Tips on Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency in Iran
In today’s busy business market, brand recognition reigns; customer engagement endeavors; and developing a competitive edge are essential. How can you best do this without necessarily spending big? You hire a top marketing agency to help connect your brand with its customers, where they want when they want, and in the ways they want.
Before I walk you through the things you’ll need to know when hiring a digital agency in Iran however, it is worth mentioning that I will not mention which specific agency you should team up with. This article concerns itself more with helping highlight methods and best practices when sourcing and initially working with a digital agency. I hope that this article helps equip you with the knowledge you’ll need to choose which agency is best suited to your brand and business.
Who’s the team leader?
Before you contact any digital marketing agencies, it would help to determine an internal review team. This team should be comprised of a small list of essential members. The team may not need to be made up of key decision makers because some of the responsibility will lay with the management of the process, but having the ultimate decision maker involved will make the process more efficient. Once all the team’s roles and responsibilities are defined, you’ll be ready for what is likely to be an exciting few meetings with your potential agencies.
Getting to know the agency team
When you meet each of the digital marketing agency’s teams, it’s good to know that those you meet at first may not be the same team you will work with day-to-day. You’ll likely meet the senior team, such as the Account Director or a senior person responsible for client handling; a Creative Director or a senior person responsible for the creative output; and possibly the agency’s Manager. Larger sized agencies may bring New Business team members or a Senior Strategist. Although larger agencies come with benefits of greater access to resources and great industry experience I feel it’s best to find the right size agency for your business needs.
Know the agency’s results
During or after the initial meeting with your shortlisted digital marketing agencies, be sure to pay close attention to their case studies. These explanations of projects can be very well presented and appear impressive, but be sure to understand what the objective was and whether each example succeeded in meeting that goal. You’ll have an opportunity to glimpse into the working relationships of the agency and their current clients by asking them questions about what the client’s expectation was at first and how they attended to it. Case-studies are also an opportunity for you to assess the quality of the team’s execution to get an understanding of how your results make the look and feel, but be sure to understand what is done in-house and what is likely to be sourced out of house so you can truly measure their capability. Should the agency not show case-studies related to your market, be sure to ask them if they feel this might be a problem for them going forward.
How to know the agency’s core assets
Be sure to hire the “culture”. Assess each digital marketing agency’s core values to make sure they’re a good match for your culture and team. Favour agencies that will be a true extension of your business and team. Healthy agencies are ones that value a culture of collaboration; nurture a positive outlook; express enthusiasm; care about innovation, and reward proactivity.
Getting to know the working process
Two of the most important methods in a client-agency relationship and somethings you should pay close attention to when selecting your digital marketing agency are the strategic and creative processes. These are two areas in which an agency will intimately collaborate with you to help your brand and business stand out and stand strong. Different organizations will have very different approaches as to how to manage these processes, and may, in fact, differ their approach when working with you. Although agency methods might have changed concerning devising a strategic and creative process — certainly concerning advances in the digital realm — a lot of the essentials remain the same. For example, it is essential to establish the business objectives, the target audience and what exactly should be communicated for the strategic team to determine an approach and later device a coherent brief for a creative team to compose a campaign around.
Know the unknowns
Although digital marketing agencies go to great length to try and understand the business of their clients, there’s often important information that is so commonplace for clients that they don’t feel the need to mention it in briefs. For this reason it’s important to stay involved with your agency during all processes and be sure to quickly provide clear feedback and prompt approval.
What to do next?
Before running a campaign, both the client and agency should establish a set a series of key performance indicators, or KPIs. By doing this, both clients and digital marketing agencies can establish an understanding of the campaigns effectiveness. With recent digital developments this can be a lot easier because clients have greater access to specific facts about their audience’s engagement. KPIs can be established to determine whether the campaign is reaching the right audience; whether the campaign is engaging that audience; whether the audience is taking action on it and lastly; whether that action is leading to sales. Aside from these benefits, KPIs can help indicate what does and doesn’t work well in the campaign so as to amend things next time.
