If you’re an entrepreneur looking to scale your business, working with a marketing agency is an effective way to take your brand to the next level. So, how do you choose the right agency for you and your unique business goals? With thousands of advertising agencies out there, each with their own individual approach, picking the right one to partner with may feel intimidating. To narrow down your search, here are some qualities to look for in an agency that will help you grow your brand to its maximum potential.
A Responsible Agency Doesn’t Guarantee Specific Ad Results
Because no business is the same, the right agency understands that ad results won’t be the same. Ad performance is based on variables beyond any agency’s control. This includes consumer behaviors, economic factors, and what the competition is doing. Despite an agency’s best efforts based on thoughtful tactics, proven strategies, and years of expertise, the performance of an ad or email campaign differs for each business. What works for one audience can completely bomb with another, which is why it is important to find an agency that is willing to try new things and perform tests to help your brand succeed across advertising platforms.
The internet is made up of various marketing channels with ever-changing algorithms that can throw an ad’s performance for a loop. Since there is no control over changes made to social media platforms and search engines, what has worked in the past may not work now, and vice versa. A solid marketing agency keeps up with the trends and learns about algorithm changes, but since they can’t control what an audience sees, how it shows up on their feed, or when they see it, a responsible agency will never make specific guarantees on how well an ad will perform.
A Trustworthy Agency Sets Realistic Expectations
Because the success of a marketing campaign depends on a number of factors, many outside an agency’s control, they aren’t able to properly predict how it will perform. Therefore, a successful agency will be straightforward about what they can do for your business and will help you reach attainable goals.
For example, benchmarks for a specific industry may not always line up with a business’s particular goals. When determining your desired results, an agency should take your brand’s unique challenges into account, as well as future objectives and how advertising has performed in the past. While it is helpful to look at industry standards, they don’t make up the full picture. For this reason, an agency with an effective strategy will factor in what is truly important to a client to help them achieve their biggest goals.
What Can Marketing Agencies Guarantee?
While a good agency shouldn’t guarantee results, what they should guarantee are the elements within their control. Rather than telling potential clients what they want to hear to get them to sign on with them, a trustworthy agency values honesty and transparency above all.
Here is what an agency can guarantee you:
Their Process
An agency can promise to implement their proven process or method to help achieve your goals. You’ll want to work with an agency that will adjust this process to suit each individual client, getting to know a business inside and out prior to running any ads. When you partner with them, the agency should take the time to develop a deep understanding of your brand, industry, products, customers, buyer personas, social media presence, goals, and more, before they put their well-developed strategy into action.
A Collaborative Partnership Dedicated to Helping Your Business Grow
The ideal agency will have a team of full-time marketing experts fully devoted to optimizing their client accounts every single day. While it is common for agencies to employ contractors who each have their own separate businesses to focus on, what sets a top-quality agency apart from other agencies is that they treat your brand as if it’s their own. This greatly impacts the consistency of the messaging that multi-channel marketing requires to successfully scale an e-commerce brand in the long term. Signing on with a reliable agency means that their talented team works with you to form a strategic partnership and accomplish realistic goals that will continuously and profitably scale your business.
Top-Notch Client Communication and Support
A solid agency will take pride in their responsiveness, addressing clients’ questions or concerns as quickly and thoughtfully as possible. They will go above and beyond to build and maintain successful relationships with all of their clients. An agency should provide you with support, professional guidance, and assistance in resolving any issues your company may encounter.
Data-Based Analysis and Clear KPIs to Measure Success
A dependable agency understands that assessing performance based on reliable and established KPIs is crucial to a brand’s success. An agency should work diligently not only to create campaigns and manage ad accounts but also to analyze data and optimize ads accordingly to improve results. They should have vast knowledge and experience with marketing KPIs, allowing them to make necessary adjustments or test new angles to bring in more website traffic and increase ROAS.
Examples of Past Clients’ Results
An agency should use examples of exciting results from previous clients to showcase their ability to grow businesses. However, they shouldn’t promise a potential client that they will achieve the exact same results for them. It is an agency’s responsibility to let clients know that marketing is an investment that takes time and must be tailored to each particular brand.
Looking for a dedicated team of marketing experts that will put the time and hard work into helping your brand flourish? With over twelve years of experience scaling online brands, Ashworth Strategy is the marketing agency that will get to know the ins and outs of your business and work with you to accomplish realistic goals with a strategy that really works.
Our Ecom Sales Accelerator™ system continues to be successful over and over again because we take the time to adapt it to each individual business we work with – and we have numerous case studies and testimonials to prove it.
To find out what we can do for you, book a free strategy call with us today!
References:
https://www.sentrycollective.com/blog/why-marketing-agencies-cannot-guarantee-results/
https://sakasandcompany.com/client-guarantees/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/why-marketing-roi-is-never-guarenteed