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Setting a New (& higher) Bar in Digital Marketing: Tips for Selecting an Agency

by | May 4, 2017 | blog

Selecting a marketing partner can be a daunting task. Everyone claims to have the most experience, they all have shiny websites (after all, they are marketers), and they are all eager to pitch you on all the things you’re doing wrong.

As a consumer, marketer, and agency founder I believe that collectively if we ask for more, we can change the way agency partnerships work.

Your marketing partner should be enthusiastic and passionate about what your company is doing. A marketing partner that isn’t as enthusiastic as you are is guaranteed to disappoint you, not just in results but also in accurately representing your vision.m

If I’m asking you to ask for more, I would expect nothing less from my team at karma digital. Here is what we require of our partners:

They must be passionate about what they doAlignment with our culture and core valuesTrustworthy and honest (see #2 above)

Easy to say… keep reading to see how I actually put these into action.
Passionate:

“Love what you do, do what you love” never sounded so true. Marketing shouldn’t be a hobby or purely a money maker, it should be a passion. Passion is an obsession, we believe your marketing team should be obsessed with communicating what you do, how you do it and attracting the right customers (even repelling people you don’t want!). When you’re in love with an idea/company/product it shows, and that’s the difference in simply getting attention and building a loyal customer base that’s obsessed with your brand.

Culture:

Does your company have a distinct culture? Do you want to be known for a certain work-style/product/voice? It’s important that your marketing agency (and all partners) have a culture that aligns with your company. If you expect 9-5, you’ll be quickly disappointed if your agency has flexible hours for their team- and your agency team won’t want to work with you either. If you have a culture of honesty and transparency, it’s critical your agency partner does too. Aligning core values helps set your partnership up for long-term success. Onboarding new partners takes time, money, and resources away from what really matters in your business.

Trust & Honesty:

Marketing agencies are really good at selling new shiny tactics, but that may not be what you actually need to grow your business. This can be challenging when you’re looking for an expert to help you (say at marketing) because you know it’s not “your thing”. How do you know if they are actually “selling” you what you need?

Hiring isn’t a total science, there’s an art and trusting your gut is important. When a potential partner is telling me all the things I want to hear, I’m immediately cautious.
I’ve included some additional tips below if you’re still not totally sure your gut is giving you the right signals.

Ask the tough questions to make sure they did their research on your company.Conduct interviews across your organization with potential partners. There are typically different views on what is needed depending on who you ask- what does your email marketing manager think is needed? What about your paid media manager? CMO? Head of Finance?. A trustworthy and honest partner will not just say what makes the CEO happy; they will drill in on how they can help you be successful.Be honest. If you expect honesty from your agency, you’ve got to be honest too. Culture, work-style, expectations and everything in between should be openly discussed up front to ensure alignment.Ask to talk to other clients. Case studies, testimonials are all important, but actually talking to other clients they’ve worked with will give you a good sense for how they are to work with, not just their experience.Invite potential partners to participate in a company event. If they have the right experience AND you enjoy spending time with them… you’ll want to work together!

When you find a good digital marketing partner, you will know it, and so do I. I’ve passed on potential clients because it wasn’t a good match. No one wants to spend time with people/companies/ideas that don’t align with our passion, culture, and experience. You might say, we take our own advice.

Have high standards, they can be exceeded by the right partner.

Monika Choudhary

Web Developer

Monika is competent professional with 10+ Years of Experience in the Website Design and Development. She is having a great expertise in developing responsive e-commerce, real estate, social networking, jobs portals, classified, corporate based websites & her expertise includes WordPress, Woocommerce, Magento, Shopify, Codeigniter, CakePHP, Laravel. She is detail oriented, driven worker who enjoys fixing code and creating something beautiful websites from scratch. Quality Work & On time delivery is always her aim. Always trying to achieve client satisfaction level, she will not only work with you to develop an amazing website with high coding standards, she will also ensure it engages with your potentials to drive more conversions and leads.

"What does karma mean to you?"

"To me, Karma is the result of a person's actions and I believe that what happens to a person, happens because they caused it with their actions. Doing things with a good intention is what matters to me the most and that is what I always remember when working for my clients. I have realized that in this industry where there is a lot of competition around, I am working for my clients with a good heart and a positive vibe. That's what keeps me going."

"Who is your dream client and why?

"My dream client would be a company or an organization who passionately wants to build a strong online presence in the digital world. The one that’s easy to work with and that inspires you and makes work not feel like work is the dream client for me. I would love to guide them from the initial stage to build up their recognition through clean and advanced coding on the web."

Leighton Hendrick

Digital Marketing

+20 years of marketing, public relations, communications, advertising and internal and outside sales experience.

Extensive experience in developing and managing all levels of product and offering campaigns including marketing collateral, Web site content, SEO, paid media and social, inside sales call campaigns, sell sheets and management of campaign success metrics.

Demonstrated success in launching new products and corporate brands, developing demand generation programs, and creating internal and external communication pieces.

Exceptional collaborator with the ability to build relationships with trade media and manage large-scale corporate initiatives and events.

Proven ability to create and manage lead generation and call campaigns that result in the successful conversion of new and unique clients. Creator and Editor-In-Chief of IT Compliance Magazine, a quarterly publication with over 2,500 international C-Level readers.

Cassie Boca

Founder, CEO

Cassie taught herself SEO in 2006 when she was working at a small business that needed to increase visibility but didn’t have any budget. She understands the financial challenges startups and small business have in that they have to wear every hat and prioritize what they work on based on what will have the largest impact to the business. There are never enough hours in the day, but consistently Cassie found her time spent increasing rankings in organic search, ensuring locations and contact info was accurate online, building positive reviews, and spreading positive news about the companies she worked at.

In the last 10+ years, Cassie has seen it all, but always comes back to her passion for helping inspirational companies grow. As a consumer, she tries to limit her purchases to companies she believes in (ok, she still goes to Target… she’s a human) because as consumers we have the ability to help companies succeed. If we all purchased from companies that aligned with our personal beliefs, not only would companies step up but we’d see a shift in the brands that we interact with daily. She calls this being a “conscious consumer”… sometimes we think she made that phrase up, but the more time we spend with her the more we find ourselves buying only from companies we know the founders or love their mission.

Enough business talk, Cassie is passionate about connecting with like-minded people, traveling and is a pretty badass skier. She loves to chase winter seeking powder fields, and on a powder day you may even get a FaceTime call from a chairlift or the backcountry.

What does karma mean to you?

To me, karma is the intention behind our actions. Good karma, to me, means doing things with good intent, a pure heart, and positive energy. When starting a company, it was critical that I start it with good karma. In writing our mission statement you’ll see that our mission has the intent of helping consumers find companies they are proud to wear their logo or recommend to a friend…what I call being a conscious consumer. When I realized my intent behind starting this company was coming from a place of wanting to increase visibility of companies putting good into this world, I knew we had to include karma in the name.

Who is your dream client and why?

My dream client isn’t a company any of us have heard of. I’d love to hear from a young startup doing something inspirational, I mean, my passion is for increasing visibility so it’s not much of a challenge if a company comes to me and they are already hugely successful.

If I had to pick a company that already exists, it would be Charity Water. Their mission and vision inspire me so much, I had all of my wedding guests make a donation there instead of buying us gifts. But again, Charity Water has great visibility already so I’d love to find a company that isn’t there yet where I feel we can change the trajectory of their company through the work we do.