How to Choose the Right B2B Marketing Agency for Your Business

5 Factors to Consider When Choosing a B2B Marketing Agency

Choosing the right marketing agency is a time-consuming task, but it’s important that you take the time to research different agencies and choose one that best suits your business and industry. It’s also important to ask plenty of questions during introductory meetings to get a better feel for the person or people you will be working with regularly. Once you’ve narrowed it down, evaluate their pricing structure and decide if it’s affordable for your budget. Most importantly, make sure the agency fully aligns with your company’s values and culture. With these tips in mind, it shouldn’t be too hard to find the right marketing agency for your business.

Our experiences tell us that these factors are especially important:

• Experience & talent of the team members: Marketing agencies use a variety of staffing strategies & partnerships to try and deliver on their projects and retainers. Make sure your contact, sometimes called an account manager or team lead, is an experienced marketing professional that adds to the conversation. Your main contact has to have a strong skill set & be able to strategize with you for the best results. Watch out for agencies that use young marketers fresh out of college that just don’t have the experience needed yet to deliver high quality work.

   

• Size and focus of the agency: Is the agency big or small? What do they focus on offering? Smaller agencies that have a smaller client load, can, and often do, deliver great results. Larger agencies with more staff might be appealing, but that will inherently drive up their pricing due to overhead. If you have a big budget & need a full team of marketing professionals, larger agencies might be where you want to start. See what aspects of marketing that the agency focuses on. Are they good at social media posts, search engine optimization, influencer marketing, ppc, website design, public relations, content marketing or inbound marketing? Compare what they are good at with your marketing needs. Watch out for agencies that are overbooked… they will have a hard time delivering due to being over capacity & possibly inexperienced team members.

   

• The kind of results you can expect from the agency: Agencies have to have some sort of on-boarding process to gather information and learn as much as they can about your business. Don’t expect much for the first 2-3 months, as the marketing team will be collecting information, setting up workflows and processes, and starting creative and strategy work. Unless it is a true disaster, I recommend you try to give the agency 3- 6 months to gain some traction and start delivering good metrics for you. There is no magic button to push to deliver instant ROI, but be sure to set aside time for progress reports.

   

• Niche or target industries the agency has experience in:  During your selection process, see if the marketing firm has experience in your industry. Ramp up time will be quicker and content creation will typically be better if the team already has a basic understanding of your industry. This is really helpful, but not always necessary for success.

   

• Your time & engagement is CRUCIAL: Be ready to present your goals as clearly as you can.  Going into the selection process, make sure you have spent the time to clarify your marketing needs and your target audience. If you need help with that, let the marketing agency walk you through your current state and then propose a “future state” strategy for you. There is never a “right time” to work on your marketing strategy & needs, however, working with an agency is a process. The more information you can provide, the better the partnership will be. Be prepared to give the agency as much info as you can, they HAVE to understand your business to do successful marketing for you.