The 7 Ultimate Questions to ask when hiring a marketing agency
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.”
Steve Jobs
“Don’t be too shy to ask for help. No-one is good at everything! I quickly learned to hand over responsibilities to those who did them better than me.”
Richard Branson
Let’s just be honest.
We all need help... at least sometimes 🙌
This especially applies to small businesses.
There is so much going on, always a bunch of problems that need solving.
Each requiring their own specific skill sets, making it hard to be a “one-man army".
96% of businesses fail within 10 years 😨
Do you want to know what sets the 4% apart?
What about the even smaller fraction of that 4% that repeatedly hit 6 or 7-figure profits year after year? 🤑
It's the commitment and purposefulness from the leaders and decision-makers in the business 💪
Are they willing to aggressively and repeatedly experiment with what skills and tactics produce more revenue and sales 📈
They dedicate time, effort, money, sweat (and tears) to creating systems and a machine ⚙🛠
A machine that produces sales should be your main aim if you want to grow. The more you commit, the quicker you will work out how to produce REPEATABLE & PREDICTABLE profit!
Without that, your business will die 💀
Doesn't it make sense to get the best people you can to be responsible for this?
Whether that's you as the owner, an in-house marketing team or outsourcing to a specialist agency or freelancer.
Most entrepreneurs I know value their time as the most precious commodity the have ⌚️
Time you possibly don't have to dedicate to learning how to become an expert in a new skill.
Or time to recruit, train and hire new in-house marketing teams (and justify their overheads to your accountant!) 😂
This is why a whole eco-system of agencies, contractors, freelancers and consultants exist.
They have honed their specific skills over many years with multiple clients and dedicate their time (and their livings) to making sure those skills deliver.
For most fast-growing businesses, finding a specialised, proven marketing agency is often the solution that works best.
If you pick the right one it can help supercharge your growth and allow for flexibility as you scale up.
Unfortunately, the market is full of fakers, scammers and under-qualified agencies, experts and so called “gurus” all chatting a lot of bullshit 💩
These pretenders cannot deliver!
Hence, in a world full of ‘wrong’ agencies, choosing the right one for your business has become tricky.
This decision could be the difference between adding an extra '0' to your monthly revenue or shutting down! We've heard horror stories from several business owners who were ill-prepared when searching for a professional marketing agency... we don't want you to face the same problems.
All early discussions should revolve around YOU:
Your business
Your problems
Your previous campaigns and marketing experiments
Your future business goals and marketing objectives
But once they've found as much information about you, expect a proposal and solution.
This is where you can do some more digging and use these 7 ultimate questions.
Read on to discover how to choose the right agency that doesn’t put your time, efforts and money in vain...
⚠️ QUESTIONS TO ASK THE AGENCY/ FREELANCER ⚠️
What sort of businesses have you worked with?
How are you different to your competitors?
How often will we communicate with each other?
What are the most important KPI's to measure success on when working together?
What is included in the scope?
Can you describe the on-boarding process for new clients
What sort of campaigns do you believe will work for us?
1. What sort of businesses have you worked with?
Some agencies operate in tight niches, if this is relevant to your industry great as you can leverage their experience and tried and trusted results within your niche. But you do have to be comfortable that your competitors will also be leveraging your future results too.
Ask or case studies and for actual ROAS and ROI, not just 'impressions' or likes.
Can you pay your bills, suppliers and staff with impressions and likes?
Ask for more detail on the process and how they achieved these results for their clients and if they would also apply to your business and its problems.
If you are going to collaborate with any agency, it is important to investigate their past work and projects, especially their achievements in terms of marketing for the businesses like your brand.
The ways they helped those clients, marketing strategies and channels they used, and the level of innovation incorporated, are some of the crucial factors that become obvious when you ask this question. Eventually, it reveals the mindset of the people you are going to work with.
2. How are you different to your competitors?
All businesses providing a service should have a clearly distinct offering and values compared to similar providers. They might do seemingly similar 'jobs' or have similar prices but this question helps you identify the winners in the pack.
Every business should clearly understand how they are different to their competitors.
How are Evergreen different to other social media advertising agencies you ask?
Evergreen exclusively focuses on small, ambitious businesses looking to add an extra '0' to their monthly revenue by building out a digital marketing machine, fuelled by social media advertising, that generates predictable & scalable profit.
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