How To Find The Right Digital Marketing Agency In Leicester
If you’re running a business in Leicester, chances are you’ve got enough on your plate to learn all the different areas of digital marketing. Therefore, it makes sense to get some outside help – with many agencies or freelancers available, it’s a smart decision to utilize outside expertise who can help deliver your business goals.
But how do you make sure the agency or freelancer is right for you? A quick Google search for ‘digital marketing agency Leicester’ returns over 5.5 million results, which shows you how many different options there are on the market.
Below, we’ll provide our honest guide on how to find the right digital marketing agency or freelancer in Leicester, or whether you need one at all.
Ready to start? Let’s go…
- Understand What You Want To Accomplish From Digital Marketing
The first thing any business owner should do is really understand what they need from a digital marketing agency. It can be easy to get FOMO (fear of missing out) syndrome in marketing – there’s always a company doing something better or using more channels than you are, but you just need to do what’s right for your business.
Once you’ve set a clear goal – it could be getting a website up and running, or increasing the amount of traffic to your current site – whatever aim is set, that will help you to narrow down your search.
Most agencies or freelancers will have a speciality – for example, we have expertise in SEO & E-commerce website setup. Finding a specialist in that area of your goal will help to find the best possible talent to help your business.
- Setting A Budget
The next thing to do is be clear with the amount of money you have to spend to achieve your goal. Some agencies are clever at extracting the most money from a client as possible, by adding on various ‘services’ that make you think you’ll be getting more value for money when you’re just adding to the agency’s bottom line.
Like with everything, agencies are available at all budget ranges – freelancers and smaller agencies are usually on the cheaper side due to lower overheads. Bigger agencies, the type with multiple locations and big staff numbers, are usually more expensive.
Hiring a big agency with an impressive client base is tempting, but the additional cost doesn’t always mean better results. Their ability to handle bigger budget clients with more staff members is their unique selling point, however, for smaller businesses, it’s quite likely you won’t get the same treatment as their bigger clients.
That’s not to say you should go as cheap as possible – try and weigh up the agency’s specialities and how they mesh with your business. If one is more expensive than another, but they provide the best service in your area of need, plus they will go above and beyond to help you achieve your goals, then it’s worth the additional cost.
By setting a strict budget, combined with your clear goal, treat each agency as a job interview and see which one suits your business the best.
- Sector Experience
It’s not always essential, but we find that having experience in your business sector will help achieve results much quicker. It sounds obvious, but understanding the market is one of the key facets to being successful in marketing.
How do you see if the agency has sector experience? Firstly, check their websites to see if they have any examples or case studies for your particular area. If so, great! If not, speak to each agency directly and see how much knowledge they have in your industry. It might be they don’t have direct experience, but have a great understanding nonetheless.
We would advise to still do your due diligence even if they have extensive experience in your sector – just because they’ve worked in it doesn’t make them experts! Also, it can be a negative if they have too much experience – working with a huge number of clients in one sector is never recommended and its a bad sign if the agency you’re looking at in Leicester is doing the same.
- Understanding The Contract
Once it gets down to the contract stage, you should have a pretty clear idea of what type of freelancer or agency you want to work with. At this point, you need to be very clear of what you’ll be receiving, but also what your commitments are.
Some agencies require a long term commitment – we’ve seen some up to 36 months without a break clause! For a smaller business, we would recommend prioritising flexibility over everything else. Many agencies will offer a no commitment set up – for example, we offer either a one off project fee or a 30 day retainer, depending on what the work involves.
Aside from the length of the contract, understand exactly what you’ll receive. For new websites, many agencies will provide a basic quote, however when you dig into it further, it excludes writing any content or additional services, like setting up Google Analytics or SEO.
Having to sort extra items yourself could add plenty of hassle to the project and require input beyond your time capability, so make sure you have a clear understanding of the terms and requirements.
If you’re ready to start the conversation on Full Gas Digital becoming your next digital marketing agency, why not get in touch and see how we can improve your digital marketing performance today.
