There are hundreds of great sustainable brands out there, offering great products and services for consumers. Unfortunately, some of them are disappearing into the crowd because of a lack of effective marketing strategy. We want to make sure that your sustainable brand gets marketed, and that is why we have put together a guide to help you to choose the best sustainable marketing agency for your needs. In this guide, you will learn what you need to know before picking an agency, why should you hire an agency, and how to pick the right one for your needs.
What to know before hiring a sustainable marketing agency?
When thinking of hiring a sustainable marketing agency to help your business, the first thing to do is to map your marketing objectives. By mapping your objectives, you will have an overview of your needs and gaps that have to be filled in to be successful. You will also understand whether hiring a marketing agency is actually necessary for your business. After mapping these objectives, it’s time to determine what you need from the agency, and what you don’t need. Based on these elements, you will be able to start your search for an applicable, sustainable marketing agency.
Why should you hire a sustainable marketing agency?
Marketing is an essential part of your business’ success. It allows you to share your products and services with your consumers strategically. Marketing can be time-consuming, and it needs constant attention to keep up with competitors. There are various reasons to consider hiring an agency to help your business with its marketing.
Often businesses are busy with multiple projects at the same time, and other projects than marketing might be prioritized. This is a great reason to consider hiring a sustainable marketing agency to help your business. It is important to give each project the time they need, without being neglected because of lack of time. If you feel your marketing execution is not consistent due to the time going to other priorities, hiring a digital marketing agency is an excellent idea. A key factor for successful marketing is, after all, consistency.
There are companies, often smaller businesses or startups that might not have the funds to hire a full marketing team immediately. For these companies, hiring a marketing agency to help with marketing priorities is a great idea as the costs will be significantly smaller. It will also help you to avoid wasting time on training new hires. Some companies do have a marketing team of their own, however, they still want to hire an agency to help them. It is understandable that your marketing team is focusing on creating a high-value marketing strategy for the business, and therefore doesn’t want to spend time on executing the strategy. By hiring a digital marketing agency, you will be able to outsource the time-consuming execution to the agency, and this way to focus on creating the strategy instead.
It is also possible that your company doesn’t have anyone in their marketing team, who has extensive experience with success in marketing. It is essential to have someone who stays up to date on all new marketing trends, channels, updates, and other important factors. If your team is missing this person, it is good to hire a marketing agency to help as they do have the needed experience.
How to pick a suitable agency?
When you have decided that help from a sustainable marketing agency is truly needed, the most significant factor to consider, when looking for a suitable agency for your brand, is to choose an agency that not only fits your needs but also reflects your values. This is highly important as you want to work with an agency that understands where you come from, and what you need to improve your brand.
You also want to find an agency that has expertise in your market. It’s obvious that not every marketing agency has the same expertise, and for this reason, it is important to research multiple agencies before you choose to hire any. Always make sure that your chosen agency is capable of fulfilling your wishes. Your chosen agency should be flexible to adapt your needs and change the strategy when needed. It’s always a good idea to check whether the agency has a startup background as they are often innovative.
What comes to the expertise of the agency, it is essential to ensure that the agency is willing to analyze all the results. This will not only give you an overview of your performance but it will also help you to truly understand what is working and what should be improved. The agency you hire should add measurable value and insights as experts.
Lastly, always remember to go through the website of the marketing agency you are thinking of hiring. Learn about their past projects and services, read their blog posts and case studies, and see what the past clients have written about them. Most importantly, make sure you feel good about the company before hiring them.
Agency red flags
The promise of immediate results & vanity metrics
If the agency is promising you immediate results such as 4000 new followers per week, it is good to second guess whether they are just making them look good so you would hire them, or if they are truly capable of providing you these immediate results. They could also be using bots to buy fake followers, which will end up hurting your brand in the long run.
No outline of the exact plan
The agency you choose to hire should always be able to provide you with an exact action plan of what they will be doing, and how they will be executing it. They should be as transparent as possible giving you access to a communication tool, project management tool and way to always be in touch with them easily.
They do not offer you a clear strategy
As the agency should be able to provide you with an outline of the exact plan, they should also provide you with a clear, detailed marketing strategy that is able to pivot as needed and stay up to date with market trends, technology changes and industry updates.
Their own marketing is bad
If the agency’s own marketing is looking bad, you should consider whether they are suitable to take care of your company’s marketing strategy. It is extremely common to see a marketing agency spend more time on their clients marketing than their own but if they cannot prioritize their own brand, it can be a red flag to their ability to be consistent and provide high quality results.
We hope these tips will help you to find the perfect sustainable marketing agency for your needs. When you start looking for an agency to hire, don’t immediately settle for the first option you find. You should always do a proper research on multiple agencies to receive enough knowledge of what each of them are offering. Then, based on the gathered knowledge and the tips we shared with you, you will be able to choose the right option for your business.
We at Ola Impact understand that it might feel challenging to find a perfect agency, and that’s why we are here to help you. If you want to learn more about our services, feel free to schedule a free consultation with our team!
You can do it here: calendly.com/ola-impact/60min
Author: Oona Yletyinen
