A List of Things Digital Agencies Do for Clients

More and more, businesses are recognising the power of establishing their online presence. Being able to reach your customers online builds bigger and stronger relationships that will benefit your business. Not only that, but it improves your credibility by providing people with ways to contact your company - it makes you a trustworthy business.

However, it can be a difficult task to constantly find ways to successfully connect and engage with new leads; as well as actually running your business!

This is where digital marketing agencies step into the spotlight. A digital marketing agency is a company with professional experience that is employed by a business to manage its digital marketing. They are an excellent way of ensuring that your online presence is tailored to reach your target audience, updating your social media activity and increasing the outreach of your brand, often achieved by campaign creation. It also comes as no surprise that they are sought after more than ever before. Digi Rush Solutions posted on the professional networking platform, LinkedIn, that “The number of digital advertising agencies has increased by 6.1% from the previous years (2021 and 2022).”

The word “digital” is a massive umbrella, and the types of marketing available fall under a long list of categories. Different digital marketing agencies specialise in certain areas of expertise, so if you’re looking for a type of digital marketing that will boost your business growth, it’s important to understand which type of digital marketing agency you need.

The areas of digital marketing include:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
• Web Design and development
• Content Marketing
• Copywriting
• Graphic Design
• Digital PR
• Paid Social Media Marketing
• Organic
• Social Media Marketing
• Brand Development
• Email Marketing
• Influencer Marketing

Not all businesses need to have these and it ultimately depends on what you are trying to achieve. In this article, we will explore all of these areas of digital marketing and why they are beneficial to improving your business growth.

Brand Development

Any type of digital marketing revolves around improving your brand’s awareness online. A digital marketing agency will investigate how your online presence may be viewed by customers and clients.

Reviews are the perfect way to directly boost trust signals and create a positive brand presence online. Do you have many reviews? Are they mostly positive or negative? Are those bad reviews due to poor business practices, or are they due to disgruntled customers with a bugbear about the service they received? These are the aspects of your online brand presence a digital agency will consider. They will encourage you to interact with all your reviews, even a professionally answered negative review shows potential customers that you appreciate their feedback and want to improve your service or product further - boosting trust in your brand.

On the other hand, indirectly boosting your trust signals can be done with PPC and SEO. If a customer or client has a number of pain points that are addressed when the search leads to your website, this indirectly builds trust in your brand as you are perceived to be the expert in your industry. This could potentially lead to your ideal customer taking that next step and contacting you to fix their issues.

An effective digital marketing agency will understand where your pain points are, and be able to give you indicators of how and where your business can perform better online.

Web Design

Just like a customer getting a first impression of your business through the shop window, impressions matter online too. Customers want to know they can trust you before they use your services.

Having a website that looks friendly, professional and easy to use is the foundation of a digital strategy. Without a website, you might struggle to maintain a trusted reputation, and your brand will not gain the recognition it deserves in order to compete with your competitors.

A digital agency that specialises in web design will create:

• The design
• Web pages
• Website layout
• Easy-to-use navigation
• Call to actions

Often, a digital marketing agency with expertise in web design may also employ graphic designers, photographers and videographers to ensure your website looks slick and modern, and accurately represents your brand in an appealing way to your customers.

Some web design agencies are able to build your website with other digital marketing tools in mind, such as advising you on the best PPC and SEO practices to further advance your brand’s digital marketing.

All of these essential tools will help you attract and show your target audience why they should choose your business over others.

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is a form of marketing that works to rank your business as high as possible on a search engine results page, such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. An SEO agency will use the following techniques to attract and improve your customer’s experience when they visit your website:

• Keyword research - What are users searching for, what are they trying to achieve (known as “intent”), what are competitors ranking for, what are you not ranking for, which search terms are good for conversions vs brand awareness, etc
• Website blog content - When done well, high-quality blog content can be a great way to both widen the scope of searches (keywords) which you appear for and demonstrate your expertise on a given subject or industry
• Assessment of metadata - Whilst search engines can and often do re-write metadata on the fly to better align with a user’s search intent, it’s still important to carefully optimise metadata, Optimising the title tag or meta description, for example, can have a significant impact on improving click-through-rates (CTRs) which can lead to more traffic or click-conversions without even necessarily changing ranking!
• Backlink audits - Backlink audits involve looking at and analysing the inbound link profile of your site vs competitors. Who is linking to you currently, are they good quality links, are there sites linking to your competitors that could also link to you, are the links relevant to your industry or subject matter, etc
• Link building - Whilst backlink audits are focused on analysis, link building is all about implementation and working to secure inbound links from high-quality external sources. Link building used to be one of the tactics that saw the biggest impact on SEO. The rationale was that a link from one site to another could be interpreted as a “vote” for that site; the original thinking was that site owners would not link to sites they didn’t believe in. However, as with many tactics, it was widely abused and thankfully the weighting of link-building has lessened somewhat in recent years. Link building is still a powerful tool, but can be very time-consuming to perform well.

When done successfully, an SEO expert is able to tweak your website in a constructive way that will improve rankings, generate organic traffic, and as a result, increase leads for your business. Although it may sound like a straightforward process, it is always changing as the algorithms adapt in an ever-evolving process aimed at improving user experience.

There are controversial opinions on just how effective SEO can be. In a generation where the algorithm is not always clear, the aim of positioning your website at the top of a SERP is not guaranteed, and it can be a difficult task; which is why a professional SEO agency is needed.

PPC

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows you to pay a fee in order to display your website on the top of a search engine result page. It can be used to simply raise awareness of your brand, generate new leads, bring more traffic to your site, and grow conversions.

PPC agencies are responsible for creating, planning, researching and monitoring campaigns for your business. With this type of advertising, you are able to track clicks and conversions, drive traffic, and understand the customer’s behaviour. Additionally, an agency can measure the success of which campaigns worked well, adjusting accordingly to the ones that are not competing as well.

Unlike SEO, you can reach the top of the search engines immediately with paid ads - so long as they’re set up correctly. It’s a quick-win strategy that has long-term cost implications.

Content Marketing

Although the term is broad, content marketing is a great way to speak to your customers and increase your online visibility. A digital marketing agency can achieve this through developing and distributing helpful content that will benefit your target audience.

Examples of content marketing include:

• Blogs: Writing an article about a subject that you specialise in helps build a trusted relationship between you and your customer. In fact, 70% of people would rather learn about a company through blogs rather than advertising.
• Newsletters: If your customers sign up to your newsletter, you have the green light to inform them all about what your business has to offer. Regularly engaging with your customers reminds them of your business.
• Social Media: Use your social media platforms wisely and you will be able to build personal relationships with your customers. Regularly engaging via likes, comments and shares boosts your reputation and welcomes new followers and leads.
• Emails: If your content on email is not up to the audience’s standards, you’ll find yourself in their email bin very quickly! Having a clear, compelling message of why you’re emailing can help keep your customers reading.
• Videos: On average, people in 2023 are watching videos for a duration of 17 hours a week. With the boom of the social media app, TikTok, online users have become accustomed to learning through the medium of video. Whatever type of video you create, make sure you tell a good story, establish your brand, and reach your audience - all in a few short minutes!
• Images: Make your brand stand out! Clear representation of your logo, brand colours and sharing format helps your brand stand out - and builds recognition with new leads.

Social Media

Fun fact - at least 71% of customers who had a good experience with a brand using social media are more likely to recommend the business to others. Since the pandemic, using social media has become stronger than ever before. If your brand has a presence on popular platforms (Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok), you are more likely to engage with your customers at every step of their buying journey.

A social media marketing agency can help you achieve this. Their responsibility is to support businesses with the creation and distribution of a digital marketing campaign for social media. They will also measure what works well, and what does not, while also working on:

• Attracting a target audience
• Branding
• Campaign creation
• Customer interaction
• The Business Ethos
• Social media management

Social media marketing can be performed organically, or through paid ads, depending on your business goals.

Organic social media works through free content (using platforms to post photos, stories, videos, etc.) that people are able to share with each other. If your business uses this type of social media marketing, you will attract:

• Your organic reach (your followers)
• Followers’ followers
• People who click on any hashtags you use

For example, if you were a local photographer and you wanted to share your portfolio with your customers, posting images on social media is a fantastic way to naturally show your profession to attract your target audience.

Paid social media is a way for brands to pay money to social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, etc. to show their services. Their content is shared with a new targeted audience in mind. The advertisements are carefully curated to users who may be interested in the product or service.

Paying social media platforms to showcase your business is a quick way to attract new followers, promote a new deal and drive conversions.

While organic social media can nurture customer relationships at a simple level, paid social media marketing attracts a larger audience in a more targeted fashion.

Email Marketing

Reaching out to your customers by email not only helps you regularly engage with them, but it also gives you the opportunity to get in touch to let them know about your latest products, deals or general brand awareness. It is fast, simple and cost-effective. However, get it wrong and you’ll end up in their recycling bin! Even though you may not directly make a sale through an email, it is a gateway to strengthen the dynamic between your business and the audience you are trying to reach.

A digital marketing agency that can help your business grow through email marketing will identify a customer journey. They will produce emails to your customers that are planned to appeal directly to the individual. Then, they will construct creative ways to gain their attention, through the following:

• Newsletters
• Customer service
• Promotional content

Influencer Marketing

The term ‘influencer marketing’ dates back to the early 18th Century, but it is not something that has become an official way for companies to use until approximately 2010. Influencer marketing works as a collaboration between your company and someone who holds a high social media presence. If you employ a digital marketing agency that works with influencers, they will be able to promote your products and services through their own profile; helping you generate more leads, promote your brand and attract new followers - depending on your target demographic.

Digital PR

In a more digital age, you have greater chances of creating promotions that are better suited online. While regular PR features print-based promotions, digital PR allows you to build more relationships with journalists and customers online, over a greater radius.

If you choose to employ a digital marketing agency that focuses on digital PR, they will:

• Create compelling campaigns
• Organise press releases
• Reach out to journalists
• Schedule interviews
• Publish online content

By promoting your business with digital PR, you are able to gain more online authority to showcase what you do, increase your reputation and let customers discover more about your company.

Why work with a digital agency?

From boosting your online presence to improving the way you engage with your target audience online, collaborating with a digital agency can be a strategic game-changer for your business. Knowledge is power, so hiring professionals who are experts in this field will help you maximise the reach, profitability and success of your company’s marketing.

Beyond Your Brand is a digital marketing agency based in Oxfordshire. We help businesses large and small across our county and beyond to reach new heights through:

• Google Analytics
• Content Marketing
• PPC
• SEO
• Social Media
• Web design and development

To increase your brand’s digital potential and drive more traffic to your business, contact us today.