Digital Marketing Agency Blunders: 5 Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make

Digital marketing agency blunders happen! Mistakes are an integral and rather unpleasant part of life. This also applies to marketing. As the number of different marketing campaigns increases, so do the chances of flaws and blunders appearing in them. As an owner or a specialist of a digital marketing agency, you may find some of them ridiculous. Others will sound more critical and encourage you to rethink the implementation of the marketing strategies.

Agency Vista has compiled five common digital marketing agency blunders to avoid. Let’s go!

5 Digital Marketing Agency Blunders To Avoid

1. Focusing on anything but a client

Before you start working, regardless of whether it is the building of a landing page or a full-service marketing consulting, you should ask yourself a simple question: “Who is my client?”. No doubt, you can search for a corporate website or social presence, but you need to get a broad picture. For advertising campaigns to be effective, you need to dive into the client’s business. It is simple. There is no other way now. Internet marketing has changed, and so has the approach to business.

For a marketing agency, it is essential to get clear answers to the following questions for your client. 

• What customer problem are you solving? 
• Why do customers choose you over others? How do you differ from others? 
• What are the motives for purchasing your product? 
• Where do your customers go if they do not buy from you? 

If you have a chance to try your client’s product/service or talk to those who did, you will better understand it inside and out. Visiting a client’s office is also an excellent idea to feel whom you partner with.

This is the basis of any marketing agency’s work and the only way to convey useful information to the clients’ target audience, distinguish a brand from the competition, and achieve an award-winning performance.

2. Setting unclear objectives and goals

Setting goals in digital marketing is a primary task. Without understanding the goals, building a competent, comprehensive work and forming a strategic vision is impossible. You compete for the audience’s attention and try to gain trust. Is it possible to achieve with no clear objectives? We do not think so. Moreover, it is not enough to see the final destination; it is essential to understand which points you need to pass and where to turn to get to the right place.

SMART goal-setting technology is used in many areas of life and business, including marketing. In short, it is an acronym – each letter defines a criterion for the effectiveness of your goal.

• Specific. No vague phrases like “increase sales” or “launch a new product.” The first criterion must be precise, evident to all performers, and unambiguous. This is where the rest of the criteria are used to check for reachability, relevance, and others.
• Measurable. An essential condition for completing a task is to track progress until it is completed. The goal should be formulated in such a way that it is possible to divide it into parts or understand where its end is. Use numerical indicators, including those based on KPI.
• Attainable. The goal should be complex enough to take the sales department and the company to a new quality level. At the same time, your marketing goal needs to be realistic and achievable to be successful.
• Relevant. The result should correspond to the current strategic course of the company and rely on its advantages. For example, if the main source of leads in the company is organic traffic, then this channel should be a primary one to attract more customers.
• Time-bound. The movement to the intended result must fit into a specific schedule; otherwise, the task may lose relevance over time, and the effectiveness will also suffer. The term can be a week, a month, a quarter, a year, or several years. It is essential to divide long-term goals into medium-term and short-term ones.

3. Having an unprofitable pricing structure

The pricing structure of an advertising agency is the most important component of the marketing policy. Its essence is to determine the prices that ensure the agency’s survival in market conditions. Any digital agency should determine the break-even point and calculate the profitability of services, choose the pricing methods that the agency will follow, and determine the pricing strategy in the advertising market.

We all know that a good project requires time, money, and appropriate tools. Unfortunately, some agencies, especially those specializing in paid search and social from another field, can face a huge problem of an unprofitable pricing structure.

Instead of risking, an agency should consider charging its customers a percentage of their ad spend. This approach encourages client growth: the more efficient a client’s account is, the more they will pay, the more they will earn, the more your agency will make. It is a win-win solution since you provide more value to the customer, the percentage-of-spend model fairly compensates you.

4. Spending too much time on reporting

According to HubSpot, agency staffers spend around four or five hours per client each month reporting on digital.” Reporting itself is good, but you can achieve the same result through some automation without wasting most of your valuable time. No doubt, the reports are essential to the clients, but they rarely spend more than a few minutes looking through them.

The introduction of marketing automation technologies is one of the fastest-growing trends. The advantages of marketing automation lie in quite banal things: saving time and resources (primarily money) for performing routine actions and optimizing all business processes.

Reporting tools help improve productivity and can make a considerable contribution to your company’s overall business performance. However, it is crucial to understand which reporting tool you need. There is no perfect set of tools for all marketers — they need to be selected based on the specific situation and the available budget. 

5. Managing multiple clients from the same Google Ads account

Many agencies still make the mistake of using the same account for multiple customers. They are looking for an easy and no-hassle solution when building marketing campaigns in a single Google Ads account. We are sure you do not want to come across such issues and pain. 

The MCC (My Client Center) is an account designed for agencies and advertisers that work with multiple clients. It allows you to create and combine client accounts with manager ones and has its own hierarchy regulating access rights.

So, if you plan to work with more than one client or have several websites and projects, then your choice is the MCC. If you use multiple channels to manage accounts, please use any third-party tool, e.g., WordStream Advisor.

Conclusion 

Now when you have covered these five common digital agency mistakes, think about your own processes. Digital marketing agencies, like any other business, will always face difficulties and blunders. This may range from creating the best culture to operating with the top tools and software. Follow our tips suggested above and learn from others’ mistakes!