What Is A Full-Service Digital Agency?
The best full-service digital agencies combine experts from:
- Branding.
- Design.
- Technology.
- Marketing.
- Global industries.
75% of small business owners find Internet marketing to be “effective” or “very effective” in growing their business.
How Do I Choose A Digital Agency?
Discover An Agency’s Strengths
Although the best digital agencies have a wide variety of expertise, no one is an expert in everything. Determine what those primary strengths are and determine if they line up with your project or initiatives.
Look at their portfolio, case studies and clientele and examine the work that they have done for them. Be sure to ask them which areas of a project succeeded and why.
Plus, a top digital agency doesn’t necessarily need experience in your specific industry. They simply need to demonstrate prior experience solving business growth problems that are similar to your objectives.
Understand How They Attain Results
The top digital agencies have high success rates with clients because they place a strong emphasis on a consistent and reliable process.
Since 46% of employees rarely or never leave a meeting knowing what their next steps are, this organized process is imperative.
Take the time to learn how an agency plans to create a roadmap to success, ensure deliverables are completed on time, determine key performance indicators, and ultimately provide a return on investment.
Create A Fair & Secure Contract
Work with your legal department or applicable representative to draft (or oversee) a fair, legally-binding document.
It should outline important information such as the project’s time frame, any applicable deliverables, who your team members and point of contact will be, and what information is under non-disclosure.
What Does A Digital Creative Agency Do?
Top Digital Agencies Manage Branding & Logo Design
Creative digital agencies can manage:
- Logo design.
- Business or product naming.
- Branding and rebranding campaigns.
- Key brand messaging, such as mission statements and core values.
- Creating brand books to maintain a consistent identity.
- Rolling out new brand identities to the public.
- Corporate identities.
- And more!
Allowing a full service digital agency to manage your entire brand identity will result in long-term benefits. For instance, consistent branding across all channels can increase revenue by up to 23%.
Top Digital Agencies Create Personalized Marketing & Advertising Strategies
Top digital companies can create a comprehensive marketing strategy.
These strategies include:
- SEO optimization.
- Social media marketing.
- Display advertising.
- Content marketing.
- Email marketing.
- Paid search.
- Pay-per-click ads.
- Experiential marketing campaigns.
- Customer service.
- Community management.
- And more!
The Best Digital Agencies Build Custom Websites, Mobile Apps & Platforms
Leading full service digital agencies offer start-to-finish custom website design, such as:
- Strategy.
- Information architecture.
- Design.
- Development.
- Post-launch support.
In addition, digital firms offer custom mobile app development. This includes a process of:
- Strategy.
- Prototyping.
- Design.
- Development.
- QA testing.
- Maintenance.
38% of users will stop engaging with a website if the layout and design are unattractive.
Thus, a functional custom website is imperative to business growth.
10 Questions To Ask A Digital Agency Before You Hire Them
Before you hire a top digital agency, ask targeted questions to unequivocally prove whether or not they have a success story that directly speaks to your needs as a business.
- Who will be working on our project and what is their personal expertise?
- Who will our point of contact be at the digital agency?
- What clients have you worked with and what services did you provide?
- What is your process for determining a roadmap, deliverables, and a progressive yet achievable timeline?
- How will you determine the goals of the project?
- How will the goals be measured (traffic, conversions, SEO ranking, revenue, etc.) and how often will you report results?
- What tools, tactics or strategies will you utilize to reach our target goals?
- Is the project a flat rate cost or by the hour?
- What deliverables are included in the cost of the project?
- Does the pricing include meetings and phone calls to touch base on the project’s progress and questions?
How Much Does A Digital Agency Cost?
Digital agencies can invoice in a few different ways. These include:
- Hourly rates
- Per-project
- Results-based fees
- Monthly retainers
An hourly rate is the most common way that a digital creative agency will charge a client. Essentially, you will be paying an hourly fee for every person and every hour spent on your account or project.
Typically, United States digital agencies charge about $125-$200+ per hour.
Meanwhile, creative digital agencies in Eastern Europe can cost between $35-$75 per hour.
Per-project invoices are often determined by hourly rates. Agencies simply divide each project they are working on for you into its own dedicated invoice.
A results-based fee is contingent upon achieving a specific goal, objective or key performance indicator.
And finally, monthly retainers are typically flat fees that allow you to work with digital agencies on more of a consultation basis.
Monthly retainer fees from US-based digital agencies can run from $500 to $5000 or more, depending on the projects you will be working on.
How To Know If A Digital Agency Is Right For Your Business
Ultimately, the best digital agency for your business is the one that has the expertise and qualifications to help you achieve your goals in a timely manner.
The right digital agency will have:
- The ability to understand your brand inside and out
- Experience solving similar business problems
- Creative and technical expertise
- Successful case studies and portfolios
- Clear transparency and a roadmap to success
- The ability to deliver a return on investment within your budget
When you find a firm that checks all of those items, you’ve likely found the top digital agency that can grow your brand effectively.
How Top Digital Companies Secure Results & Stay On Top Of Emerging Trends
A Top Digital Agency Utilizes Talent & Invests In Effective Teamwork
One of the biggest benefits of enlisting the help of a digital agency is widening your access to top talent across the world. The best digital ad agencies often have global offices and draw top designers, brand experts, and marketers.
In addition to a robust network of skillful creatives and business experts, digital agencies also house industry experts that are well-versed in the best practices of e-commerce businesses, service-based companies and more.
Access to top talent allows digital agencies to curate successful teams, unlocking more innovation, better ideas and lucrative campaigns.
These result in better success rates for clients. Although your internal team may have great initial ideas, a crafted team of experts will be well-versed in bringing those concepts (and more!) to fruition.
57% of businesses think outsourcing projects ultimately enables a better “focus on the core business.”
So, it may seem counterintuitive to hire an additional team for online projects. But in fact, a digital agency could be the best thing for your overall business.
People who work at top digital agencies are surrounded by intelligent and talented colleagues. This culminates in unique and compelling ideas for all clients.
Whether it’s an individual team, department, or the firm at large, teamwork is constant and evokes innovation.
With a large mix of designers, marketers, business professionals and industry experts, digital agencies have many people contributing to an ever-growing pool of ideas, trends and general best practices.
What’s more? These experts also work directly with many clients, resulting in additional collaboration on several similar projects.
This enables digital agencies to research and cultivate new ideas, observe the trends other big businesses are implementing, and utilize them in other projects.
When you contract a small team of experts from the best digital agency, your employees will be able to focus on their own roles within the company.
This streamlines projects and enables internal employees to stay in their own lane of expertise without allowing new initiatives to falter.
Top-Rated Digital Agencies Maintain An Organized, Goal-Oriented Roadmap
Marketers who draft and report on their strategy are up to 538% more successful. But this strategy is more than just a few timelines and a general idea.
Enter: A roadmap, or a clearly defined guideline of your goals, set forth by a digital advertising agency.
Unlike a process or agenda — which details the who and when of a digital strategy — a roadmap outlines how you’re going to achieve your goals.
Because a top digital agency initially takes time to understand your users, online presence and general business goals, their roadmaps will likely be much more detailed.
They'll be significantly more actionable and, thus, provide better results for your brand’s bottom line.
In the 1960s, Dr. Edwin Locke performed a study that challenged one group of individuals to “do their best” and another to “beat their best time.”
His research found that people who had specific, concrete goals performed better 90% of the time.
The idea of implementing actual, numbers-based goals should be utilized in business as well. A leading digital marketing agency can help.
Through research and expertise, an outsourced team of experts will be able to hone a set of progressive yet achievable goals for your business. These objectives, coupled with a strategic roadmap, will breed success for clients.
Top Marketing Agencies Have Access To Top Tools
Digital agencies have direct access to top tools that allow them to acquire information, conduct research, design platforms and produce marketing campaigns without forcing you to pay for your own subscription.
Some of these include SEO and website performance tools like:
- Ahrefs
- SEMRush
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
Content marketing tools, such as:
Email marketing resources, like:
And social media management platforms, like:
- Facebook Business Manager
- Sprout Social
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
These tools and resources are imperative for conducting effective consumer and competitor research. When leading digital companies utilize them, they can gather detailed data on:
- Website performance and traffic.
- Target audiences and demographics.
- Competitors’ successful campaigns.
- Advertisement performance.
- And more!
When marketing experts have access to this information, they can better understand your brand’s strengths and weaknesses, determine goals, and formulate a successful plan of action to achieve them.
What’s more? When digital agencies utilize these resources well, the proof is in the pudding. 88% of marketers saw measurable increases with personalized digital marketing efforts.
The Top Digital Marketing Strategies Focus On Users
The best trends are those that focus on users. Whether it’s a functional website or a cohesive brand identity, keeping the customer’s wants and needs at the forefront of every decision is the best trend any digital agency can follow.
“The main thing for both designers and the client to remember is that we aren’t designing for ourselves. Businesses and designers need to talk to consumers and learn as much information as possible from them — how they shop, how they look for products, and so on,” says Tatyana Khamdamova, head of design at Blue Fountain Media.
“They need to create the best user journey possible to achieve the goals that the company has.”
To find the best digital agency for your brand, explore DesignRush's comprehensive list of digital agencies above.
