My marketing agency keeps telling me everything is fine, but I have no clients

For many people with little experience in marketing, evaluating the performance of the marketing agency they hired is usually a big problem.

As it is to be expected, there are many agencies that fail at achieving the expected results, but they still want to keep client loyalty through false expectations or results that will never happen. 

Nevertheless, there’s a few things that can be considered red flags for a professional marketing agency. So, if you are one of those clients that is tired of waiting for the promised results and you feel like your investment has been wasted, this article will help you identify if the digital marketing agency you hired is doing a good job.

It doesn’t matter if they say that everything is fine, in marketing, as in many fields, results come from accomplished objectives and not from fake promises. Read until the end to find out. 

Table of contents:

• How can I know if I selected the correct marketing agency?
• How to evaluate the results of a digital marketing campaign
• “Everything is fine”, but still no clients. What to do?

How can I know if I selected the correct marketing agency?

Achieving success online is the most common objective in any business, no matter the area. Without a doubt, choosing a digital marketing agency is the best option. But even though there are thousands of options available, finding one that’s worth it is not easy. Which is why before choosing it, you must consider certain parameters any professional agency must have. 

If you have gone through the process of hiring a marketing agency, this is some of the info you must pay attention before making your choice: 

• Previous work and important clients: A well known agency with verified clients is much more reliable
• Website and social media: Their digital platforms must be impeccable, it’s their specialty after all
• Method used with their clients: Investigate about the internal processes for each of their clients, what info they need and how they use it. 
• Progress presentation: It is important to have a clear understanding of how the company presents their progress reports and the estimated time those will be submitted.
• Work team: It is recommended to know the professional team that will be part of the project execution  

If your agency fulfills all those requirements, you can be certain that you have chosen an agency that, at least has the basic specifications required to provide an optimal service.

But now we arrive to the difficult part: The results

How to evaluate the results of a digital marketing campaign

If you want to check that the work done by a digital marketing agency is effective, you must consider many factors, specially their KPI’s. But you can start by focusing on these three: 

• Return of investment

The most important one, the ROI (return of investment) will show you the percentage of the investment you have received back. Have your earnings increased since you started the campaign? 

• Traffic vs Bounce Rate

If users found your website, they entered and quickly left, it is a clear sign that your content needs to be modified, as it doesn’t bring value to your potential clients.

• Proposed objectives vs Real objectives

Basically, you must ask yourself: Has the agency kept their promise? Have they achieved the main objective of the campaign? If the answer is no and the time elapsed is longer than the one initially proposed, it’s very likely you’re not using the correct strategy.

“Everything is fine” But still no clients. What to do?  

Digital marketing is all about the conversion of the proposed objectives. Without a doubt, if the objective of your campaign was to gain clients and you still haven’t got any, it’s reasonable to think that your agency hasn’t done their job

But before reaching that conclusion, you must consider other factors

• Length of the campaign

Getting concrete results in the digital world takes more than a few days. Some objectives require strategies to keep going for a while before they are reached. For example, positioning a website in the first places of a search can take between six months and a year until you can see tangible results. 

Remember that getting clients is a task that requires positioning, capturing and loyalty strategies. Plus branding resources that let you generate a greater reliability on your potential client. All of that can take between 3 and 9 months 

• The competition on your segment

Some segments are more competitive than others. Therefore, the effort for reaching goals (clients, positioning, traffic, among others) must be strong and long-lasting. 

For example, it will be easier to achieve your goals if you have a clothing store in a small city and your objective is to gain more clients and better positioning there, compared to positioning your online global store that directly competes with giants like Amazon, Shein or Alibaba. 

• The attributes of your business next to the rest of the competitors

This might be the most controversial point, and of course it doesn’t apply to every case. Marketing by itself does not guarantee the success of a business that doesn’t have the required attributes to differentiate itself from the rest.

These attributes can be the price, quality of the product or service, buying experience from users, post-sale service, customer service, among others. If your direct competitors offer better experience/quality/price, it is likely that the campaign will not succeed, no matter how well it was planned.

Although, it is the duty of any agency to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each brand or business when they make a marketing plan that adapts to their necessities. Therefore, it is a scenario that should have already been discovered. 

In a nutshell, the success of a digital marketing campaign is based on the fulfillment of objectives in a certain window of time. The agency must present the appropriate information that demonstrate the performance of the campaign and of each conversion achieved.

Now what are you waiting for? Contact us. We have verifiable results to show you!