Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Marketing Company

As society evolves towards a fully-digital environment, companies need to enhance their digital footprint further and make themselves fully visible to the billions of online internet users. Digital marketing takes the lead to unlock a powerful online presence across various digital platforms such as social media. It is so effective to the point that even small businesses and new start-ups can easily compete with established brands from their very onset. Like any other profession, however, this digital promotion of your business, products, or services is best handled by seasoned professionals from reputable digital marketing companies.

Before engaging a digital marketing company, there are several aspects to consider to determine whether it is the perfect fit for your business or brand. These aspects can be quickly evaluated by asking several targeted questions. Let’s take a quick look at the three most important questions to ask before hiring a digital marketing agency.

How do you plan to improve my website’s ranking on search engines?

So, right to the important stuff, huh! This is the most critical question to ask your selected digital marketing company or agency. After all, there are many ways to boost a website’s ranking, with some of them being quite unorthodox, otherwise known as Black Hat SEO.
The plan’s strategies will indicate whether or not the company is a good fit for your business. Always go for a digital marketing company that focuses on generating organic traffic via White Hat SEO techniques. These will avoid many complications with search engines and ensure that your generated traffic translates to increased revenue. Promises of quick or instant results such as # 1 rankings on some keywords are all serious red flags.
Of course, if you’re running a shady or spammy business that you know might be shut down soon anyway, then the Black Hat SEO techniques might be a fit for you.

How closely do you adhere to the Google Webmaster Guidelines?

The Google Webmaster Guidelines exist for a reason! Any digital marketing company that plays hard and fast with them is to be avoided. It’s that simple! Wondering why? These guidelines are put in place to regulate marketing practices by website owners. Hence they are essentially governing laws to be followed, yet some marketers tend to tango with some guidelines for traffic and ranking gains, just like how some members of society tend to break the law.
Now, the consequences of such practices will eventually hit hard on the website owner, having to suffer penalties and poor rankings when Google finally catches up with you. Distance yourself from such digital villains unless, once again, you are just as villainous yourself.

What is your track record with similar businesses like mine, and when can I expect results?

This question is a must! It will instantly transform the company’s pitch from being idealistic and conceptual to be factual and realistic! Every digital marketing company will claim to have the best team, strategies, bla-bla-bla, but how many of them can walk the talk?
A good company should at least have some experience dealing with similar businesses as yours, with tangible results of their success on that project. This will validate all their claims of how effective their strategies are. Most importantly, it will also help you ascertain the expected results, based on a proven track record.
Is this important? Consider this; what happens if you suddenly get a market boost, increasing your product demand to 100 units per day, yet you can only produce 20 at the time? Knowing what to expect is critical for business planning purposes. An excellent digital marketing company should always be able to give you a reasonable timeframe for the results to manifest. It also helps you to determine whether the company is worth engaging in the first place. Generally, digital marketing results become evident from about six months.

With so many digital marketing companies available online, we hope that these three questions will help you weed out the villains and shortlist the desirable ones. Some of the best-performing companies in this niche include Lakeplace Design.

Don’t forget to check out user reviews before engaging your final pick.

Good luck!