As you begin your marketing planning for the upcoming year, you might look into finding a digital marketing agency to help you and boost your brand and numbers.
Given the saturation of the digital marketing industry, it is not difficult to find a digital marketing agency nowadays. The challenge is finding the right agency to do it.
With the abundance of choices, it may seem difficult to narrow it down to one and that’s understandable. In the spirit of giving during this festive season, here are 3 ways to choose the right digital marketing agency for your business:
Know Your Budget & Goal
To find the right agency, you need to do your own homework first and be able to answer the following questions:
How much are you willing to spend? What’s your budget?
By planning your marketing budget, you will be able to get quotations that are more tailored to your needs. It will be easy to weed out the agencies that are unable to fit into your budget.
Understand and set your marketing goals before approaching various agencies and subsequently, look at their proposed strategy.
Are they aligned with your goals? Do they aim to achieve the goals you have set?
It’s easier to work with an agency that has the same goals as you. From there, you can determine which agency is more suited for your brand.
Vet Their Creatives & Portfolio
Have you seen their creatives? If not, it’s time to take a look at their portfolio. A good digital marketing agency often boasts an extensive portfolio of design deliverables.
Do they have a design style that you like? Do they have a wide range of style that caters to your brand? Are their creatives actually creative?
Creatives and creativity are important aspects of digital marketing, as it is what makes your brand stand out. Hence, these are vital questions to consider as you choose the right digital marketing agency.
While you are looking at their portfolio, look at the clientele they have. Are there any notable brands that you wish to emulate or learn from?
If so, it bodes well for your potential partnership as they can achieve the brand you desire.
The Right Personnel
At the end of the day, when you are collaborating with an agency, you are working with people. Similar to hiring the right person, it is important that you are working with the right people.
Do they meet the deadlines agreed upon in the initial phase? How are your communications with them? Do they feel genuine? And most importantly, do you like them?
These are points to consider in deciding an agency, as you will be working with them extensively. Digital marketing is fun, so you should be able to enjoy the process. Hence, it is paramount that you like the people from the agency, to ensure that your partnership will be smooth and a happy one.
It can be difficult to find an agency that checks most of the points in this list, but I Concept is a budding digital marketing agency that strives to do so.
Speak to our professional and friendly team to find out if we are the digital marketing agency for your brand.
Table of Contents
Know Your Budget & Goal
Vet Their Creatives & Portfolio
The Right Personnel
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It’s always nice to see your digital marketing efforts get viral on social media and reach a wide audience in a very short period of time. However, chasing viral marketing may lead to your downfall in this digital age.
Virality is often dictated by the STEPPS factor – Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories. Due to the widespread content, the things that trend these days can range from heartfelt stories to a simple photo of an egg.
Yes, a stock image of an egg went viral on Instagram and beat Kylie Jenner’s record for the number of likes. If this piece of news does not dissuade you from pursuing virality mindlessly, here are 3 more reasons to do so:
When we talk about talking selfies and stories on our socials, which side are you on? Instagram, Facebook or… Snapchat? When Facebook attempted to buy Snapchat recently, they were rejected despite a whopping bid of $3 billion. In response, Facebook leveraged on their acquisition of Instagram to compete against Snapchat, by launching Instagram stories or what’s widely known at Instastories.
Talk about life’s regrets.
With the purchase, Instagram’s platform soared in terms of the number of users and ads, while Snapchat struggled to keep up. Facebook also launched Facebook Stories to add options for the avid social media users. From there, Snapchat started to look more and more like an Instagram copy instead of the other way around, as they struggled to innovate to pull ahead of its ‘successor’.
Until now.
Snapchat recently launched a gaming platform, similar to WeChat, in an attempt to improve user engagement and move ahead of their rival. They released a series of Snapchat filter games and Augmented Reality (AR) games that users can play on the platform.
Most notably, the AR Tennis game against Serena Williams is a clear sign that Snapchat’s advanced AR technology is going to become their selling point.
Y’all seeing this? Get your chance to battle @serenawilliams – you wont win 😂 but try your best and share your high score. pic.twitter.com/sXuxtImgJI
— Alexis Ohanian 🧠 (@alexisohanian) July 2, 2018
Credit: Alexis Ohanian Sr.
Snapchat games provide an additional tool for businesses to adapt. (YAY!) That is always welcomed for creative people (*wink wink*) to adapt for marketing.
Does Snapchat still matter?
Well, it really depends.
Snapchat numbers have risen steadily over the past year, with more and more youths adopting the platform. We’ve to admit, they’ve got really nice filters. Heh. This means any strategy or business targeting youths have to take Snapchat into serious consideration.
Incorporating gaming has given other platforms (aka Facebook) a boost before and it should do the same for Snapchat.
What can businesses do with this information?
Consider playing around with Snapchat’s functions and ads viewing if you are unfamiliar with the platform. Businesses can also start looking into adapting filters and AR games to help their own cause.
Do keep the demographics of Snapchat in mind while developing and utilising them and tie in to your branding. It will be a waste of marketing dollars otherwise.
If you want to utilise them, and you are having trouble with incorporating into your brand, consult an agency to help you.
After Facebook’s recent scandal with leaked user information and the US Election fiasco, the social media giants have decided to become more transparent with their platform. In early April, Facebook announced they were making ads transparent and marking political ads as special cases.
This has been a long time coming, given the chatter on Russian meddling since the US Elections fiasco ended 2 years ago.
How does this affect your business?
Ad transparency means anyone and everyone can now view all the ads you are running. This includes your target audience and unfortunately, your competition. The good news is that they can only see the content and the type of ad but nothing on the data and statistics that come with it.
So what should you do?