Answer These Questions Before Creating a Strategy With Your Marketing Agency

March 25th, 2019 by Michael Shargois

Desk with crumpled up marketing strategy next to plants and marketing books

In the world of digital marketing, both asking and answering the correct questions can be the difference between success in a digital marketing campaign and frustration. Often, as a salesperson (or consultant or relationship-builder guy… whatever I am), I find myself realizing how many different types of potential clients there are. I have divided them into three tiers. In tier 1, you have potential buyers that have little to no knowledge of what digital marketing is or how it works, and I find myself educating more than partnering for a specific campaign. In tier 2, there are the prospects who know that digital marketing exists, know that they need it because their competitors have it, but nonetheless still need to be educated. And finally there is tier 3, which consists of the people who know all about it, have it, and are just looking for ways to improve it. Though different potential prospects have different levels of knowledge, what remains consistent across my three tiers are the types of questions that need to be answered to successfully put together a campaign.

What Are These Questions?

There are many foundational level questions we tend to ask business owners to get an idea of how much they know about digital marketing and what marketing efforts have worked for them in the past. But, from a strategy standpoint, the most important questions entail information that is very specific to what objectives have been put in place by the business. Those questions are…

I have a question about digital marketing

What Are Your Goals for This Advertising Campaign?

Quite simple, right? What are you looking to accomplish from this campaign? Goals vary from industry to industry, business to business. For example, some businesses have a bigger need for brand awareness if they recently opened a new location. Other businesses have more of a need to drive new business to supplement their current book of business. This is often the case with insurance agents and attorneys. In the case of businesses that do e-commerce, the goal would be to drive more online sales. If a particular company wants to increase their sales in a particular area of the business, it is important for that to be outlined in their goals, as well, which makes this question very important for keyword purposes. For instance, if an attorney wants to push for more personal injury cases, we want to make sure that someone looking for a divorce lawyer doesn’t get served ads or content for a personal injury lawyer. This will just lead to wasted clicks and no conversions. Also, when asking this question, make sure it is explicitly clear what you consider to be a conversion. Sometimes a conversion can be considered a potential buyer filling out an on-site form fill with their personal info, which, in turn, makes it easy for a business to reach out to the person who seems to have some interest in their product or services.

31 questions to ask a marketing agency

How Much Is a New Customer Worth to the Business?

This metric is a key detail when running digital marketing campaigns. The reason why it is important is because it can be a great tool when tracking ROI. If we know that each new lead you bring amounts to a certain amount of revenue, then we can use that info to understand how much of your product needs to be sold in excess of how much budget is being used on our campaign to net your profit goal. For example, if a person has a business selling sofas, and each sofa costs $1,000, and this business spends $1,500 a month on digital marketing services, and our services lead to two sofas sold based on our tracking, then we know we netted a $500 profit. Simple math, right?

What Is Your Target Demographic and Area?

This is an all-important detail. We, as marketers, use this information to be able to reach the actual audience you are after and target them where you, as a business, would want your content to be found. For instance, if you are a women’s clothing boutique in New Orleans, we wouldn’t want your ads being served to men in New Orleans, as they are less likely to click or convert. The same holds true with targeting, say, a woman in Houston because she is less likely to travel to New Orleans to come to the boutique. Obviously, the targeting can change if the boutique has an online store.

31 Questions Checklist square image

These details are important for keyword purposes, as well. Searching for a particular service and adding the city into the end of the search can drastically change results. For example, searching “cheap hotels near me” versus “cheap hotels New York City” will yield much different results.

There are many other fine details that can be leveraged to create success within a digital marketing campaign, but these are the three major questions that can make or break your success and either lead to money down the drain or money into the pocket of your business. If you find yourself struggling to get the answer to any of these questions or don’t know where to find your start in digital marketing, download our checklist of questions and fill out this form, or call Search Influence at (504) 881-1467 to speak to one of our experts today!