If you’d asked your grandma whether the internet would have changed the landscape of advertising, they probably would have told you NO.
But fast-forward to the 21st century, ecommerce stores, social media, and online shopping, the vast competition has made people take a different route. That route is digital marketing.
However, if you want your business to stand out, you need to know how to use digital marketing to your advantage. This is where a digital marketing agency comes into play.
Try to think of digital marketing agencies as wizards of the internet. They know how to help businesses get noticed online regardless of the competition. But note digital marketing agencies are more than service providers.
So, what is a digital marketing agency?
Join me as we dive into understanding what a digital marketing agency is, why your business needs one, and what services they help you accomplish.
Are you curious already? Well, let’s go!
What is Digital Marketing?
For you to better understand what is a digital marketing agency, let me start by defining digital marketing.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing involves using search engines like Google, social media, mobile devices, apps, and websites. It’s fair to say that digital marketing follows the same principles as traditional marketing methods.
But there’s a slight difference between the two.
The goal of digital marketing is to build user engagement and trust as well as to increase a client’s brand awareness through the consistent publication of digital promotion materials through social media, search engines, and other platforms.
This is the goal digital marketing agencies strive to accomplish.
Now that you know what digital marketing is, let’s get to defining a digital marketing agency.
What is a Digital marketing agency?
A digital marketing agency uses digital marketing tactics to help reach customers online by marketing and advertising through different channels, such as emails, social media, websites, content creation, and more.
Like a chef who uses different ingredients to create a delicious dish, a digital marketing agency combines different online tools and strategies to make your business stand out.
They help clients design their online presence blueprint, from building a strong foundation with search engine optimization (SEO) to crafting engaging content.
Digital marketing agencies help you reach out to your target audience through a medium that resonates with them.
In fact, stats have proved that digital marketing does help improve a brand’s awareness by 90%. That means digital marketing agencies reach a much wider audience compared to other methods of advertising.
For example, a company that focuses on selling clothes and accessories with a target audience of young girls would benefit more from working with a digital marketing agency.
There are different techniques that a digital marketing agency can employ to help give you the reach you desire.
That leads me to my next point: what are the responsibilities of a digital marketing agency?
What Responsibilities Does a Digital Marketing Agency Have?
While the primary goal of hiring a digital marketing agency is to increase brand awareness and build user engagement, there’s a whole load of responsibilities a digital marketing agency has.
These responsibilities include:
They Help Grow Organic Website Traffic
One of the primary responsibilities a digital marketing agency has is to help a client or clients grow organic website traffic.
Unlike traditional marketing methods, digital marketing allows experts to track more than product sales. Digital marketers also get to track customer behavior, customer journeys, and search engine algorithms.
All these metrics help inform the strategies digital marketing agencies employ to help grow their clients’ organic website traffic.
The more organic traffic a website obtains, the higher the probability of your clients actually making a purchase.
They Help Generate Leads
The foundational goal of marketing, whether traditional or digital, is to generate leads. But unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing allows you to reach your target audience where they are.
Digital marketing agencies know how to reach your ideal target audience using different strategies. With more targeted marketing campaigns, your business can generate more leads.
I’m not just talking about any leads; I’m talking about quality leads. A digital marketing agency service will be able to help you get the right message delivered using the right medium at the right time to each lead depending on their stage in the marketing funnel.
Digital marketing agencies can also help you move your leads up to the very top of your sales funnel, which is the end goal of any marketing campaign.
Help Expand Your Brand Reach
Recent stats have shown that close to 4.9 billion people globally use social media. That number is expected to grow to 5.7 billion by 2027.
That’s a whole lot of reach and a huge target audience if you know how and where to cast your net. Digital marketing agencies have the skills and techniques necessary to help you cast that net.
A digital marketing agency will help you improve your visibility, which in turn translates to a wider brand reach. Thanks to the digital marketing techniques these teams employ, you can reach people who might have never known your business or brand existed.
Improves Your Marketing
Unlike traditional marketing, a digital marketing company focuses more than just digital marketing when improving your marketing angle.
They also help catch any weaknesses in your current marketing techniques. For example, a digital marketing agency can advise you to improve your website design and search engine optimization techniques or focus more on social media marketing.
Just in case your in-house marketing team isn’t experienced in any of the above digital marketing techniques, you can choose to hire a digital marketing company.
Now that you know the responsibilities a digital marketing agency holds, let’s look at the services they offer.
Digital Marketing Agency Services
Some of the common services digital marketing agencies offer include:
Social Media Marketing
This is probably one of the most common services most digital marketing companies offer. The goal of this service is to help businesses market their brands using social media platforms.
These social media platforms include Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Social media is undoubtedly a powerful medium, and with over 4.26 billion active users worldwide, the sales possibilities are endless.
But you need to know how to take advantage of this huge target audience, and that’s what digital marketing agencies do.
Digital marketers go beyond posting social media posts. They know how to keep posts consistent and schedule them according to the intent of the marketing campaigns they’re running.
They also know how to coordinate every message across all platforms so every part can tell a story about the brand.
A crucial part of social media marketing, in addition to the posts, is analytics. Digital marketers analyze the performance of their clients’ posts and create strategies based on the data.
That’s a skill digital marketers, especially those who specialize in social media marketing, have that even the best social media influencers might not know about.
In other words, if you want to make use of social media platforms as a business or brand, it’s going to take a lot more than simply handling your personal Facebook or Instagram profile.
It requires a blend of data-driven strategy and creative thinking and that’s something only a digital marketing company can offer.
Content Marketing
You know those blogs you love reading? Well, they’re actually part of what digital marketers use in their bag of tricks for digital marketing.
The main goal of content marketing is to help readers take action and become customers. But here’s the thing about digital marketing: the words matter a lot.
Yep, I’m talking about how the stuff is written, the words chosen, and even how the whole thing is put together—it all plays a big role in marketing.
For digital marketers, content marketing goes way beyond just throwing words on a personal blog. It’s about creating a strong, trusting relationship with the people they’re trying to reach. The ultimate goal? Turning those readers into customers.
The strategies they use for content marketing might include blogs, podcasts, e-books, white papers, or YouTube videos.
These are also awesome for including SEO strategies and for use in social media marketing.
But remember, unlike most of their services, content marketing is a long-term game. It takes time to see results, but when it works, it can really pay off.
Email Marketing
Even though we’re all caught up in social media these days, emails are still super important in our daily lives. In fact, according to data, 99% of people check their emails every day, while 58% open them first thing in the morning.
This data alone tells you how huge emails still are in the 21st century. It’s no wonder email marketing is a huge strategy digital marketers use for their digital marketing campaigns.
They know it’s a mega strategy for their digital campaigns. But here’s the kicker: if you’re going to use email marketing to turn readers into actual customers, you’ve got to step up your game. Boring old newsletters just won’t do the trick.
That’s where digital marketing agencies come in. These guys are experts at making super interesting campaigns.
They also understand audience outreach and can creatively analyze customer data and interactions. It’s with this data that they can make a conclusive decision on their email marketing campaigns.
While digital marketers may use different metrics, the two main analytic measures they look at are the open and click-through rates. The open rate measures the percentage of recipients who open the email, while the click-through rate looks at the number of people who open the email and click the link.
Based on these two metrics, digital marketers can adjust their email marketing campaigns accordingly.
Pay-per-Click
Pay-per-click refers to promoted search engine results and paid advertising. This strategy is excellent for helping businesses reach more qualified leads, which can eventually turn into sales.
This digital marketing strategy involves creating advertisements to help a business appear at the very top of the search engine results pages. The ad is usually above the organic results you get for your search.
It would look something like this:
You’ve also probably seen those annoying ads on YouTube that pop up every five minutes.
Just like TV ads, there’s a lot of thought that goes into creating these Pay-per-click ads. One crucial element digital marketers pay close attention to is the keywords.
They also help clients zone into their geographical locations for better results, which is great, especially for brick-and-mortar businesses. As a business owner, you don’t have to worry about serving ads to people who live outside your service location.
Search Engine Optimization
You’ve probably heard of search engine optimization or SEO. Like pay-per-click, the goal of SEO is to increase your site’s organic traffic.
The only difference is that with pay-per-click, you’ll have to pay for the results, hence the name. For every click you get, you’ll have to pay.
SEO is a popular digital marketing strategy mainly because 76% of users who search for a local business on mobile visit a store within 24 hours. This makes it the fastest way to get clients through the door.
While this strategy does help produce results, it isn’t easy to implement, especially if you don’t know the first thing about SEO. This is where working with a digital marketing agency comes in handy.
Digital marketers know the basics of SEO. And with their skills you can take advantage of the benefits SEO has to offer.
Mobile Marketing
77.5% of the global mobile device market is made up of smartphones, and with that comes a huge market.
This type of mobile marketing fully focuses on reaching potential customers using their phones or smartphones. With mobile marketing, digital marketers can reach people through emails, text messages, websites, and mobile and web applications.
Digital marketers can tailor their special content or offers to a particular geographical time or location. Mobile marketing allows digital marketers to go where the customers are.
With digital marketing strategies out of the way, it’s time to look at the different types of Digital marketing agencies.
Types of Digital Marketing Agencies
The different types of digital marketing agency come from the strategies I’ve talked about. They include:
Social Media Marketing Agency
What is a social media marketing agency? This is a company or firm that mainly focuses on marketing and advertising through social media channels like Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok.
The goal of a social media agency is to help:
- Build a community
- Improve customer experience on social media channels.
- Customer engagement
Another crucial aspect that a social media marketing agency helps with is effective planning. This includes identifying the platforms and channels they’ll use to reach out to potential customers.
They also set milestones and timelines to help them track their client’s progress. However, most people tend to think of a social media marketing agency as an in-house marketing team.
So, what makes these two completely different? Here are some differences you can look at.
| Social Media Marketing Agency | In-house Marketing Agency | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost and Budgeting | Upfront costs are expensive, but not overhead costs and potential for cost saving in the future | High overhead costs of training, benefits, salary, and resources. |
| Expertise and Skills | Access to a team of specialists with social media marketing experience | You’ll need to build a team with diverse skills, and that’s a challenge. |
| Speed and Efficiency | They know everything there is to know about social media marketing, meaning their speed and efficiency will be at an all-time high | Quick decisions might be easier, but workload might be difficult to handle |
Email Marketing Agency
As I mentioned earlier, one of the digital marketing strategies used by digital marketers is email marketing. And there are agencies that specifically handle email marketing.
With that said, what is an email marketing agency? This is a company or firm that specifically uses email marketing as a digital marketing strategy.
The goal of this type of agency is to create a sense of urgency in their client’s target audience to check their emails for a deal, coupon, or discount. They also provide personalized calls to action, which help ensure customers can visit the company’s website.
They also gather data based on customer conversations and interactions. Based on that data, an email marketing agency can decide how to craft emails with the best open and click-through rates.
Lead Generation Agency
So, what is a lead generation agency? A lead generation agency is a company or firm that specializes in helping local businesses identify and attract potential leads or customers for their services or products.
The goal of a lead generation agency is to help businesses generate interest and inquiries from individuals and organizations that are likely to become customers. Since it’s a branch of digital marketing, you can expect that some of the strategies these types of agencies use are similar.
But, since lead generation specializes in the rapid acquisition of leads and short-term goals, the strategies they mainly focus on include:
- Social media advertising
- SEO
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Highly targeted landing pages
- Content marketing
With these strategies almost looking similar to what most full-service digital marketing agencies offer, what makes these two different?
Here are some differences between lead generation and a full-service digital marketing agency you can look at.
| Lead Generation Agency | Full-service Digital Marketing Agency | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | A lead generation agency focuses on creating a process for attracting people to a product, service, or brand and converting them into actual customers. | A full-service digital marketing agency’s goal is to market or advertise a product, service, or brand |
| Services | The services of a lead generation agency rely on SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing. | Full-service digital marketing agencies utilize all the services digital marketing has to offer. |
Pay-Per-Click Agency
Pay-per-click advertising might sound like something so easy to do, but you could end up wasting thousands of dollars on a system that won’t actually give you the desired results.
And this is why working with a PPC agency can work to your advantage. So, what is a PPC agency? A PPC agency is a firm or company that oversees online advertising efforts mainly those based on the number of consumers that click on ads.
These include anything from search engine sponsored search ads, YouTube ads, and other video ads played on streaming sites.
The goal of a Pay-Per-Click agency is to ensure that the ads you’re paying for appear in the right place and to the right people.
PPC agencies help you create ads that attract your target customers and make them want to learn more about the company. They also ensure a high return on investment; after all, if you’re going to pay over $1000 for paid organic traffic, you need to make sure it works.
And since PPC agencies specialize in this key area, working with them for paid ads can help you control your ad expenditure.
Creative Marketing Agency
A creative marketing agency specializes in creative content marketing and content creation strategies to help their clients accomplish their goals.
The services they offer can include anything from copywriting, copyediting, graphic design, website development, motion graphics, and more.
The main goal of a creative marketing agency is to encourage potential customers to engage with their client’s brand. With the content they create, it gets easier for the target audience to visit the website and learn more about the company.
Full-Service Digital Marketing Agency
A full-service digital marketing agency is basically a one-stop shop for all digital marketing services, including SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and email marketing.
Unlike agencies that specialize in one digital marketing skill, full-service digital marketing agencies focus on developing strategies based on SEO audits, customer engagements, and more.
They have to look at a whole variety of issues for them to decide the strategies that would best work for that particular company.
But here’s the thing: digital marketing skills are diverse. And while you can learn all of them, you won’t necessarily be a master of all.
Working with agencies that specialize in a certain area of digital marketing does guarantee better results than simply trying to test out different options.
SEO Agency
The last type of agency on the list is the SEO agency. So, what is an SEO agency?
An SEO agency is a company or firm that focuses on increasing an organization, company, or business’s organic visibility by increasing its ranking on search engine pages.
To do this, SEO agencies audit their clients’ websites to assess their current performance. They then proceed to conduct the necessary keyword research.
When I talk about keywords, i’m talking of the words people mostly use to search for businesses or services online. This could be words like “dentist near me” to “Best mobile apps.”
These keywords play a key role in helping businesses rank better on search engine platforms like Google. The higher you’re rank on these platforms, the easier it is for people to actually find your products or services.
Now that you know the different types of digital marketing agencies available, it’s time to look at how you can start your own.
How To Start A Digital Marketing Agency
Starting a digital marketing agency isn’t easy; as there are plenty of moving parts, you’ll need to consider.
So, here’s everything you need to know if you want to start a digital marketing agency.
Build Your Digital Marketing Skills
The first and most important step in starting a digital marketing agency is learning the skills. This means needing to know:
- What digital marketing is
- How it works
- How to run marketing campaigns that help your clients actually get the sales they desire.
Remember the different strategies we discussed earlier? You need to learn all of them, as they are basically the backbone of digital marketing.
I’m talking about acquiring skills in:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Google ads
There are plenty of programs out there that promise you can learn all these skills. But most of them barely scratch the surface, especially if you’re goal is to start your own agency.
Rather than place your bet on the wrong horse, why not check out the Digital Rental Method?
With the Digital Rental Method, you learn from actual experts in the industry. And let me tell you, learning from the pros is the best way to go when it comes to digital marketing. They know their stuff inside out, and that’s exactly what you need.
The best part is that you don’t need any experience to start your own agency.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a stay-at-home, a college student, or someone struggling to make ends meet; the digital marketing skills you learn from this course are something you can implement and start your own business.
I’m talking about a consistent semi-passive income of $2,000 to $10,000 a month.
Decide What Service You’ll Offer
With the skills you’ve already learned, the next step in starting a digital marketing agency is deciding what services you’ll offer.
Now, with the list of digital marketing agencies I’ve listed earlier, you can choose what to offer. But this decision isn’t as easy as it looks, as there are so many variables you’ll need to consider.
They include:
- Your skills: What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? That’s gonna play a big role in what services you can offer.
- The market needs: What are businesses looking for when it comes to digital marketing? Are there any gaps you could fill?
- Competition: What are other agencies offering? How can you stand out from the crowd?
The fact that you’re completely new to the game can make choosing the right digital marketing service a whole lot harder.
But guess what? You don’t have to go it alone. With the Digital Rental Method program, you can immediately start your own digital marketing agency.
All you need are the skills the program teaches you and your effort to start a successful digital marketing agency. And here’s the really cool part: you’ll get to own digital assets at a low price. Not many programs offer that!
And the icing on the cake? You’ll be helping local businesses thrive while making some money for yourself. It’s a win-win!
Market Your Services
You need to find clients to make money, and that is going to be an uphill task, especially if you don’t know how to do so.
The best way to get yourself out there is by marketing your services.
You can choose to highlight your services on the website or use your digital marketing skills to get clients. But you’ve got to be ready to compete with already established clients in that space.
But here’s the thing with the Digital Rental Method: you don’t have to guess your way through getting clients.
You get taught how to get clients using their sales system. I’m not just talking about marketing your services but also a sales system that’s guaranteed to get you results.
Now that you know how to start a digital marketing agency, let’s take a look at how to hire the right type of digital marketing agency.
How To Hire The Right Type of Digital Marketing Agency
This section here is for anyone looking to outsource their digital marketing responsibilities to an agency rather than create one themselves.
Here are several steps you can use to ensure you hire the right digital marketing agency.
List Your Digital Marketing Goals
With all the different types of digital marketing agencies available, the first step to hiring the right one is listing your digital marketing goals.
Once you have a clear understanding of your marketing objectives and business goals, finding a marketing agency gets a lot easier.
Also, the type of goals you make does help determine the type of digital marketing agency you should hire.
For example:
- If you want to grow your organic traffic by X%, your best bet would be to hire an SEO agency.
- If you want to increase the number of leads by X% in two months, hiring a lead generation agency is the way to go.
Evaluate the Agency Services and Experiences
With a clear understanding of what digital marketing agency you require, the next step is evaluating their services and experience.
Don’t just go off what you see on their website. Look at the agency’s portfolio and client testimonials.
In the digital marketing world, a client’s review is worth a lot of weight, so if the bad reviews outweigh the good, it would be best to move on to the next.
Also, ensure that the services align with your goals. If these two checkpoints aren’t enough, you can include some screening questions.
Some of them would include:
- How many years of experience does the agency have?
- What experience does the team have?
- What client references and case studies can you share?
- How exactly do you approach every client’s digital marketing needs? Or do you have a cookie-cutter method for everyone?
Schedule a Consultation
Now that you finally have a list of agencies you can work with, the next step is scheduling a virtual or in-person consultation.
A consultation will give you a much clearer picture as to whether the agency you choose is a good fit.
Topics you can discuss include:
- Your business objectives and digital marketing goals
- Measuring success
- The marketing plan
- Potential costs and more
At this point, it’s safe to say that you’ve already found the agency you want to work with. So, everything that comes after the consultation, does end up becoming a lot easier.
Is Starting A Digital Marketing Agency A Good Idea In 2024?
With everything we’ve read about digital marketing agencies, I’m pretty sure you have a rough idea of what they are and what they do.
The best part about having all this knowledge about digital marketing companies is that you can actually end up starting one if you want to.
So, if you are interested in owning a digital marketing company and becoming your own boss, why not check out the Digital Rental Method?
With the Digital Rental Method, you can:
- You can work for yourself
- Own digital assets
- Create a bigger impact on businesses
The best part? You can create a consistent, semi-passive income stream, ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 a month.
Now, that’s one way to make use of the neat facts you’ve learned about digital marketing companies.
