If the marketing and promotion activities of the past were usually done via print and radio, today it’s mostly done online! Yes, and in today’s fast-paced and highly-competitive markets, the best way to market and promote your product or service would be thru a digital marketing agency! To cover the increased demand from today’s clients, the term “full-service digital marketing agency” was born. This type of agency offers a wide array of services to their clients, from SEO, or search engine optimization to paid campaign marketing, website development, and more. Here’s a little of everything you need to know about digital marketing agencies.
What Digital Marketing is All About
Before we talk about the many services offered by inbound marketing agencies, let’s first discuss what digital marketing is all about. With 81% of customers today conducting research online before making a purchasing decision, it’s imperative for companies and businesses to develop a robust and healthy online presence that engages and nurtures their clients online all through their journey as customers. And, crafting a digital marketing strategy is a step in the right direction.
So, what is digital marketing? Well, according to experts, it’s defined as a multi-faceted strategy that is aimed to target, reach out and build relationships with customers online, and across a broad range of channels, to ultimately get them to make a purchase, and become repeat customers.
The impact of digital marketing can be astounding. For instance, blogging alone can help brands or products rake in 67% more leads as compared to those who never post a blog. SEO also boasts a lovely 14.6% conversion rate, which is way higher than the 1.7% conversion rate that traditional methods deliver, like print or radio ads.
Now, what tactics or methods does a high-quality digital marketing agency employ? Well, these include content marketing, SEO, video marketing, mobile marketing, online advertising, email marketing, and social media marketing (Which is one of my favorites).
The Various Types of Digital Marketing Agencies
Because digital marketing employs a wide assortment of tactics, strategies, and tools, this can make planning and execution of a simple digital marketing campaign a major challenge, especially for solo entrepreneurs and smaller marketing departments.
And, since choosing a reputable, and reliable, digital marketing agency can be a challenge if you’re not familiar with the industry, let’s discuss the various, and the most common, types of digital marketing firms or agencies. For starters, some agencies specialize in one type of service, or in a certain industry or niche market. On the other hand, many offer a wide range of services, which spans various industries or market segments (And they cater to varying budgets too).
A standard digital marketing agency reaches out to existing, and prospective, customers online through what’s called an “omni-channel”, single channel, or multi-channel marketing strategy.
With multi-channel and single-channel marketing, the agency interacts with clients through one or more channels like email, websites, blogs, social media, and more. Omni-channel marketing is a technique that provides a seamless customer experience across channels and devices throughout their lifecycle.
On the other hand, a full-service digital marketing agency tends to be much larger than other types of digital marketing agencies. Many businesses often team up with this type of agency because they have the experience and acumen to do specific projects like lead nurture campaigns, website redesign, and other more tedious digital marketing tasks.
These types of digital marketing agencies can also bring added weight or muscle to existing marketing departments, at a much lower cost than it would usually take to build them out with new hires!
Now, an inbound marketing agency usually offers inbound marketing strategies and techniques, which differ from conventional outbound strategies. Inbound marketing agencies or firms seek to position a business entity online where customers can easily find them, build trust over time, and eventually generate considerable sales.
An SEO agency, or a search engine optimization agency, is a digital marketing agency that helps their client’s websites, and website content, rank high on the search engine results page. This type of agency often has specialists who perform keyword research, website audits, backlink audits, website and blog content, video description optimization, link building, and more.
An SEO digital marketing agency will also make full use of a wide array of data analytics and website developer tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, SEM Rush, SEO Moz, and more. SEO agencies are also early adopters of search engine optimization best practices, which include complying with Google’s ever-changing search algorithm.
Now, a Digital Ad Agency or a PPC digital marketing agency utilizes paid search (Which is also called paid advertising) to generate traffic to a business website. Unlike free organic traffic, paid traffic involves spending money to bid on keywords and ad placement on search engine results. Digital advertisements can appear on websites, search results pages, and social media channels.
Digital ad agencies usually have the skill and capability to produce attention-getting, keyword-filled ads which conform to the best practices of the digital platforms on which the ads appear. The popular services include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube ad creation and deployment, as well as Google Ads Manager account creation and maintenance.
Now, a social media agency can help manage and produce social content, as well as set up advertisements on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. They also offer services that are related to reacting and responding to customer interactions on various social media platforms, as well as offer influencer outreach for more effective cross-promotion or affiliate marketing.
A web design agency is made up of creative designers who often build optimized and customized websites or web pages for their business clients. These web designers handle the look, feel, and functionality of the website, whether it’s for a brand-new site, or a website re-design, or a smaller project.
The common services offered by a web design agency include user interface design and research, image creation and storage, web hosting, and web development.
