Whether you’re an enterprise level company or a small to medium size business, focusing on your digital marketing is one of the most important things you can do. Following best practices and taking on some of the responsibility for your partnership with your agency can pay off with big dividends.

What’s Next for Antler Chandeliers?

Set the website up on a secured certificate

Google is going to start including a warning (in July of 2018) on sites that are not locked down starting in July on their Chrome browser. This is a must for all websites especially if the site is collecting personal information or selling products online.

Add content around what users are actively searching for in Google

This content will include a .pdf catalog of products or other complex pieces of content that can be placed behind a lead capture form. By doing this, they will start the lead nurture process and build their database of ‘owned’ audience.

This owned audience can be nurtured over time with fresh content, special deals and other information via emails. The potential customer’s email address is actually a business asset as they can communicate directly through email.

Develop links from high-authority websites

Links will help to further develop their domain authority, drive traffic and improve keyword rankings. The key is to have really great content that other websites want to link to. Websites with thin content will not attract great links.

As they add more great content, links will grow organically and through effective link building outreach accelerate that process.

Should Antler Chandeliers Fire their Digital Marketing Agency?

Now that you have some background on what I was able to do for Jim and Kelly’s business, and where their agency had fallen short of expectations, the question is: should they fire the agency?

I’ve seen some common mistakes that have caused once successful websites to falter and their traffic drop dramatically. It’s because the agency made mistakes and/or didn’t follow through.

I’ve asked prospective clients what their agency is currently doing for them and I often get blank stares or quick generic statements like:

“They’re doing our SEO.”

“They’re building links.”

And my favorite, “I’m not sure.”

When I dig in and start to ask specific questions about exactly what the agency is doing for them, they can’t tell me. They never received a detailed scope of work pointing out what steps and deliverables are part of ‘doing our SEO’ or ‘building links’.

Sometimes the client isn’t sophisticated or informed enough on digital marketing and doesn’t know what to inspect or even the right questions to ask. After all, you don’t know what you don’t know.

And, while I can’t answer this question for Antler Chandeliers or for your situation – I can point out some basic warning signs and things to watch out for when you engage with an agency. I can also point out some items that should be the agency’s responsibility and things that are the client’s. Your agency should be your ‘partner’, which means sharing responsibilities – and it’s critical toward building a good agency/client relationship.

Agency responsibilities

Create a detailed scope of work that allows the client to fully understand the work you’ll be doing for them and by when.

Help the client understand the ‘why’ behind your activities.

Engage with the client and ‘teach’ them along the way. Show them what you’re doing and why it’s important.

Communicate on a regular and frequent basis

Do the right thing

Client responsibilities

Inspect what you expect

Ask questions if you don’t understand

Hold the agency accountable for the work they’ve contracted to do

Communicate on a regular and frequent basis

Warning signs

These should be warning signs if your agency is telling you the following:

“We can get you immediate ‘organic’ traffic.”

“We have link packages.”

“We can migrate your site with no problem overnight.”

“We don’t do reporting.”

“You don’t have complete access to your admin log in and analytics.”

“You don’t have credentials for your hosting and URL registration.”

What should be happening?

It’s your agency’s job to use their expertise and skill to advance your brand, boost your traffic and takes steps for you to ‘own’ your audience. They’ll need to collect data, analyze that data and report back to you on what the data means and what their next steps will be.

You should set up weekly calls to go over the data with specific action steps. These calls can spread to monthly once you get started and have momentum.

You should have access to all the credentials for your site, hosting, admin and analytics

You should have a plan in place with what the agency is doing on a month to month basis

When it all comes together, and you have that great relationship, here’s what happens: