Choosing The Right Marketing Agency Doesn’t Have To Be Hard
Developing trusted, long-lasting, and fruitful relationships in business can be tricky. When it comes to choosing a digital marketing agency for healthcare businesses, things can get especially complex. The fact of the matter is, when you partner with an agency, you are often:
- Purchasing a product you can’t really see
- Taking a leap of faith that you’ll get a decent ROI
- Assuming that communication will be consistent and clear
- Hoping that your campaigns will be tailored to your needs
- Presuming you’ll receive recommendations for ongoing campaign improvements
Now, high-quality, growth-oriented agencies will deliver on the above concepts. Some will even go above and beyond those things. But until you actually have that experience you’re putting your organization in a vulnerable position, one that you’re hoping you won’t have to sever due to poor results or poor communication.
We believe that your relationship with your digital marketing agency is critical to your success, and that you have a better shot at achieving growth when your partnership is built on a foundation of transparency, communication, and accountability.
So, with that in mind, here are our recommendations for how you can find the right digital marketing agency for your medical or healthcare organization.
Give Yourself Options That You Can Compare
I’d recommend that you reach out to at least three agencies for proposals. This exercise will give you all sorts of valuable information, including but not limited to the content in the proposals themselves.
You’ll also gain insight about their:
- Professionalism — How well do they understand your business, your goals, and how their work can support you?
- Communication skills — Are they speaking to you about your business and your needs in your language, or in jargon that is difficult to decipher?
- Respect for your time — Is their communication, their follow-up, and the proposal itself coming to you in a timely fashion, or do you feel like you’re waiting on them? This matters!
Again, the content in the proposal itself really matters — of course it does! — but those seemingly small experiences surrounding the proposal really matters, too, because it sheds light on how these agencies operate, and how they might treat you if you were an actual client.
Rank the proposals in order of your preference, take note internally of how you feel about their communication, timeliness, and professionalism, and continue the conversations from there.
Beware of the Hard Sell
This is incredibly important, both for you as the client and for the agencies that you’re considering partnership with. There’s a big difference, in my opinion, between being courted and being sold.
You need to figure out if you’re the right fit for each other, and if this agency is more focused on closing than they are on relationship building, then odds are things aren’t going to work out in the long run.
Doesn’t matter if it’s personal or professional: Relationships built on high-pressure demands have a tendency to fall apart fast, and in this instance, having your agency relationship fall apart so unceremoniously is a bad thing.
It delays your ability to run successful campaigns. You’re likely missing out on all sorts of client opportunities. This diminishes your bottom line and prevents you from achieving your goals. What’s more, it probably makes it hard for you to trust your next agency relationship. You end up operating with a sense of suspicion vs. trusting that they have your back. Not good!
I believe that the rapport between you and your agency should be comfortable. You don’t have to become friends, per se, but you just might have that level of trust, too!
At the very least, both parties should be equally excited about the partnership. You deserve to work with an enthusiastic account person who:
- Regularly follows up to ensure that all of your questions are answered
- Regularly provides valuable recommendations for improving your campaigns
- Treats your marketing investments as they would their own
In a nutshell: An account person who contacts to share that your “offer is going to expire if you don’t sign up in the next 24 hours—HURRY UP AND SIGN THE CONTRACT!!!” is someone you want to avoid.
Too Much Jargon Is Too Much Jargon
We’re marketers, so admittedly, we’re all guilty of the occasional dip into marketing speak. It comes with the territory. However, too much jargon can make a person feel isolated. I don’t feel that it’s a way to make our clients feel comfortable and I’m wary when peers speak exclusively in technical language.
A client-first agency should empower you by communicating in terms that are meaningful to you and provide the context you need to make informed decisions about your marketing investments.
Were we to work with you, I would ask you something like, “What does a successful agency partnership look like to you?” so you can put your expectations in your terms. This helps us meet you where you are, define goals, and create a plan that supports your mission and goals.
A Good Agency Will Say No To You Sometimes
Any business wants to be profitable. But making a buck shouldn’t be the priority when integrity is at stake. Here’s what I mean:
Formada is an incredibly talented team of digital marketing professionals — our results prove that — however, we don’t do everything, and we’re very honest about that. We weren’t designed to do everything, and we don’t pretend to.
In that sense, we’re very comfortable with saying that we’re not the right agency for the job when it comes to certain tactics, and we’ll happily recommend other specialists that we know who could.
We’re also going to speak up if we think a tactic isn’t the best one for your business. We’ll give you our honest opinion while knowing that, at the end of the day, you’re the client and it’s your business and that you have the final say. But we didn’t create Formada to become “yes men” — we’re here to do great, effective work, and so we’ll speak up if we think we’re going down the wrong path together.
At Formada, we work really hard to exceed our client’s expectations. We believe that the best relationships begin with a solid foundation of respect and strong communication.
Want to see if Formada is a good fit for you? We are a digital marketing agency for healthcare, and we just might be the right fit for your business and its goals. Contact us today to learn more about our team, our services, and most importantly, how we can work together to give you the best possible results for your digital marketing campaigns.