business goals. For example, you might be focused on generating leads. Choosing the right digital agency will allow you to convert those leads into buying customers.

Ask questions about the agency. Make sure their strengths bolster your growth.

The Importance of a Tailored Approach

Your marketing efforts need to be laser-focused on what your business needs to achieve, not primarily what the agency wants to do.

When recruiting an agency for small business marketing, ensure they see this. Agencies that take a ‘set-and-forget’ approach won’t get results for you. They should collect data. Google Ads, especially, require constant monitoring and adjusting. Without this focus on data, a digital marketing agency may hemorrhage your funds.

Full-Service vs. Niche Agencies

The biggest advantage of full-service agencies is that you can buy all of your digital marketing services anywhere, from SEO to social media management to paid advertising. We’re a full-service agency. If it’s digital, we do it. We’re a small team with relationships with expert contractors to complete every digital job you need.

Full-service agencies are ideal for small businesses that can’t hire multiple agencies with specializations.

However, as a business scales, they may need an agency with specializations. For example, we handle technical SEO. We get down to the code level and eliminate things like unused CSS and Javascript.

Some specialized agencies take it even further. They complete advanced server-side work to push the margins even further.

Local vs. National Agencies

We love local agencies.

The relationships you form with some nearby are great. We work with clients across the globe — from right here in Austin, Texas, to Brisbane, Australia — and we’ve developed great friendships with them all.

If you have a local agency that has helped businesses in your area thrive, go with them. Zoom is great, but meeting in person is much better.

Local agencies often excel at local SEO. They know the people. They understand the competitors. However, many local agencies use one platform to build your website. They often struggle to use builders other than WordPress or Squarespace. So, if you want to get started on HubSpot, Shopify, or even a platform like Webflow, let us know.

Key Services to Look for in a Digital Marketing Agency

Once you’ve determined the right kind of agency for your business, you need to evaluate the services they offer. Here are some of the key services you should expect from an agency servicing your small business:

SEO and Content Marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are critical for long-term visibility: design your site to rank in search and create content that adds value for your audience. Content marketing is often an afterthought for small businesses because it is not the easiest way to drive customers in the short term. Still, it is one of the most effective methods to attract and retain customers in the long run.

Check that the agency you’re considering has a solid SEO strategy, complete with keyword research, technical SEO, and ongoing optimization. If content marketing is something you want to use, ask about their approach to blog writing, video content, and any other formats that might intrigue your audience.

Paid Advertising (PPC and Social Media Ads)

As a small business, you don’t have much money to waste on per-click advertising. A good digital marketing agency will conduct thorough research to ensure your paid traffic is effective — even if your budget is small.

Website Design and Development

Your website is often someone’s first impression of your business. It should look good. Period. Check out the agency’s work and see if you like their style. A fast, intuitive, mobile-friendly website is also key. If visitors don’t stick around, you’re losing leads.

When discussing your digital marketing agency, ask about their experience with website design. Do they create a website in-house (we definitely do), or do they outsource this service? The more an agency controls the entire process from inquiry to launch, the more consistent your online presence will be.

Evaluating an Agency’s Experience and Expertise

Experience counts; your business is no place for someone to learn on the job. When looking for a digital marketing agency, look at their experience and track record. Look for case studies or testimonials on past work. If the agency is credible, it will have an online portfolio. Notice the type of companies they have worked with. Have they helped other small businesses to grow or operate successfully within your industry? If so, how did they do it?

Testimonials are key. Studying these reveals much about how an agency works, its communication style, and whether it gets results.

Knowledge of Your Industry

It’s important to know if the agency has experience with your industry. This experience may not be a reason to choose or not to select an agency, but it’s certainly worth learning about. For example, we understand small businesses. We have a decade of experience helping companies like these:

Retro Vibes Collective: We helped a glassware rental and furniture store create a social media strategy and WooCommerce store that boosted their monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by $1,500 a month.
Discover Psych Therapy: We helped a psychology practice 30 new leads a month by redesigning their site and optimizing it for mobile traffic.

Our specialties are small businesses, startups, education technology companies, higher education institutions, and sports companies — our work centers around these topics.

Budgeting for Digital Marketing

Make your marketing budget realistic. You’ll have to invest more than doing it yourself, but don’t expect to give someone $5 a month and expect to get $500 in new business. Explain your budget to any potential agency and see how they plan to maximize your spending. Remember, usually, the cheapest option is not the best – sometimes, spending a little more in the short term for quality can be more cost-effective.

Transparency and Relationships

Transparency and communication. It’s everything. If you get the feeling the agency does not communicate well, run. Seriously. Your business growth is tied to how well the agency communicates with you (and vice versa). The onus is on them, though.

Also, is there potential for the agency to grow with you? Your small business could soon be midsize or even a large company, and you’ll need a partner who can scale your marketing to growth. Look for agencies to grow with you and help you reach the next level.

We sure can, and we’d love to talk with you.

Tyler Agnew, M.Ed.

Tyler Agnew is the CEO of Made with Heart. He has contributed sports stories to USA Today and has traveled abroad to teach English and write for international brands like Traveling and Living in Peru. His current work with rising SaaS platforms such as WeVideo and GreenPal keep him in tune with best practices in content marketing, SEO, and AI.