Watch this week’s Duct Tape and Popsicle Sticks video: “How to Choose & Hire a Marketing Company“

You’re a business owner who has discovered that you need help with marketing. Your marketing efforts aren’t paying the dividends that you would like. You realize that you need to bring in a marketing manager or outsource it to a marketing agency. It feels like a risk that can pay off or fall flat. You’ve heard some of your business owner friends talk about how they’ve hired different marketing companies that haven’t worked out. They got no demonstrable results.

You have a dilemma…you need the help and feel stuck. Maybe you’ve decided to go ahead and hire an outside company. With all the horror stories you’ve heard, how will you choose who to work with? Will they understand your business and your goals? Will they perform? Are they within your budget?

Hiring the right marketing agency is a big decision. They will be taking over a labor intensive and very important part of your business. It shouldn’t be taken lightly.

There are a number of different types of marketing. Deciding which is best for you will take some consultation.

• Direct Mail Marketing
• Telemarketing
• Digital Marketing
• Print Marketing
• Radio/TV Marketing
• Paid search
• Social Media Marketing
• Email Marketing

These are some of the main methods available to you. They each work for different types of businesses but not all of them will be the right fit for you.

Based on all of this, we’ve come up with a method for you to go about choosing the right marketing company.

1. Find someone you trust to help you understand the services that would work best for your business. You may want to interview several different agencies to get their take on what you need. Meet with some of your business owner friends to see what’s worked for them and what has not. But at least start to get a basic idea of the types of marketing tactics might work for your business.
2. Identify your marketing goals. We’ve often heard business say “we need better marketing” but they don’t necessarily know what that translates to in real life. Is it more clients? Is it a certain percentage of financial growth? Is it growing your target audience and amplifying your brand? What, specifically, would you like to see happening that isn’t?
3. Seek referrals. Ask your peers who are happy with their marketing who they work with. Not every agency is going to be the right fit. Ask questions of people you trust. Maybe they have a good center of influence who is a reputable marketer. LinkedIn and Google reviews are very useful in this situation.
4. When you find an agency or two that you think might be a good fit, go through their online content. Visit their website. Go through their social media. Read their blogs and watch their videos. See if you think they might understand you and your business. You can learn a lot about them before you ever speak to anyone. See if they resonate with you. This is very important.
5. If they do resonate, interview them. Interview them extensively. Ask a million questions and try to get a feeling of whether or not they understand you or if they are simply trying to sell you something. Make sure that what they offer is what you actually need. For example, some firms specialize in social media advertising. Therefore, they will see everyone as needing social media advertising. We don’t want you to spend money unnecessarily on things that may not work for you.
6. Ask them for references and samples of work. This is a perfectly fair request. You want to know that they stand behind their work and that they have satisfied clients.
7. Read Google reviews. This is also very important. People are very candid when they leave Google reviews. This is where you’ll thoroughly get to understand how clients truly feel about the agency. Don’t gloss over this.
8. Finally, determine if you feel that they are a good cultural fit. You want to determine whether or not the personalities of your companies click. It makes the ongoing working relationship that much more productive.

Hiring a marketing company is not a task you should take lightly. If you follow this approach, you’ll have good odds of making the right choice.

Recent article: When should you launch a marketing campaign?

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E Circle Marketing is a digital marketing agency in Manchester, CT that offers a variety of digital marketing services to small businesses