Businesses around the world are investing their energies, time and money in growing their revenues online. Digital marketing has penetrated to the most micro levels in the economy, making even small shop owners to create budgets for online promotions. Platforms like Google Ads are witnessing major growth by the ever growing account enrolments of micro and SME businesses. But apart from organisations which employ digital marketing experts, all other are dependent on agencies for their digital promotions.

In my last blog I discussed the reasons why digital marketing agencies have failed to service small businesses and startups, but not every agency has ceased to get the desired results. There are many agencies out there in the market who can do wonders for your digital business growth. So what is it, that the best agencies do to increase your revenues online. Nothing fancy, just the following 9 simple things.

 1. Extensive Keyword Research

Online marketing majorly revolves around ‘keywords’. Keywords are the general queries people use to find services and products online. Agencies use free and premium tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, UberSuggest, and many more to get germane insights to draw ideas and analysis for your business. At Krenovate, we share extensively researched list of keywords related to your business. This has a dual benefit, one it helps our prospective clients in understanding which queries are trending for their industry and second, it helps them get an idea of budget needed for marketing their products and services online. You can use this tip to filter out proposals of good agencies.

2. Content Mapping & Strategy

Content has proven time and again that its the core foundation of winning marketing strategies. Content mapping is a simple activity of understanding characteristics of users who will be consuming content of any marketing activity. An online user generally goes through three pre buying stages namely, awareness stage, consideration stage and decision stage before a successful sale can be made to him/her. At every stage organisations need to create the right kind of content to move users to the next stage and finally converting them to profitable customers. Read this blog, to get a free content mapping template and grasp more knowledge about it. Good digital marketing agencies create exhaustive content mapping documents to draw winning content marketing strategies.

3. Community Discovery on Social Media

With competition getting critical and difficult in the online marketing segment for activities like SEO and paid lead generation, organisations will need to shift their focus to social media marketing, especially going into 2019. Social media is an ocean of communities with platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Quora, Pinterest and many more. Good agencies help organisations identify communities for their prospective customers across various social media platforms. Though many argue that its easy to broadly ascertain communities on each platform, but this broad classification can turn out to be a blunder for many startups and organisations selling niche products and services. Agencies that help you pinpoint smaller but more relevant communities are the ones that you should go ahead with.

4. Quality Content Creation

An agency which can create unique, original and creative content for online promotions is definitely the one, organisations should hire. Many small agencies might fail to impress at the proposal stages, but if they have a portfolio which stands out for quality content, you should definitely on-board them. Also this is the first step that good agencies do, once they start the online marketing activities for your organisation. So if you are not happy with content copies, you should definitely reconsider your agency, these decisions are difficult, but better for all if taken at an early stage.

5. Design Amazing Graphics

IF YOU THINK GOOD DESIGN IS EXPENSIVE, YOU SHOULD LOOK AT THE COST OF BAD DESIGN. –RALF SPETH

Everyone likes to look at something that is stunning and stands out from the rest. This single task is the differentiating factor between good and great agencies. Great digital marketing companies understand that marketing campaigns are primarily about making a lasting impression from the word go. They have highly skilled graphic designers who can empower and augment the reach of your online marketing campaigns. A great design also helps create high brand recall and retention. Apple is the greatest example of a company that has loyal brand followers primarily due to their focus on simple yet amazing product and software design.

6. Improve Website Performance

Google recently in this news update for SEO declared that website loading speed will be a primary factor in ranking websites on Google search engine. They have also launched an exclusive website building technology- AMP, which guarantees lightening speed loading websites even on poor internet networks. Updated and good agencies will do everything to make your website performance better. If not an AMP website, good agencies use tools like CDN and PageSpeed optimisers to enhance the performance of your website.

7. Lead Generation

Lead generation is the most essential service rendered by digital marketing companies. Fresh businesses, should definitely opt for these services, as creating a lead funnel at the start can kick-off your revenue generation. One smart thing that digital marketing agencies do for you is tapping multiple platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Marketing, LinkedIn Ads for lead generation, which helps in optimising budgets and lead quality quickly. Also small businesses neither have the bandwidth nor the employee strength of managing several lead generation campaigns simultaneously.

8. Improve SEO Rankings

Rarely done by an average agency. SEO requires a mix of technical and marketing skills. Also if your agency has not done your content mapping and content strategy, they might not be the right option to render SEO services to your organisation. Best digital marketing companies will do a detailed content strategy before they even start On-Page SEO of your website. Also website performance as discussed earlier has become an important part of organic search rankings. Top agencies understand this, and render conjoining services that result in increasing your SEO rankings for relevant keywords.

So go out and on-board the best digital marketing company for your business. Choose carefully and smartly. Also, share your thoughts and feedback about what more top digital marketing companies do.

Happy Hunting!