You’ve been told how awesome digital services like SEO, email marketing, content creation, PPC, and the others are.

The thing is, everyone is trying to sell themselves. And at the end of the day, the information you currently have as a decision maker is the only way you know what seller is worthy. And that is what we’re here to ensure.

To answer BIG question number one-

1. What are the necessities for baseline success?

It’s likely that you have a functional website, social profiles, and you exist on Google Maps. Also likely that this leads to a passable amount of visitors who already knew you existed and really wanted to find you.

But that’s the problem.

These customers already knew you existed.

Finding success means growing your business, and business growth doesn’t happen without a digital strategy for customer acquisition.

So what is the best method for online customer acquisition? It begins by getting the customer to your website or Google maps listing. Here are common tools used to do this:

So naturally, the next question is-

2. Which of these services are needed?

Depending on your industry and franchise size, you may need more of some tools than others.

As an example, if you’re a young retailer franchise with few locations, you need to get your digital footprint seen without going too far into the “paid media” end of things.

More grassroots strategies like producing content and email marketing using discounts would be effective methods of getting people to your site and map listing.

Small and large businesses alike all want more organic search traffic to land on their site from search engines. However, if all you’ve done is put up a website and write some content it isn’t going to happen on its own.

Especially for multi-location businesses, local search engine optimization is almost always essential. Here’s a look at what we experience on a daily basis, which could have easily been prevented.

This graph is not only representational of SEO’s ability to fix issues and prevent them, but also that aligning the SEO stars on any website to increase organic traffic is easily possible.

Venturing into the paid advertising territory is nothing new to online marketers and has become an extremely refined process. With that said, it can become expensive.

Google largest money-maker, AdWords, is essentially a vessel to throw money at to get traffic onto your website to buy things. As you can imagine, it works better for certain industries. Seeing an ad in a Google search for a sub sandwich isn’t going to do much.

But a funny ad for a sub sandwich franchise shown in Facebook feeds will probably get some new followers and in turn, new customers.

3. How can I know if I’m choosing the right digital strategy for my franchise?

The best way to answer this question is to take a scientific approach and ask the following questions:

1) What is it my business is lacking to grow? (More organic traffic, better conversion rate, better website, etc.)

2) What are my industry competitors doing better than I am?

3) What are some of the advertisements my competitors are using?

4) Will this strategy build my brand image or dilute it?

In order to answer these questions some research much be done, and I recommend beginning with free analysis tools. There are infinite options out there to use, but of course, the holy grail of them all is Google Analytics.

But it is entirely possible that you’re already juggling one too many responsibilities for this.

Good news though, we’ve been doing this for years.

So we can answer these questions together.

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Read more about the most common failures of digital marketing agencies

Constant innovation.

Ability to adapt.

High Growth.

Results oriented.

These are a few of phrases off on an infinite list of items agencies use to describe themselves. Trying to uphold all these claims, digital marketing agencies have found themselves running into some roadblocks.

Do you remember when Google AdWords became a thing 15 years ago? Undeniably, it is still quite popular, yet, it’s looked at as a “traditional” method of online advertising by most online marketers. Digital marketing agencies now have to do much more than know how to build a successful Google AdWords campaign.

The evolution of digital marketing agencies

Only a few years ago throwing some money at an agency to run your AdWords, do some SEO work, and operate your social media profiles was the name of the game. It was a simpler time, and for some companies, that’s still their only services.

However, there is one phrase listed above that’s more important than the others. It’s not a phrase used for show, instead, it really means something.

Having the “ability to adapt” means learning new fundamentals like inbound marketing strategies, watching for emerging trends like the Meerkat App for live video, game-changing platforms like Snapchat, discovering new ways to build a website, or experimenting with small changes on current platforms like Facebook “buy buttons” which could mean huge things.

Sure, not adapting leads to failure. But why?

The biggest reason are:

Not knowing how or what steps to take to begin

Feeling like the current strategy is “good enough”

The idea that your process “shouldn’t be messed with”

No leading entity or person to spearhead initiatives into new territory

Of course, large corporate silos

These are only the tip of the iceberg, or maybe more accurately, the fundamental issues. Even if a digital marketing agency has none of the above to worry about, finding success for clients by outsourcing online services is much easier said than done.

And this is because when it really comes down to it, there’s never one right way to solve a problem for any two clients. So “guaranteeing” success upfront is a classic way to get some quick money in your pocket, but will always lead to angry customers and eventually, a failed business.

And overpromising and under delivering is something marketers have by and large perfected over the years.

As Gary Vaynerchuk would put it:

So, what it really comes down to is this: being successful is dependent the adaption to how marketers have screwed things up.

Ironic, isn’t it.

But the best part is, the road to not screwing things up begins with simply being natural.

As stated by Pat Frend from Razorfish,

“Successful marketing these days’ starts with social first, and it’s really got to fit naturally into people’s behaviors… Trying to thread the needle to create something that stands out in people’s personal digital spaces, that’s where the real magic happens.”

Again, this is where all the modern emerging trends come in. Not being ready is not an option.

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