4 Questions You Need to Ask When Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency for Customer Acquisition

If your company is aiming to boost its customer acquisition strategy, you may benefit from hiring a digital marketing agency to assist with those efforts. However, with so many acquisition agencies out there, how do you know which agency to partner with to achieve the best return on investment? You likely already have a line of RFPs stacked on your desk and a calendar packed with agency pitch meetings. During those pitches, you’ll want to make sure you ask potential digital marketing agencies these four vital questions before working together on your customer acquisition efforts.  

How long will it take to get results?

Every company is excited to get started after choosing a new marketing agency. They’re especially eager to start seeing results and getting a return on their investment. So it’s a natural inclination to ask how long it will take to see an increase in client acquisition.  

Understanding how your acquisition marketing campaigns are going to be set up for success is important. You of course want a digital marketing agency that is nimble and quick. But you also want to make sure everyone is on the same page and understands the key performance indicators (KPIs) and goals. Your future partner agency should not only give you the tactical details. They should also share the customer acquisition strategy and the thought process behind their campaigns. 

Additionally, you should be provided a project management plan that outlines a schedule of deliverables, communication frequency, and how long the onboarding, setup, and launch phases will take. Transparency is key during this process. You should have consistent contact with your agency partner so you understand how the acquisition campaign is unfolding. 

How will your marketing strategy integrate with our customer acquisition processes?

Digital marketing isn’t a strategy that should be executed in a vacuum. It works best when combined with other efforts across lead generation, sales, and traditional marketing channels. 

By putting these efforts together, you should be able to follow a customer’s journey and identify key touchpoints that are essential to your business. 

When your digital marketing agency suggests new acquisition strategies and tactics, it’s important to understand a few things. Knowing how those strategies will achieve your goal is good, but also what role they play in your overall customer journey. The burden of the answer to that question shouldn’t fall entirely on your internal marketing team. A good digital marketing agency will understand what place their efforts have in your overall acquisition pipeline. In addition, the right agency should be able to illustrate how they will move customers through the sales funnel. They should also walk you through how digital marketing campaigns will positively impact other parts of the customer journey. Everything from campaign optimizations to reporting should be guided by this integrated effort. 

“How did you solve [insert your current issue] with previous clients?”

Most likely, your team is seeking a digital marketing agency with expertise in customer acquisition strategies and your particular industry. Your potential agency partner has probably seen some recurring challenges and opportunities across their portfolio of similar clients. They have hopefully learned from each of those scenarios and will bring those experiences to your acquisition campaigns. By asking how they have handled similar challenges in the past, the prospective agency partner has a chance to reveal a few things such as: 

• The agency’s level of transparency and expertise

  . By sharing a past digital marketing problem experienced by a client, the pitching agency can offer a glimpse into their inner workings. Marketing agencies who are willing to share former obstacles (and solutions) are seemingly committed to a transparent client-agency relationship. Knowing you can count on your acquisition agency to share things that didn’t go as planned in a campaign, as well as the good things, is a hallmark of a partner you can build trust with. 

• How the agency deals with adversity

  . Analyze how a potential digital marketing partner addresses past challenges. What lessons did they learn and how did they implement that in future situations? You’ll want to understand the type of challenges an agency has faced. You also want to know how they faced the challenge. That understanding is key to knowing what that process looks like when a problem arises in your acquisition campaigns. Knowing this information can help you decide if an agency is a right fit for your company.

What KPIs and other metrics will be used to measure campaign success? 

Campaign KPIs and goals are one of the first pieces of information you want to discuss with a potential marketing agency partner. Campaigns, budgets, and time could be wasted if this critical information isn’t understood by the whole team. 

It’s also worth asking potential agencies if they recommend any additional KPIs to measure customer acquisition campaigns more efficiently. Although all recommended metrics may not be immediately acquisition-based, you may find that top-funnel-centric and awareness goals are key when driving conversions, in addition to nudging your customers along their journey. Sample KPIs in this category could include: 

• Engagement rate
• Conversions percentage growth
• Lead quality

Digging deep and asking prospective digital marketing agencies these tough questions will not only demonstrate their holistic strategies (versus being stuck in their own tactical realm). It also will help you make the most informed decision. 

Interested in how our agency has answered these questions for our business partners? Talk with our experts today.