Marketing your business online today involves a whole host of skills and specializations.
When brands want to reach more customers online, they need to consider the best practices for how to choose a digital marketing agency.
Hiring a digital marketing agency may include looking for an agency that specializes in:
Then, the rise of AI content has also added another element of consideration. Many digital marketing agencies incorporate AI to quickly create briefs, blog posts, or ad campaigns so they can speed up production and take on more clients.
If you’re wondering, “Why hire a digital marketing agency?” We’re here to guide you through top considerations and how to navigate digital marketing in the age of AI.
Rather than hiring and building an in-house team or trying to figure it all out yourself, knowing how to choose a digital marketing agency can set you up for success right out of the gate.
Here’s what to look for:
Working with a digital marketing company means accessing a pool of highly proficient, well-trained experts in a variety of marketing-related fields. You’ll have access to a team that’s well-versed in content marketing, social media strategy, pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, and more.
If there’s one thing that can be said about the online marketing and advertising world, it’s that it doesn’t stay put. Digital marketing agencies often have access to the latest tools including Google Analytics, Ahrefs, SEMrush and others which can give you insights into how your marketing strategies are working.
Looking for more information on the latest digital marketing tools? Check out our guide on types of content optimization tools, or try the Originality.ai content optimizer.
Working with a digital marketing agency means being able to scale and grow as your business outreach begins to bear fruit. The agency can also scale with you, helping you use more of your marketing budget effectively in the areas where your campaigns are performing best.
Digital marketing agencies, like nearly every other type of company out there, quickly adapted to the world of AI and started integrating AI into their operations.
Using AI in digital marketing in a balanced approach can have benefits. It’s great for coming up with unique ad angles and content ideation for blog post topics. It can also streamline the overall workload through thoughtful and specific integrations.
However, relying on AI to blanket generate content en masse can potentially cause issues, particularly if the content is low quality and barely scratches the surface of the user’s query.
So, when deciding how to choose a digital marketing agency, one of the main questions you’ll need to answer is: How is this company using AI, and to what degree are they using it?
Before deciding to work with a digital marketing agency, it’s important to know, not just their stance on AI use, but how they implement it in their client work.
This matters for several reasons, including:
If the agency is creating content on your behalf, it’s crucial that the content is properly aligned with your brand’s voice and tone.
Clarify from the beginning whether content will be AI-generated, AI-edited, or entirely human-created, so everyone is on the same page.
If you opt for human-crafted content, you can review the content with an AI detector or AI website scanner.
When choosing a digital marketing agency, you’ll want to work with a company that aligns its services with your brand tone of voice to maintain brand trust and integrity.
These days, search engines and consumers alike are finely-tuned to the accuracy of their searches. Google also prefers people-first content that’s unique and adds value. Mass-producing AI content can result in Google penalties.
Plagiarism is no longer just an academic issue. It’s rampant online. One of the features of Originality.ai is its ability to check for plagiarism.
You can choose to scan content for potential AI or plagiarism to make sure that it isn’t inadvertently infringing on content and intellectual property.
Self-plagiarism is also an issue to be aware of if content is accidentally recreated for multiple clients.
There’s also the issue of duplicate content in SEO. AI is trained on and can draw content from other sites. If the likeness is similar enough, this could in turn, penalize a site for duplicate content.
There are a number of benefits to hiring a digital marketing agency. You can benefit from their expertise in specific marketing industries from social media to content production to PPC.
Search engines and customers alike want relevant, high-quality information that answers their questions, guides them or informs them. Working with a marketing agency can help you reach new customers and grow your business.
At the same time, it’s important that everyone is on the same page right from the beginning. Establish if and how an agency uses AI and whether that aligns with your brand’s policies so you know what to expect as a client.