At least once a week I talk to a business that had a rough run in digital marketing. There is a long list of reasons why and most of them are easily and perfectly avoidable. From bad digital marketing advice, to terrible execution support and lack of analytics, much can go wrong. Some companies get bad digital marketing services because they themselves are bad partners. So let’s look at how NOT to hire a digital marketing agency.

10 Traps to Avoid When You Hire a Digital Marketing Agency

Forgot to Clarify Objectives

What will success look like to you? The most common answer I hear is, “engagement.” Or, a “more cohesive” approach.

Let’s start with the latter – cohesiveness is not a business or a marketing objective.  It’s a way of doing business. So let’s add this to the list of “traits” you’re looking for in your new digital marketing agency’s approach.

Also “engagement” is not and should not be your leading objective. “Engagement” is too much and too little. Be honest about what you truly want and need. If you can’t openly share that you hope to get more customers, look better to leads, make friends with the media, look good to your boss, etc, if you can’t be clear and specific, if you can’t trust your partners with the truth, you are doomed to cycles and cycles of bad marketing.

Ignored Values and Personality

Some businesses only want a promise to meet objectives. And a low price. But what if your new marketing agency will meet your objectives but in an unethical way? Or what if they meet your objectives and your objectives weren’t actually good for your business? What if they get the job done but never challenge you to do more?

So before you start looking for an agency, write down the qualities of people you work well with. Values, passions and skill-sets will all play a part in how well you’ll work together. Add that “cohesiveness” element back in as well. This is the right place for it.

Don’t start your search process until you have a final and agreed-upon list of business and relationship objectives.

Didn’t Do Your Research

“We’re talking” to 5 companies. Why 5? Wouldn’t it be easier if you could narrow it down to 2? If you have a hard time narrowing the choices down to two, most probably there are other problems with the process. I know about 10 very good digital marketing agencies in Chicago and they are all different. They have different specialties, passions, processes, pricing etc. They have different strengths and weaknesses. No five of them fit in the same bucket.

Or maybe you just picked 5 companies and didn’t do any additional research?

This is like hiring employees. Do your research and ask for referrals, not necessarily in that order. An analysis by Ernst & Young found that employees found through referrals, “perform better, stay longer and are quicker to integrate into our teams.” Same applies to partner agencies.

Which of these companies look qualified and a good match for your list of requirements?

Didn’t Follow Recommendations

The other day a friend told me they recommended two companies to a lead, and the lead came back with three different company they were considering. It reminded me of something I learned by managing teams of people – don’t ask for recommendations unless you plan to listen to those recommendations.

Looked for the One-Stop Shop

The digital marketing agency that is great at everything is a myth. The agency that can help you with everything even if not great at everything is a myth too. Just as an individual can’t be good at everything, or do everything, an agency can’t either. You want expertise and to get expertise in every area of marketing you’ll have to hire multiple agencies and consultants.

Getting good at marketing takes years of experience. But if we try to do everything we don’t gain enough experience in any particular area. We’d be ok at everything and not great at anything. Don’t settle for anything short of great.

Fell for the RFP Trap

John Warrillow called it “Death by RFP.” He lists seven reasons to not respond to RFPs, including:

• they cut your margins,
• they’re rigged and
• they undermine the company’s sellability.

RFPs are not just expensive to agencies, they’re expensive to your business.

Services are not commodities to be traded based on price and a set of compliance parameters. For these and many other reasons some of the best in the digital space don’t enter RFPs. You will be excluding some of the more innovative and agile agencies.

Expected the Problem to Go Away On Its Own

If you’re still looking for that great partner, and you’re still using the same process as before, you won’t find a better agency. Change the process. Don’t make me quote Einstein on this one.

Refused to meet

“Send us a proposal first and then we’ll decide.” Do you truly believe you can get more information by reading a typed document than you can get by talking to a person face to face?

In most cases, those who refuse to meet have already decided on hiring someone else. So please don’t ask for a proposal just so you can meet some quota.

Others ask for a proposal just to compare prices.

If you are not interested in a particular agency after an introductory phone call, don’t ask for a proposal. Be honest, disclose there isn’t a fit and move on.

Expected Too Much or Too Little, Too Soon

1. Quick campaign:

We frequently see requests for 3-month projects. There isn’t much a digital agency can do in three months. Maybe some PPC, and only “some” of that. But that’s about it.

You will find agencies who will accept your project and they will take your money and do some work on it. But you won’t get very far.

2. Big numbers fast:

Another trap here is to expect being able to see growth immediately and every month. Or to get thousands of followers on Facebook, in a few months. If you want 100,000 followers by the end of the month, expect to pay $100,000 in Facebook ads, to get them. Otherwise, you have a long road of intensive organic marketing work in front of you. Getting results takes time, work, consistency and relentlessness. It won’t happen over night, but in six months to a year, you’ll have a significant advantage over your competitors.

3. Direct conversions:

Digital marketing is not a direct sales channel. It’s an audience generation and retention channel. Conversions will happen but only from the group that’s ready to convert, and only if your conversion mechanism, such as your website or sales team, are working.

4. Too much Facebook, too little of everything else:

Facebook is the most visible channel to most, so it’s natural to be tempted to focus all attention on it. But spending all of our time on Facebook isn’t enough. Most businesses we talk to tend to gravitate toward Facebook and ignore the other channels. This can be a problem in hiring – look for an agency that has experience in digital not just Facebook.

Forced a lie to satisfy the bosses:

There was a rich discussion about this on SpinSucks, and I highly recommend you read through it.

We get proposal requests with unreasonable asks. Often. “We really need to know exactly how many new followers you will get us.”

Not only that it’s not possible to predict exactly, “number of followers” is also not a very good objective. We’ve seen Facebook pages with more than 100K followers that get barely any website traffic and conversions, and pages with a few hundred followers who frequently visit the website and convert.

But many in the selection process insist on their requirements to be perfectly met. “We have to have a number in there.” Insisting on a lie and bad advice can only lead to one possible outcome – bad marketing.These are just a few of the many problems we’ve seen organizations battle when it comes to hiring a digital marketing agency. No one goes this way through life. However when it comes to business, we try so hard to make the right decisions, we end up making things more complicated than they need to be. Don’t fall for that trap.

Keep the process simple, look for expertise, strong and aligned values, honesty and collaboration. And the ability to turn ideas into proper execution and measurable results.

If you’d like to see a list of top digital agencies, head over to DesignRush. We are proud to be named a top Illinois Digital Marketing Agency.

What other traps do you recommend companies avoid when they hire a digital marketing agency?