Advertising is big business. Many companies feast or fast depending on the success or failure of their advertising campaigns. This is because a majority of many business’s revenue comes from advertising. For Google, for instance, these feasts represent 95% of the company’s revenue.
Advertising is not only one of the biggest revenue sources for companies, it’s also one of the biggest investments made. Over $180 billion were spent on advertising across the U.S. in 2015 alone. With so much weighing on advertising campaigns, its no wonder savvy companies rely on professional advertising agencies to help them along. But how do you make sure your hard-won dollars are going towards an advertising agency who will provide a return on your investment?
If your ad agency provides the following, chances are you’re working with one of the best advertising agencies around:
- Your account manager never seems to sleep.
If new content is being created every time you breathe, you’ve found a winner among the many advertising agencies out there. A full 15% of surveyed digital marketing agency professionals cited “meeting the expectations of the always-connected customer” as their top challenge. If consumers are always on, it means your advertising campaigns must always be on, too. - Your advertising team has a plan and you know what that plan is.
As many as half of all companies using digital marketing have no plan for how that marketing campaign is going to progress, let alone how they’ll reap the benefits from it. One of the first things advertising agencies know to do is develop a plan for how your company’s marketing strategy will go. Who is your target consumer? How are they most likely to be reached? How do they prefer to be reached? These are all important pre-campaign launch questions to ask and answer. Once your advertising firm has an understanding of who you are and who your customers are, they’ll build you a customized plan of attack. If they can’t or don’t clearly outline this strategy to you before beginning, you might be partnered with the wrong team. - They’re results-oriented.
The second most commonly cited number-one challenge digital marketers face is executing campaigns which drive results. By results we mean leads or revenue. If your ad agency team doesn’t have a clear idea of how they’re going to get results and a strategy for how they’ll track the success of their campaign, you could do better with one of the other advertising agencies. It’s not enough to have a great idea for a campaign, you need to be able to track its results. How else can you know if your money would be better spent elsewhere? Say on more Facebook ads. - A dedicated social media strategy.
Like advertising in general, social media advertising has the potential to make or break a company’s reputation. A whopping 83% of consumers have had a negative experience with a social media marketing campaign. Don’t let a poorly run social media campaign ruin your reputation. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, and all the other eclectic members of the Social Media family are great friends to have when looking for introductions to new customers. Ruin your reputation with one through a bad ad or campaign, however, and you’re likely to lose your shot at thousands or even millions of potential consumers. The best advertising agencies know this and as such will have a dedicated social media strategy built on a wealth of experience and expertise. - Mobile and Smart Device-Friendly content
Do people even own computers anymore? Even if your target consumer has a desktop PC, chances are he’s on his tablet or smart phone even more. Twitter knows this: 65% of its ad revenue comes from smart devices. The best marketing content in the world won’t do much good if it isn’t mobile-friendly. Have you tried loading the blog your advertising agency created for you on your smart phone or tablet lately?
As a business owner, you’re likely going to be spending big bucks on advertising. As you should – – how else are you going to let potential customers know how great you are? Before you start pumping top dollar into any old advertising agency, make sure they can provide all of the above.
