If you have a business or a brand you want to grow, you’re likely going to depend on a digital marketing strategy. Of course, this means creating an efficient one for your company, which is something that isn’t exactly easy to do alone. If you have a marketing budget dedicated to growing your brand, you might want to consider getting a digital marketing expert to meet your business needs. If you’re already in this process of thinking, then that’s great – but then again, knowing you need a digital marketing expert and getting one can be quite tricky. Below are tips to finding a digital marketing expert for your business.

Digital Marketing: What Does Your Expert Need To Know?

Before we proceed to finding ways on finding the digital marketing expert for you, it’s important to establish a few facts. It’s said that the most efficient marketing channels to date include user experience, ecommerce, email marketing, marketing technology, mobile marketing, social marketing, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), and search engine optimization (SEO). These are a lot of options to choose from, and options your expert should be able to determine if they can or can’t help with your company needs regardless if they’re an Indianapolis digital marketing expert, or if they’re based somewhere. If your digital marketing expert aspirants have knowledge on these matters, then you can proceed to grilling them on the other tips below.

Your Digital Marketing Expert: Finding The Right One

Finding the perfect digital marketing fit for your company is like finding the right employee for any job. Your digital marketing expert should have a particular set of skills gathered across their career that would help them be able to help you find the right direction when it comes to your brand’s identity and awareness. Here are a few tips to spot the one for you:

Assess your brand’s marketing needs, objectives: Perhaps the most important aspect of searching for a digital marketing expert is to make sure you’re aware of your marketing needs and objectives. While your digital marketer should be able to make this assessment for you, you yourself should be aware of your brand goals, especially in terms of your growth and recognition:

• Assess your brand carefully and monitor your current digital marketing efforts. Make sure you get the hard numbers and observation from your team – just what went right, and what went wrong?
• Ask yourselves – if you had the opportunity to change an aspect of your digital marketing strategy, what would it be? Is this something fundamental to the strategy that you may have to start from scratch, or is this something you can replace with something easily?
• Based on the above, do you think you need a completely new marketing campaign? If so, what are elements from the previous campaign that should absolutely be there? Assess if you need a change in the color scheme, the logo, the placement of things in your website, the kind of channels you choose, and others.
• If it’s a minor change, just what else do you want to change? What aspects of these “minor” changes do need changing, and why do you think they’re essential? Knowing these and being able to explain these to your potential marketing expert clearly can get them in your creative mind and be able to assess your needs better.
• What exactly are your objectives in terms of returns and profit? Just how do you want your channels and website to perform, and what sorts of results are you expecting? Do you want to earn more money from sales? Do you want to build a following? Your marketer’s approach will depend on how you answer this.

Evaluate your digital marketer options: By the time you evaluate your own brand’s needs, it’s time to consider your digital marketer options. A lot of factors come into play when it comes to checking out the availability of digital marketers in the area – aside from your goals, these depend on location, team size, skill sets, certification, or even costs:

• Having been clear with what you’re looking for, it’s time to evaluate your options. First, decide if you want your marketers to be locally-based, or if you’re willing to hire from something either outside your region, or through a digital service – like freelancers or other companies abroad. These can drastically affect the difficulty of your search, as sometimes these kinds of services can be easy or hard to find depending on your geographical reference.
• Are you looking to hire contractors or are you looking to hire and build a team in-house? Again, this will subtract a lot of people and groups from your shortlist, so be sure to have this clarified.
• What are the kinds of services you’re expecting? Assume that some of the needs and objectives you have won’t be met – what are needs and objectives that are absolutely necessary? Find companies that meet those criteria as well.

Recheck the black and white: There is most likely someone in your slate of shortlisted digital marketing experts that will be the “best” fit for your company. However, don’t hire them immediately, and instead try to assess the black and white first. Polish the potential terms and conditions you’ll be having, including quotation, pricing, and other important parts of their employment with you:

• When you do have your own prospects to consider, try to ask them exactly what they can offer to you specifically. Of their entire slate of services, what are the things they are sure that they can offer your brand based on the background you’ve given them?
• Do be sure to ask for an initial quotation of their services. Be sure to elaborate if the quotation they give is a fixed rate or an hourly rate, as these two can drastically affect the budget you have. Make sure to ask if there are extra fees you’re expected to pay that aren’t in the quotation.
• When it comes to the equipment and the hardware and software, are you supposed to provide these, or are they going to bring in their own materials? Who’s going to be in charge of repairs and maintenance?
• Who exactly are you going to work with throughout your entire campaign/s? Are you going to work with the exact people you’re working with, or are you going to be assigned a different team from the company? What are their qualifications?
• If the rates they gave are beyond your budget, try to negotiate if they want to accept the offer you want to give. Do remember that should you offer such a deal, there might be services that they won’t be able to offer.

Check their digital marketing proficiency: When you do get to choose your shortlist of digital marketing experts, try as much as possible to check their digital marketing proficiency. This doesn’t simply mean assessing what they know, but rather assessing whether or not their knowledge, skill set, and approach does work for your specific needs, as specified in the above:

• Just what exactly is their opinion of your current digital marketing strategy and brand presence? They should be able to give at least an overview of what’s right and what’s wrong while they review your company and brand on their own.
• Ask them to create a pitch for you on what they’re going to do should you hire them. It doesn’t need to be a perfect pitch, the point is for you to determine whether or not the both of you are on the same page. Did the plans they initially setup presented things that fit your vision of the company?
• Take note of how they explained their pitch to you – is this something you can work with? Mind the language, the tone, and the expressions. Are they confident with what they’ve done? What is the level of research they’ve provided when it comes to this initial pitch? Can you work with this kind of method?

Open for adjustments, innovation, improvement: When you do choose a digital marketer, make sure they’re open to adjustments, innovation, and improvement. Various technological changes and marketing trends tend to spice up any industry, and those capable of adapting to market changes can have bigger chances of establishing their brand much better. Your digital marketing expert should be able to recognize these trends and be able to help them work for your company:

• When you do get to hire a digital marketer, make sure you’re aware of exactly how they’re going to assess the progress of their campaigns. How often are the reports going to be? How will they monitor their achievements?
• Assess whether or not your digital marketer is open for adjustments and improvements. The campaigns they build for you should be adjustable on the fly, as sometimes digital marketing trends can go out the window and strategies have to be built from scratch – take for instance various instances when Google updates its algorithms without announcements. Your marketers should be able to adjust.
• Be sure you’re aware of exactly how things are being done as your campaigns progress. Will there be a document where all changes in websites and materials are going to be monitored?

The Bottomline: Digital Marketing Is About The Objective

Digital marketing can become such a huge gamechanger in the realm of business – especially if you’re aware of what you’re doing, what your objectives are, and how you want your brand to be recognized in your industry. However, acquiring the right digital marketing expert for your business can be quite the challenging endeavor, as after all you need to be able to find the perfect fit for your company’s vision and your digital marketing professional’s skill sets. The tips to finding a digital marketing expert for your business above could hopefully help you understand that one of the most important elements in finding the right digital marketing partner is to find someone aware of your objectives and is willing to try out multiple approaches to meet your particular demands. A professional consistent with his strategies but flexible in terms of adjusting to trends and technologies can be quite a lifesaver in terms of your digital marketing.

Melinda Streepe is a digital marketer with a penchant for writing stories, and she combines her passion with writing and her training in digital marketing to create informative yet entertaining pieces on various technical aspects of the marketing and advertising world. As a contributor for High Mark SEO, she likes making sure her pieces are not just understandable by her audiences, but are also enjoyable to read that they want to come back for more. She loves baking during her free time.