What Makes a Marketing Firm the Best Fit for Your Business?
While we stay true to our ideals and seek companies, products, and services that speak our language, the way we hear the messages is always changing. Sometimes they change rapidly. Marketing strategies and technologies are always adjusting to reach people living out current trends. They change to accommodate YOU.
A quality marketing firm brings knowledge of the changing culture plated up nicely with their marketing methods and techniques. They know best how to connect with and engage your audience. This task proves vital to business growth.
Unfortunately, selecting the top name from a list of marketers can produce lackluster results. Why? Because your business goals, clients, and audience prove to be quite unique, and finding the best marketing firm means identifying the best match for your company. To tackle this issue with understanding, let’s look at a few key ideas that help you assess a firm’s benefit.
In other words: what makes a marketing firm the best fit for your business? Here are some ideas to consider as you make your decision.
Makes a Good First Impression
Your website is the front door to your business. The same goes for marketing firms. Visiting a marketing firm’s personal site will give you a sense of their skill for design, how they build a high-impact and aesthetically pleasing website, as well as how important it is to them they are keeping everything updated, fresh, and impactful. If they can’t do it for themselves, are they really doing to do it for you?
At N2Q Consulting, we call this “eating our own dog food.” We’re not going to sell you on a new website when ours is a cheesy template with bland, poorly written content. How embarrassing. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve curiously pulled up websites after meeting another professional out and about, and were… surprised… with how the marketers were marketing themselves. We think it’s important to practice what we preach and it’s a good idea to make sure the marketing team you hire does the same.
Gets to Know You
Addressing your business needs requires an understanding of who you are while also creatively drafting solutions to move you forward. Rigid or static formulas do not accomplish this – this is why all of our campaigns at N2Q are results-driven. Look for a firm which respects the unique nature of what you do, believe, and aspire to… and creates a campaign accordingly. You shouldn’t just fit into a package – the package should stretch to fit you.
Good Relational Skills
Communications via email, text, phone, and face-to-face reveal relational skills of those with whom you will be partnering. Assess a firm’s responsiveness, timeliness, the questions asked, and how well they get along with each other. This will draw a picture of the type of relationship this team brings to the table, and how you can expect to be treated.
Proves to be a Team Player
The ability for a marketing firm to work well with your team is vital. After all, the flow between their role and yours must be seamless. Watch for signs of compatibility, or red flags of incompatibility to answer the key question: “Do we all get along?”
Inspires Future Goals and Vision
To prove successful in their marketing efforts on your behalf, effective firms develop a vision and goals to help your business grow, even beyond the lifespan of the current campaign. Evidence of this forward-thinking skill within their firm reveals the degree to which they will effectively accomplish it in your case.
Maintains a Good Reputation
Word of mouth still plays a crucial role in modern marketing. And, this truth applies to the reputation of any marketing firm you hire. Research a firm’s track record with other businesses (most firms have testimonials, a marketing portfolio, or intensive case studies on their website for your review – those aren’t there just for fun), check out their personal campaigns (do they have a Facebook & Twitter presence? Do they have a good following?), and notice if they sell themselves effectively.
Proves Humbly Knowledgeable
Knowledge worth noting avoids false claims and inflated promises, the hallmark of the over-the-top salesman. In your marketing firm search, notice how representatives answer your inquiries. A humbly confident sharing of knowledge supported with evidence offers one indicator of a firm’s worth to you. If it sounds too good to be true, it might be.
Real-Life Experience
All talk and no action get you nowhere. After all, planning is only one stage of the game. Find firms with proven comprehensive experience in strategy, implementation, and optimization. Focusing on any of these areas without one or both of its counterparts leaves your campaign unbalanced.
Incorporates Modern Ideas
As we’ve previously mentioned, marketing strategies and techniques change as the audience does. A quality firm maintains updated knowledge of SEO, social media, and the like. A respectable firm knows where to stretch you for your own benefit, yet understands which avenues are not right for your business goals.
Produces Measurable Results
The reasons for hiring a marketing firm include, at the core, getting results in the form of leads and sales. While products such as creative content are necessary, without results, they fall flat. Listen for a focus on achieving the best outcomes for your business and a track record of measurable results with other companies.
In Closing, Do You Like Them?
While this may sound like a question asked by a first-grader, the basics hold true. The relationship needs to flow organically between your team and the marketing firm you hire. Yes, you must like each other. This key to a successful ongoing relationship does not negate the other important qualities mentioned above but proves an integral component of a successful marketing firm hire.
If you’re in the market for a marketing firm in the Seattle area, consider partnering with N2Q. We love what we do, we take pride in our work and our relationship with our clients. And, we’d love to buy you a coffee to talk about all of the above.
Branding & Design No To The Quo
