As a digital marketing agency, we get the great pleasure of experiencing different industries, markets, and more all from our office. That’s part of the agency life – touching real estate, lawyers, non-profits, vet clinics, home builders, and so many other markets. However, working as a digital marketing agency in Alabama has its nuances that make our work more challenging, and much more rewarding.
The internet is changing at a rapid rate, and marketing agencies have to keep up with the latest updates to search algorithms, advertising rules, and much more on the fly. Contrast that idea to the “back home,” handshake market that is the south, and you can see the challenges of marketing in Alabama as a whole.
How to do "face-to-face" businesses marketing online?
The traditional greet you with a handshake, face-to-face business people, recognize that a large part of “the deal” is wrapped up in the personality of the person you’re doing business with. If you’re not an e-commerce store, or in an industry that otherwise can make a sale without having to interact with people, then you have probably seen and acknowledged this idea.
When you’re trying to sell a home with real estate marketing, you’re trying to get people in the door for the handshake. When you’re a law firm looking for more cases in a particular practice area, your law firm marketing is about making the phone ring to get the potential client into the system. When you’re marketing your interior design services, you’re trying to get people to respond to pictures of work you’ve already done.
These ideas are throughout every industry in some form or fashion, but especially those that don’t sell simple products. While the sales process is outside of the control of the marketing agency, there’s a lot to be gleaned from what your agency has to say.
For instance, if a marketing agency can provide your home builder business form submissions for “Interested in this plan in X location,” but your sales team doesn’t respond until the next day, then that’s not a marketing problem, that’s a sales problem. If your old-school plumbing business is getting plenty of calls, but the phone operator is always on the phone already with another customer, then you need another phone line.
It’s these ideas that make a digital marketing agency in Alabama go through a few extra hoops for the “face-to-face” businesses. It’s a problem of manageable growth over time.
Here are three things to consider when working with a digital marketing agency:
1) Are you prepared for more business?
While this is certainly a “glass half full” problem, having too much business can lead to the loss of existing customers. If you’re unable to adequately handle the additional workload, your customer care will likely dip. Also, new customers will likely not get the same quality of support and thoughtfulness that your previous customers had. Your online reviews could suffer, and so could your word of mouth referrals.
While those may seem like small prices to pay for additional revenue, you need to think about the long term. If your company receives a bad reputation, then there’s very little you can do to quickly recover it. Remember, it’s almost always the worst experiences that incite action online, not the best. A bad customer experience is far more likely to get a bad review than a positive experience is to leave a good review.
2) Will you respond to data?
Data is King
The traditionalists are resistant to this idea, but when it comes to lead generation online, the idea that Data is King is 100% accurate.
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Acquisition Source
- Where did your leads come from? Social Media? a Google search? How do you know?
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Keywords
- What did the user search for to find you? Is that what you want to be found for?
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Acquisition cost
- How much are you paying for each lead for your business? How often are you converting your leads into actual sales?
3) Do You Trust Your Business Partner?
When your customers and clientele want to look you in the eye and know that they can trust that you have their best interests at heart, your digital marketing agency wants you to do the same. This idea is the backbone of every well-run digital marketing company specifically because there are so many frauds out there.
“Fraud,” may be too harsh of a word, but the sentiment is correct – many digital marketing businesses are happy to take your money without giving your business the genuine consideration it deserves for growth. When you’re looking to hire an agency, you should be looking for an agency that you trust to have your back, and then act on that trust.
Many of these practices are extremely complicated, and use a significant amount of technical jargon, making each one more difficult to understand. While we will do absolutely everything to explain and teach, when a client is always second-guessing the methodology, it makes the partnership tenuous.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be inquisitive or comfortable with your digital marketing partner, but it does mean that if you’d be uncomfortable with the services offered as a whole, then maybe you’re not ready for a digital marketing agency yet.
As an Alabama-based business, we have a lot of experience coaching service industry businesses in Alabama through the difficult transition from outdated business technologies to new ones. That unfamiliar tech can seem daunting to employ. That’s why we’re here.
This is a real issue and it affects thousands of businesses in Alabama, and all across the south. While you may not make your sales online, the technology is changing and improving so quickly that if you’re not taking advantage of the lead generation tools now, then trying to get caught up to speed later will be that much more difficult.
Find yourself an Alabama digital marketing agency that you can trust, that will teach you what you want to be taught and then commit to them.