When shopping around for a marketing agency, it can be difficult to distinguish one company from another. Making sure you find the right fit for your business is essential to a successful working relationship and profitable marketing campaigns. One of the most important things you should look into is the skills that the agencies have.
Many agencies will advertise they have a wide range of skills like SEO, marketing automation, branding, social media marketing, PR, etc. But you need to look beyond these general claims and focus on the specifics of what the agencies do and how they do it. Here are some skills you should be looking for when talking to agencies:
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The Skills, Experience, and Resources to Succeed in Multiple Channels
You’ll want an agency with the skills, experience, and resources to build successful marketing campaigns in the channels you’re focusing on. Eventually, expand to other channels as you scale your campaigns. This requires the agency can take you to the next level.
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The Knowledge and Experience Necessary to Integrate Channels
To maximize the results of your marketing campaigns, it’s important you properly integrate the channels used. It helps if your agency understands the interplay between various channels (example: content marketing, SEO, social media) and how to utilize each one properly.
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The Ability to Act On Real-Time Data
Work with an agency that sets data attribution points and acts on them at the right time. For example, if the data shows a specific segment of customers is responsible for a large percentage of sales, the agency should target these types of customers and attract more of them. Not acting quickly to important data means losing out on potential profits.
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Capability to Use Dynamic and Contextual Content
Content is more important than ever. But what’s more important is serving the right content to the right people at the right time. Building a relationship with your prospects and customers requires making each engagement meaningful. Use the right automation platform and deliver relevant and valuable content to each person and situation.
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In-Depth Knowledge and Experience Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is essential to scale your business. Creating lead nurturing campaigns, using lead scoring, developing customer database strategies, and integrating sales and marketing departments are all things to work on. This requires in-depth knowledge and experience working with a marketing automation system.
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Mastery of Data Analysis and Reporting
Most agencies rely on data to drive campaigns. But setting up key attribution points and automatically collecting data based on KPI makes a big difference. It optimizes campaigns as you go, saves money, and grows your business faster.
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Focus on Strategy Over Tactics
One of the worst things you can do is work with an agency focusing on tactics. At the end of the day, the right strategy is the one that scales your marketing campaigns and grows your business. Ask them key questions about their approach to projects and evaluate whether the focus is being put on strategy.
These are just some of the marketing skills to look for in an agency. What connects all these skills is marketing automation. It’s advantageous to work with an agency with an understanding of how to integrate marketing automation into the core business strategy and has the technical knowledge to get the most value of the platform being used.
