I Googled how many marketing agencies exist across the globe, and best estimates hover between 300 and 500 thousand. McDonald’s restaurants represent about 42,000 global places of business, making marketing agencies 10x more prevalent. Wait, what?
I think it’s safe to say the industry is inflated. At any given moment, there could be more than 10,000 digital marketing agencies willing to take your business… for better or for worse. Here’s what to consider when hiring the right growth marketing agency.
Why Hire a Marketing Agency?
Consider the hiring needs surrounding the execution of a single ad on Meta that’s optimized for conversions, for example. Having a realistically favorable outcome means you’d also have a inhouse marketing team comprised of a:
- Designer: If you want to do it right, it’ll require design work. Ideally, you wouldn’t be using a single image even though you’re hypothetically running a single ad. You’ll need three sizes because different ad units have different ad specifications.
- Sr. Designer/Creative Director: Most small websites have teams of 2-3 designers. You can expect the need for someone to manage whoever’s covering your assets. It’s not a fair expectation that a single designer takes on the responsibilities of an entire website and marketing materials.
- Paid Ads Manager: This is your ad maestro with years of historical spending learnings who executes ads on Meta. They’re responsible for experiments, budgeting, optimizations, segmentation, and more. Ideally, you’ll want this candidate to be an expert in direct response copywriting too.
- Analytics Engineer / Manager: Attribution is a specialty of its own. Setting up tracking parameters for ads, events, dashboards that spell out channel-specific performance, full-funnel mapping and more can be a full time gig.
- CMO / VP of Marketing: Managing a team this size can be a full time job, so if you already have an 8+ hour workload, you may need to perform a bit of a balancing act in order to allocate your time properly.
Monthly operation costs for a top-tier team made up of the positions above may run you about $75k. That’s roughly twice as expensive as hiring an agency with all of these positions (and more) built into your relationship.
How Do You Select a Growth Marketing Agency to Hire?
Your business goal should determine your agency selection. When you begin your search for growth marketing agencies to work with, try including your industry in your search. If you’re in the healthcare industry, you’ll want a “healthcare marketing agency” sooner than you’d want a generic one. To help you get a better idea, here’s more on types of agencies out there.
Growth marketing agencies that specialize in your industry will naturally rank higher in search for the industry-specific keyword you searched for. Ranking within the first page or two is a great testament to that agency’s success. The same know-how that got them there can now be unlocked by you and your team if you so choose. The growth marketing agencies on the first couple pages of Google will likely be more expensive to hire than agencies that show up on pages 3+, and for good reason.
Most agencies feature brands they’ve worked with on their website. Looking up the current health of those brands is a great indicator of the long term effects that particular agency can have on your business. If a brand tells you they improved ROI for a client by 250%, but that client no longer exists, it means the 250% wasn’t enough. Sounds like a big number, right? It’s a great time investment to do the needed digging.
Already have a few agencies in mind but don’t know how to choose the right one?
What Should You Ask A Growth Marketing Agency Before You Hire Them?
Ask the world of them. Ask them for case studies, previous client testimonials, and hard numbers. What’s their client renewal rate? How long has everyone on the call been with the agency? Where were they before?
It sounds like a lot to ask, and it might feel a bit nosey … but the truth is, even after you’ve asked these questions above, there’s still a good deal to learn about which digital marketing agency you should hire.
Ask them for channel-specific success stories from marketing campaigns of clients in your industry. Ask them for exact pricing that’s tailored to your needs instead of the whole shebang they may be trying to upsell you on.
Let’s say you’re meeting a Google or Meta ad expert from an agency for the first time. Go snag a question or two off of a Google Ads/Blueprint Certification exam to see how they respond. If you’re trusting a small group of individuals to carry out a $1M monthly Google campaign, there isn’t room for error. Prod away, but not with antagonizing intent.
You want to give them an opportunity to sell you on their genius. It’s totally fair to expect that a marketing geek will handle a geeky question by geeking out with you. To ensure yours is a high-caliber candidate, geek out with them you must.
If you aren’t sure what questions to ask, here are some 2024 SEO trends to get the ball rolling. What are some major predictions the candidate you’re talking to has about the future of SEO? In a perfect world, they’d have a few strong opinions!
What Are Some Green Flags To Look Out For When Hiring a Growth Marketing Agency?
- Website Quality: Their website needs to be extremely polished. There’s no excuse for anything less when it comes to being a digital growth marketing agency. How else can you establish your ability to obtain leads without having a conversion rate optimized piece of digital art of your own?
It should also be obvious that a marketing expert wrote the copy on their website. Did they entice you creatively with a unique CTA, or are they simply asking you to “click here to talk to us?” You’re going to be tapping into whatever copywriters and marketers they’re using for their own website, so make sure you’re impressed before you strike up a convo. - Ranking High: The likelihood you’ll rank higher in search goes up if the agency you’re talking to ranks higher. If you have some other goal that’s not SEO/AEO related, it’s still a solid indicator for an agency you’re considering hiring to rank within the first 2 pages of Google, given the multitude of agencies out there.
- Specialization: Everyone is a PPC expert. Everyone is an SEO expert. It doesn’t necessarily mean these folks are experts in your industry. In a perfect world, you’d have evidence this is going to work for you. If you’re a SaaS, your extended growth partner better be a bit “SaaSy” already, or you’re going to be the guinea pig. You shouldn’t be the first type of client in your industry to hire any particular marketing agency.
- They’re a partner in growth: The team you hire needs to identify as more than just a marketing agency. You want an extended famiglia. You want the agency you’re hiring to actually share your marketing goals. If your goal is high-intent service quality leads, but your agency contact has more of a focus on internal goals like retention, upsells, and lowering employee turnover, there’s going to be a disconnect.
The agency should see itself as your internal team, and the line between the agency’s goal and the client’s goal should be nonexistent.
What Are Some Red Flags To Look Out For When Hiring a Growth Marketing Agency?
- Excessive Hyperbole: There are charlatans out there who have mastered this as a full-time language. If you’re listening to a pitch, and they’re spending 20 minutes talking about “…providing a framework for growth via a cohesive team that develops proven, measurable lift with strategic, results-oriented, dynamic data approaches…” just get off the call. It’s fluffy, disingenuous cockamamie that can envelop the senses and hemorrhage your spend. Proceed with caution if you find one of these Jedi-like wordsmiths. The hyperbole-speak is often born from marketers’ inability to demonstrate results. It’s okay in small doses.
- Stock Photos: Social media and web users don’t respond to stock photos. If your go-to-market strategy involves ads or a website that resembles Shutterstock photos (with respect to our friends at Shutterstock), you’re going to have a hard time outperforming those brands that have more creatively designed assets. You can comb through the library of any active client on Meta by searching for them to see firsthand the ads that are being run on their behalf.
If an agency is comfortable telling you they’re running ads for Client X on Meta, go through their ads yourself to make sure you love what you see. Now, there is a universe where stock photography does entice users, but you’ve got to be spot-on with your delivery to resonate.
- A Pushy or Automated Sales Team: A good agency will pull you in, not push you. If you’re receiving 5 consecutive emails from “,” that’s likely a computer sending those messages under the guise of a person … even though they’re signed with an individual’s name. It’s something of a programmatic fishing net. Now, there may be an actual Rick on the receiving end of those outbound emails, but great agencies typically don’t have outbound efforts. They have too many leads as it is. Good client communication is marked by trust and transparency. The people you’re talking to should sound indistinguishable from internal team members in the sense that your business goal is front of mind.
- Upsell Mentality: If you don’t need organic social, for example, but an agency is trying to convince you otherwise, it might be because they’re focused on their own goals instead of yours. If you get a sense there’s a greater concern on the agency’s part for striking a big deal than there is figuring out your actual growth levers that need an investment, don’t move forward. A good sales team will have mROI at the front of mind. It should be obvious that your growth is more important than the growth of the agency on every call you’re on.
Final Thoughts
It comes down to the culture of the people behind the agency you’re talking to. If they’re always looking for the bigger, better deal, it’s going to complicate things when it’s time to focus on lean and efficient growth. If they identify as team members of your own – that’s what you want. Make sure you spend enough time talking with the agency you plan to hire to give yourself as much runway as you can to pick up on all the red and green flags you’ll find along the way.
