1. Introduction to Digital Marketing

Since the development of the digital age in the 1990s, marketing has been taking new shapes and designs. Businesses are rolling their sleeves up to attract and retain customers via websites, search engines, and social media accounts. Meanwhile, customers have risen to turn to the digital realm for problems, solutions, communication, and sharing. Hence, in the 21st century, marketing is more about the customer now than ever. Businesses may not be able to survive without a digital footprint during these years of crisis. They have been investing billions of dollars every year to implement digital marketing strategies in the hope of standing out and being recognized in the competition.

Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, refers to all marketing efforts utilizing the internet and electronic devices. Marketing agencies are companies that provide professional services for other businesses. Over the last decade, global marketing ecosystems have been oversaturated. Despite being a growing separated niche of the traditional marketing strategy known as marketing communications, digital marketing is also used together with other marketing strategies. Marketing agencies tend to be specialized in various niches such as targeting, identifying, segregating, and retaining customer bases on different social media channels. More than 90% of digital marketers agree that social media marketing has been increasingly rising in importance. It has been hard for traditional marketing agencies to transform their businesses to digital marketing-only agencies without specializing in social media marketing or content marketing. However, digital marketing strategies may not need social media at all for some businesses to succeed.

2. The Evolution of Marketing Agencies

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the first advertising agencies were founded, primarily focusing on print advertising. The emergence of radio and television in the 1920s and 1940s led to a new phase in the industry with the creation of new advertising agencies dedicated to the development of work created for audio-visual media. In both cases, advertising agencies began to provide digital marketing services in a less systematic manner, integrating advertising on the Internet, in emails, or on digital billboards into traditional media advertising campaigns; however, these agencies did not compete against the first digital marketing agencies, which specialized exclusively in marketing on the Internet. Digital marketing agencies appeared in the second half of the 1990s as a reaction to changes in consumer behavior generated by digital technology. Online information and communication channels transformed the way consumers search for and evaluate products, easing access to information on product features and prices, on the one hand, and product-related generated content and communication, on the other. The gradual shift of budgets from traditional media to online media laid the foundation for the consolidation of the digital marketing sector in the 2000s.

The passing of time and the gradual integration of digital marketing into the marketing strategies of companies led to the creation of integrated marketing agencies that have grown to become the largest marketing structure within the industry. Digital marketing agencies doubled down on specific areas of the marketing chain, such as public relations or brand content, while others specialized in marketing automation and performance analysis. As such, there is now a wide range of marketing services, with traditional agencies, digital and integrated agencies, and service providers specializing in content generation, analytics, influencers, among others.

3. Key Services Offered by Marketing Agencies

Marketing agencies usually offer a wide range of services, depending on their specialization and expertise, and it is important for businesses to assess these services to evaluate which one will offer its business the best support. The table below lists a few of the services that many marketing agencies offer, along with a short description of each service.

3.1. SEO Services

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is probably one of the most discussed online marketing strategies, as its goal is to make businesses visible to search engines. SEO services provided by marketing agencies may include keyword research, on-page optimization, and link building. The goal of implementing an SEO strategy is to earn higher positions for targeted keywords and drive targeted traffic to the website.

3.2. Content Marketing

SEO is commonly confused with content marketing and while the two services are complementary, they are not the same. Content is the heart of an online marketing campaign and an effective content marketing strategy includes creating valuable, relevant, and compelling content for the target audience.

3.3. Social Media Management

With the growing importance of social networks, a Social Media Management Service aims to promote a business on social networks through profiles, pages, and groups. It creates and shares content, chats with fans, and promotes fan growth.

3.4. Email Marketing

Marketing by email is targeted and cost-effective. Due to its unique targeting capability, email marketing is still considered as one of the most effective online marketing strategies. It provides a great way to reach existing customers and prospects and keep them informed.

3.5. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

PPC Advertising is an advertising technique in which an invoicing platform is used and the advertiser pays only when someone clicks on the ad to go to the website. It can bring large amounts of targeted traffic to a business website.

3.1. SEO Services

SEO, or search engine optimization, plays a vital role in increasing organic traffic from search engines, making it one of the most crucial services offered by marketing agencies. It involves increasing a website’s position in search engine results for search queries that are relevant to the site’s primary business offerings. SEO is a fragmented discipline composed of on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. SEO also comprises local SEO, which aims to optimize a business’s visibility for geographically relevant query results. The popularity of SEO services stems from the fact that search engines are still the largest source of new traffic for most online businesses. It’s no wonder that businesses are so keen to capitalize on this potential, and SEO has become both a science and an art at this scale. SEO services typically include keyword research, information architecture development, on-page SEO optimizations, off-page SEO, technical SEO optimization, and local SEO. SEO consultants work with content teams as well since great content is at the core of most successful SEO campaigns. A good SEO will start with keyword research in order to know which topics to craft content around. For non-branded search queries, SEO presents the best opportunity to generate new traffic for businesses through the addition of new content or the optimization of existing content.

3.2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a vital part of marketing in general, and it has many definitions. It is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

At its core, content marketing’s purpose is to acquire and retain profitable customers. Organizations have to understand that a substantial amount of content – news articles, blogs, pictures, videos, slideshows, status updates – is created daily. Most of this content creation is amateurish and not aligned with the strategic goals of an organization. Forward-thinking organizations realize that to break through the noise, they must create strategic, high-quality content. This means building and supporting a “brand newsroom” of writers, designers, and producers. Content marketing is, therefore, the practice of creating and distributing relevant and engaging content to attract specific target consumers at distinct points in the buying process – with the goal of acquiring and retaining loyal customers.

Although advertising is still the dominant form of marketing, the promotion of products and services is rapidly changing to content-driven marketing, using intellectually appealing, entertaining, or instructive content to engage potential buyers. Content marketing fuels advertisement services such as PPC, SEO, social media marketing, and affiliate marketing, which channel traffic to an organization’s website. If people are interested in an organization’s content – and find value in it – they will trust the organization to deliver similar content in the future. In turn, that will help the organization achieve its goal of gaining and maintaining profitable customers.

3.3. Social Media Management

The first mother agency for a social media management agency was founded in 2012 and now there are more than 90 of them because social media is a very significant channel currently in use by many businesses and brands in their digital marketing communication activities. Digital marketing is not just Pay-Per-Click advertising anymore, the different alternatives and pages that have been opened for these activities are allowing for a much broader view of the options possible, and companies and brands are taking advantage of it. Currently, all businesses, brands, and organizations are in a race for survival, not only corporate but also personal. It is for this reason that we must develop a branding plan that will build a strong brand that survives to the digital marketing attempts we will do in that channel. The branding plan must be included as part of the digital marketing strategy; to do the delivery of branding techniques, it is necessary to use the range of digital channels available: Social Media, Digital Ads, Email, Influencer, and Virtual Communities. Each of these digital channels makes a different contribution to brand equity. It is expected that Social Media is beneficial for brand awareness as well as for brand image; that Digital Ads enhance and sustain brand awareness; Influencer Marketing that focuses on brand consideration and purchase and Community that improves and sustains brand loyalty. Social media marketing agencies or digital marketing service providers take on the responsibility for providing resources and experience to its clients that the brands in-house team may lack. The benefits that these agencies provide include new ideas and initiatives, staffing flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and specialized knowledge.

3.4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is the origin of digital marketing as we know it. In fact, many digital marketing experts consider every other type of online marketing as an extension of email. There are several reasons for this: Email works. Emailing is how businesses have been selling to their customers for the last two decades. In addition, email has an enormous potential reach. Everyone who has internet access has an email address.

Is email marketing dead? Certainly not – in fact, it is up there with Search Engine Marketing as the most effective way to get leads for your online business. It is also true that social media is gaining an ever-increasing share of how users can be contacted and engaged with. As such, using email along with social media to connect with users is likely better than using email alone.

However, the sheer volume of money spent on social media, and the even greater number of businesses that could otherwise be reaching their audience via social media but are unable to, means that social media should be regarded as an enhancement and complement to a website’s email marketing strategy, rather than a replacement for website-based email marketing efforts. No matter how many fancy tools businesses develop to engage customers on social media, the good old email addresses will continue to work as the only truly certain means of brand interaction.

3.5. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a digital marketing model that allows businesses to buy visits to their website rather than earning them organically through search engine optimization. With PPC, marketers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it is a way to buy the highest positions on search engines, resulting in a substantial return on investment. The most common type of PPC is search engine advertising in which advertisers bid on keywords that are relevant to their target market, and their ad commonly appears alongside the list of organic search results.

Because marketers are only charged for their ads when someone clicks on them, they can really make the most of their advertising budgets. Still, PPC advertising can come with its risks, especially for businesses that are inexperienced with the growth model. Marketing agencies with PPC advertising services can help manage and design these paid media campaigns, though businesses can certainly use platforms on their own. In total, companies spent over $210 billion on paid media advertising in 2020, accounting for more than half of total media ad spending. Among those, search engine advertising was the largest individual category, commanding about $143 billion.

4. Understanding Digital Marketing Strategies

A digital marketing strategy is an organizational plan detailing the elements of a digital marketing campaign. It sets guidelines for how a brand or organization connects with its audience, raises awareness of its products or services, and reinforces brand loyalty. Marketers understand that connections with audiences can happen on multiple channels: through a search engine; on their favorite blogs; on social media sites they frequent; and on apps they use daily. Each of these channels provides pathways for organizations to build their brands and loyalty with target audiences. Marketers also know that developing a comprehensive and effective strategy requires more than just a general idea of where and how to reach those audiences. It demands a firm understanding of the audience, an outline of specific goals and objectives, identification of the marketing messages and content that will speak to the audience’s needs and interests, and a selection of the channels that will be most effective in delivering that content.

To help structure the planning process, strategic marketers often use a framework composed of three key foundational components, usually referred to as the 3 Cs: Company, Customer, and Competitors. The 3 Cs serve as the foundation for defining digital marketing priorities, often called the 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. At the center of this framework is the customer. Each of the 3 Cs plays an important role in guiding decisions about the marketing mix: products or services offered, pricing, distribution or place, communication or promotion. The objective is to create a cohesive, synchronized digital marketing strategy developed to meet customer needs while distinguishing the organization from its competitors. This means that all channels and touchpoints along the customer journey need to work together smoothly to maximize brand awareness, increase customer engagement, and drive conversions and sales.

4.1. Defining Target Audiences

To understand how a target audience is constructed, let’s analyze the time-consuming and difficult stage a marketing agency has to build before the actual development of the digital strategy: the definition of the target audience. Conventionally, advertisers have profiled target audiences taking into account variables such as demography, geography, or sociocultural factors. Some international advertising agencies have gone much further in their strategic considerations, creating very ambitious systems to segment and select target audiences. The target audience must be selected in accordance to the objectives of the campaign and according to the reasons that lead people to feel affiliation with a particular brand: the demographic data, however, are not the factors that explain loyalty to a brand. This second great group of segmentation variables is associated with factors of a psychological nature of the target audience: values and lifestyles. This clustered thinking on the basis of a group of people’s psychological affinity tends to be very effective when creating emotions through a message or communication. These models are widely known in strategic planning, but require considerable effort in their implementation since they must provide an adequate number of segments and collect enough information to validate it.

In an ecosystem of immediate and permanent digital data, the development of models to create the target audience makes little sense, or at least it can be supplemented with heuristics. Those methodologies based on big data allow us to accurately select the digital profiles that may be used as references for an advertising communication, because they give us psychographic and behavioral information in real-time, regardless of where they are located, or the demographics they belong to. However, without a brand strategy that identifies its distinctive elements referring to that target audience profile, the big data of the digital media do not guarantee success in the campaign. Analyzing the six initial stages of the digital strategy, makes clear that defining the target audience is a key factor in the first stage, which will be updated throughout the campaign.

4.2. Setting Marketing Objectives

A digital marketing strategy is an essential companion to a business plan, taking the company’s overall business objectives and mission statement, and translating these into how to leverage digital marketing communications, promotions, products, sales, and customer service to meet those objectives. The creation of a focused digital marketing strategy is a crucial step before embarking on any kind of digital program or campaign, to ensure that resources are channeled to the right places. The digital marketing strategy describes how the short-term tactical activities fit into the longer-term digital vision, where the company is moving in the long-term with its digital marketing activities. It also describes why the company is pursuing its digital marketing programs, clarifying the business context so that people involved understand the reasons. A well-defined and thought-out digital marketing strategy will help prevent any wasted time or resources implementing ineffective or misaligned digital marketing activities. The strategy is usually based on an overall marketing plan, describing how digital marketing will contribute to the achievement of the company’s marketing objectives. The digital communication mix will have been specifically tailored to the current relationship stage of the consumer in relation to the product or service.

Marketing objectives define what you are trying to achieve with your marketing activities. Defining these goals allows you to allocate resources, focus your activities, measure their effectiveness, and refine and improve. First and foremost, when setting marketing objectives, think about the bottom line: setting targets in sales or revenue is by far the most common marketing objective. However, marketing objectives can also focus on other measures, such as building awareness, growing revenues, improving customer satisfaction or gaining market share. Indeed, many other business functions will feel the impact of a successful marketing plan, including sales and customer service. Thus, marketing objectives might include customer care targets, such as customer satisfaction, retention, and profitability; sales goals such as volume, revenue, and share; and future financial goals, such as financial impact and shareholder value. Marketing objectives can also be more focused on the communication aspect of marketing rather than the activity itself. These more marketing-focused objectives can include brand and product awareness; image; and brand and product loyalty.

4.3. Choosing Digital Channels

Choosing the digital channels through which to reach customers is one of the most important decisions in creating a digital marketing strategy. Digital channels enable brands to promote their products, generate leads, close sales, and perform a variety of other relevant marketing functions. These channels include owned media such as the brand’s website and mobile apps; earned media such as reviews, shares, and reposts; and paid media such as search ads, display ads, promotional ads on social media, and paid endorsements by influencers. Some channels are focused on promotion, while others provide a more comprehensive marketing capability. For example, a social media profile can be used to share product news, but brands also leverage these channels for customer service and even e-commerce functionality. Different types of channels reach different audience segments. Email is one of the most effective lead-generation tools, and an organization’s own website is the best channel for converting visitors into leads and then purchasers. However, generating traffic can be a challenge, and social media enables brands to help increase the visibility of their owned sites. Display and video ads on other sites can also drive traffic. Given the wide variety of options available, it is important to select the ones that will be most effective for a given business, taking into account the target audience and their preferences; the goals of the strategy; and the available budget. Brands can also apply a multichannel approach, drawing on a combination of owned, earned, and paid channels, along with a mix of different messaging strategies, to reach a target audience. Deciding on a multichannel strategy enables consumers to explore products across channels in a way that is convenient for them, and to transition between channels. In addition to increasing convenience, it has been shown to increase sales and brand loyalty, as visiting more channels provides consumers with more information about products and prospective purchases.

5. The Role of Data in Marketing

Marketing generates a lot of data. This occurs whether a marketing campaign originates in a digital environment or on traditional media. However, the “digitalization” of marketing communication and distribution channels has enabled and propelled marketing agencies to take advantage of data generation in levels before considered unimaginable. Not only do marketing agencies have access to huge volumes of directly generated data, but they have also become experts in the use and development of sophisticated, advanced, and accessible data analysis tools. Agencies have embraced and led the path into Big Data and Data Analytics for marketers. What agencies are enabling brands to now do is that the former, as well as marketers, can develop deeper and richer understandings of customer databases with a breadth and depth beyond that afforded by traditional marketing mix measurement techniques.

The revelations born out of this understanding are now enabling marketers to identify customer groups based on a variety of different behaviors within the high-traffic database segmented customers, as opposed to classic traditional demographics. Alongside the mass personalization promised by respondents to our research, is the promise of one-to-one marketing. The concept of Dynamic Customer Profiling is the new wave spearheaded by agencies with the use of data as the foundation marketing infrastructure. Using advanced data mining capabilities, agencies are combining the advantages of direct marketing and customer relationship marketing with the power of mass media to achieve cost-effective mass personalization and extensive disintermediation. Data at the speed of relevance is increasingly driving marketing strategy, planning, and creative execution. As a result, the average department performance of marketing departments is being led by agencies with uses of knowledge and data that drive real-time market responsiveness.

5.1. Data Analytics

Data analytics is a broad and multidisciplinary concept that describes the process of analyzing vast amounts of data, including structured and unstructured information, in order to make better decisions and drive business performance improvements. This evaluation is done by using algorithms, systems, and machine-learning techniques and a variety of software solutions and programming languages. Due to the generalized availability of big data in the last few decades, its analysis has attracted the attention of scientists, software companies, and business practitioners leading to tremendous developments in the fields of statistics, computer science, mathematics, and engineering. The growth of increasing computing power and cloud computing has enabled a new era in business, in which decision makers can collect, store, and analyze data on-demand and at lower costs.

The properties inherent in big data boost the capabilities of business analytics, such as improved decision making; improved marketing effectiveness; new product, service and internal process innovation; better customer service; cost reductions; and enhanced collaborations. Data analytics allows for synthesizing data that can generate further, increasingly refined data for specific projects, challenges and opportunities. Data analytics can also be applied at each step of the data analysis process, including data mining processes of discovery, data management and interoperability; and data analysis, warehousing and utilization. The increasing popularity of the field of data analytics has resulted in the development of specific areas of expertise for corporate and public organizations. Data analytics, business analytics, business intelligence, data science, marketing analytics, web analytics, and industrial analytics are some examples of domains that connect to the development of the modern field of data analytics.

5.2. Customer Insights

Understanding the motivations and behaviors of its customers is invaluable to any business. Having a deep understanding of customers allows a business to market the right product to the right customer at the right time. Data analytics gives a business the ability to delve deep into the thoughts and actions of its customers, which can result in the gathering of customer insights. Customer insights come from analyzing different types of data, and they help to shape business strategy on the whole, in addition to shaping marketing strategy, as well as customer engagement across multiple channels. The insights can help inform pricing decisions, product and service changes, sales strategies, and communication tactics.

There are many different sources of data that can inform customer insights, including first, second, and third-party customer data. First-party data consists of data that a company owns, including historical sales data, customer service entries, social media interactions, and engagement with web properties. Second-party data includes first-party data that is shared between companies, such as data provided by a media company based on the data that they have collected on their customers. Third-party data involves a third-party vendor collecting data from multiple businesses and websites to create large third-party data sets, and this type of data further enhances first-party data analysis. Each type of data can become a customer insight, which can further customer interaction, engagement, and performance. It is up to marketing agencies to decide which type of data their clients will focus on and which insights can become valuable data points.

6. Collaboration Between Businesses and Agencies

Successful collaboration between a business and a marketing agency is a coalescent endeavor, which is largely dependent on setting realistic expectations for measurable goals, sufficient transparency, and effective communication. In the marketing agency context, the relationship between the agency and the client is often described as a “partnership.” However, for such a partnership to be effective, it must be underpinned by a healthy level of commitment from both parties, recognizing there is mutual accountability. For too many marketing efforts to actually produce success for a business, there must be a high-quality and dedicated team on both the agency side and the business side.

Discontent can arise when agencies are not conducting meetings frequently enough with the clients, sharing progress on the smaller steps required to meet goals, and communicating well with the client. Communication strategies could potentially include in-depth creative guides, regular project updates, and meetings to celebrate wins, among others. Setting expectations is critical for agency-client management. This means setting expectations for goals that are based on analytics, goals that tie in the new campaigns with the core company objectives, and goals that may require time to achieve. It is important to have the client onboard and committed to these results-driven goals, as well as realistic budgets and timelines. This requires having an established understanding of how the agency really works, so the client is not waiting on quick turnaround times for things that require more time than they realize.

6.1. Communication Strategies

The relationship between businesses and agencies in work can be characterized as an ongoing collaboration characterized as intra-organizational, inter-organizational, disjointed, and reciprocal. A feature that differentiates agency work from the more typical example of work organization is the temporary organizational structure such that a project team typically consists of members from the client and agency, but formally working in their own organizational environments. This creates special coordinating challenges that make day-to-day interaction different. In client-agency exchanges, agencies provide specialized resources and become empowered. If clients have a poor experience at the first stage of the screening process, it is unlikely they will continue to the second stage to evaluate more firmly what they want from the agency. The client and agency must be aligned with two goals: building a powerful agency-client alliance, and ensuring that the agency’s core business functions continue efficiently and smoothly over time, even as they evolve along the client life cycle. Successful client-agency collaboration is characterized by five important aspects: cooperation, collaboration, commitment, respect, and the sharing of both intellectual and other resources.

Many successful agencies seem to adopt a generalized logic that seeks to eliminate most of the formalities and make the agency-client relationship as informal as possible, given the constraints of working in two business settings. This extends to areas such as paying bills, which in many agencies has become a very cooperative process. Creative teams want to keep in close communication not just with the client brand manager, but also with the package designers, research personnel, external model coordinators, and external media strategists assigned to the budget. When creatives become insulated from other important client internal and external players, the creative product begins to suffer.

6.2. Setting Expectations

In every successful relationship, there needs to be some degree of expectation setting prior to the relationship starting. As in any industry, there are a number of different digital marketing service providers; from global agencies that offer service lines in every vertical, to small startups that may offer services in a single vertical or industry. For businesses, what is required in order to optimize your digital marketing strategy is to ensure that the appropriate expectations are laid down for not only the agency that is being hired, but also any internal team members that will be accountable for the execution, management, or oversight of these digital marketing initiatives.

It’s important to ensure that everyone involved has an understanding of both the service delivery as well as the outcome. For example, not all things are created equal in a local SEO campaign. The local SEO campaign may be responsible for increasing local search visibility, traffic and leads; however, many factors outside of the agency’s realm of responsibility could affect the success of the campaign. For example, are there any seasonal swings in the business? Are there any new or existing competitors that have a large budget or focus local marketing around a certain time of the year that may supersede any efforts made by the agency? Is the business able to handle the number of leads that would come through the website during the campaign period? Does the business have the necessary software or services in place to convert those leads into customers?

7. Case Studies: Successful Agency Collaborations

The following case studies illustrate how hiring a marketing agency can complete your plans and lead your business to success. We’re presenting different types of successful campaigns for directional inspiration. They vary in form and result, from direct response to branding and awareness.

Case Study 1: E-commerce Success A digital marketing strategy should include SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and social media management. This was an e-commerce strategy that resulted in a successful campaign on several fronts. It included foundational strategies like SEO, but with a strong distribution and promotion tactic, account management, and more ad words initiatives and advertising on the social media platform that’s rife with shoppers.

There were several pivots along the way due to difficulties fully relying on branded terms and outfitting the customer’s brand to retailers. Stellar had great conversations with the customer about direction and other types of products to advertise including those that complemented the sellers for the retail chains.

Stellar also ran awareness and catalog campaigns for prospects—those who had yet to visit the customer’s website or who didn’t have a history of purchasing the customer’s products. And there were several ad campaigns highlighting special moments—spring break family fun and holiday gift guides.

Case Study 2 Brand Awareness Campaign Produced by a different agency that Stellar developed a long-term relationship with, this video campaign aimed at developing positive brand association. The focus was awareness and with digital becoming easily measurable, connecting a campaign-focused landing page did play a role in the final message and call to action. The video wasn’t just sharing brand information; it helped build brand identity.

7.1. Case Study 1: E-commerce Success

The first case study was created to solve an e-commerce client’s problem with high costs and low revenue, which led to the inability to keep the business running. In order to achieve the success of the project, it used a targeted plan with determined timeframes and costs. From the analysis of existing data and optimization of the available data, it focused on optimizing the existing account and its campaigns. Products that attracted exaggerated clicks and impressions and did not lead to sales were excluded from advertising. In the next phase, off-page and on-page search engine optimization methods were implemented. These activities concentrated on ensuring that products were shown for relevant terms, that users would be interested in an offer, lead to sales, and thus be efficient. The time of digital marketing spend optimization was very short, around three months, and after that, a very good return on sales and investment percentages were achieved.

In order to optimize the e-commerce site’s performance, it decided to also use marketing campaigns for the existing newsletter receiver databases. With prepared templates of newsletters, together with the frequency of publishing them, the company could reduce the cost of the marketing activities planned for the client. After the first year of implementing activities, the company could lower the budget, however, they were still necessary to support high sales in the timeframes with promotional campaigns. With such a plan of working on the project and help, the final results of co-operation exceeded even the preliminary plan. The transfer of traffic into one of the peak seasons for the online retailer reached a level much higher than planned.

7.2. Case Study 2: Brand Awareness Campaign

While many small businesses benefit from digital advertising in generating revenue, it is not the only goal companies have when running marketing campaigns. A lack of startup funding—or a belief that generating revenue is not the best use of marketing resources—has led many companies to invest in brand awareness and less quantifiable benefits of advertising. Companies still require steady cash flow, and many are turning to funding from venture capital or industry-specific investment firms to help propel them forward. With this funding, some startups are willing to invest heavily in marketing collaboration with advertising agencies.

One such example is a beverage company. When developing a marketing strategy for a startup beverage company, there were not even purchase orders for product yet. In order to obtain future product validation, the beverage company required investment to develop taste and packaging, as well as product purchase orders from retailers. Without heavily investing in brand awareness on lifestyle media and influencers, this startup did not believe it would be able to gain the foothold it needed to penetrate the beverage category.

With guidance, this company considered that, in order for a beverage purchase order to be negotiated with a retailer, the manufacturer must be in the sight of store buyers. There are two routes – influencer/social media and consumer, which would hold the key to this startup’s future: activities on social media would be staged at the earlier start. For a period of time, the focus of paid and organic posts would be on influencers with audiences that enjoy similar products and activities as the target audience.

8. Challenges Faced by Marketing Agencies

The challenges faced by marketing agencies are many and varied, especially as the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve. With that evolution comes a corresponding need for agencies and brands to keep up with trends and a shifting digital marketing landscape. Digital marketing is constantly changing with the introduction of new technology to the marketplace and marketing agencies must work diligently to stay dedicated to those changes to remain competitive in their industry. This also means that agencies must take special care to maintain their client relationships to ensure client retention, often putting agency success on the line.

One of the challenges of working in digital marketing is keeping up with trends and often being forced to understand them before potential clients do. This can lead to further inconsistency in your digital marketing agency’s efforts as you are forced to rely on your instincts and knowledge of the industry rather than concrete evidence in order to guide your local business. Digital marketing is the most diverse and fantastically fluid field of study. The diversity of tasks that make up digital marketing can at times seem overwhelming. Keeping up with the trends in marketing is one of the important challenges faced by agencies. With a whole host of tasks that can fluctuate at a moment’s notice, it is understandable why agency marketers sometimes feel overwhelmed. Digital marketing agencies and their clients must dedicate a considerable amount of time to keeping their machines oiled and in sync; however, digital marketing companies have their work cut out for them. It becomes a challenge for digital marketing agencies to gain a client’s trust before implementing a strategy that may yield results in the future.

8.1. Keeping Up with Trends

The marketing industry is constantly changing. What is trendy one year may be boring the next. Marketing companies are responsible for keeping up with technology and changes to social networks better than their clients. Clients often look to big name marketing firms for guidance, and as such, agencies are expected to innovate on their behalf. People are barraged with marketing content every day so agencies must figure out how to set themselves apart while also coming up with a unique strategy for their clients’ campaigns. Good digital marketers know what consumers are tired of, what is becoming popular again, and what marketing strategies are effective at staying in the public’s good graces. It is tricky for marketing agencies to find the balance between setting trends and following trends. Agencies cannot blindly follow trends that don’t make sense for their clients, but they also don’t want a product or campaign that is too outside the box to resonate with consumers.

Sometimes the trends that consumers love make ownership uncomfortable. Agencies often have clients with strong brand guidelines. Big name brands are making headlines for avoiding backlash over controversial events. Marketers can be creatively stunted because of brand reputation. Agencies can often experiment with local brands, or less iconic companies with wiggle-room in their brand guidelines. Companies that are only recognizable in certain areas likely will keep management devoted to customers rather than worrying about what everyone else is doing. Still, it’s expected that marketing agencies keep in mind how certain marketing trends might affect even the negative perception of a major company, since advertisement campaigns are supposed to be tying their clients closer to the consumer, even if the brand is known globally.

8.2. Client Retention

Offering social media development services is only one step in forming long-lasting partnerships with clients. Acquiring customers is expensive; companies will invest money on advertisements or make an effort to establish connections, regardless of the method. After the customer you’ve presented to the brand has given you a chance, what will you do to convince them to continue working with you? Without earning the loyalty of customers, you run the risk of permanently losing them to the competition.

Eighty-eight percent of corporate professionals who participated in a survey said that their company places increasing importance on client retention. Constantly attempting to win over new clients won’t help you establish corporate stability.

As the research demonstrates, improving client service can be the centerpiece of your strategy. According to a different survey, 86% of respondents said positive experiences would entice them to buy from organizations again. Those moments may be anything that makes customers feel good about their choice. This can have an impact on basic elements, such as how professional and cordial your staff is, but it may also entail going above and above to satisfy clients’ particular requirements. It is essential to connect with clients not only when there is a problem but also when things are running smoothly. Sending encouraging emails will keep your name at the forefront of their minds and make them aware of your paranoia. Sharing relevant content or congratulating them on a significant development —be it large or small— will help further your relationship and reinforce the feeling of agency partnership.

When something creates a barrier in the customer-agent relationship, response time is really crucial. According to the survey, 81% of clients prefer traditional communication —including talking on the phone, face-to-face chat, or email—instead of other modes. Eighty-three percent would recommend companies that accept a variety of communication methods.

9. Future Trends in Digital Marketing

The future of digital marketing is predicted to be busy, as it continues to accelerate towards further topics, such as artificial intelligence and the use of advanced algorithms to search for information according to user preferences. The augmented reality will simulate environments with the help of a phone application and will facilitate shopping by allowing the buyer to imitate and virtually test the products. Continuing with innovations, virtual reality will create a new space that will allow you to interact better with customers, either to launch new products, to recreate experiences or to improve your relationship with the brand. Following these new concepts presented above, we will be affected by immersive high definition ads, so it is convenient to get familiar with moving image formats such as video streaming or refresh your creativity in regards to the production of spectacular ads that make a mark. It is very likely that in the future, social networking apps will have these advertising features aimed at generating business sales.

Artificial intelligence has transformed modern life, allowing new products and services to develop at the speed of light. Just a few months after being announced, AI-based tools have captivated people of all ages, demonstrating their usefulness for students, automation of routine work processes, and creativity in writing texts of all sorts. Despite the criticism, it has successfully appeared in something as basic for mankind as language. There is a general consensus on the need to capitalize on these AI’s capabilities in order to improve productivity, creativity, service quality, etc, working as a complement to humans, and to do so, what better than to integrate them into marketing agencies in their digital marketing strategies? In the environment of social networks, digital marketing agencies will concentrate on finding the right content based on AI algorithms to be pushed at the critical moment of conversion. The ineffectiveness of mass marketing, lost amidst information excess, will progressively revert to micro-targeted campaigns, which will be executed in an automated manner.

9.1. Artificial Intelligence

9. Future Trends in Digital Marketing

The future of digital marketing lies in three technologies which have been developed over the years or are already being utilized, like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Influencer Marketing, and Marketing technologies that follow marketing agencies closely for their clients to help them lead successfully in their markets and also satisfy end-user requirements.

9.1. Artificial Intelligence

One type of technology which is currently developing rapidly is Artificial Intelligence. Big companies utilize it for their business strategies already.

But different types of Artificial Intelligence are not only conceivable for large companies; it is also feasible for medium-sized companies. This year a medium-sized company developed a Chatbot for a customer which is already trained. The bot is trained to service 200 different questions around the subject of installing new windows. If the user’s question is in the dataset, the bot gives an exact answer. If not, the bot generates an answer telling the question is unknown and is emailing that one to the project responsible persons who come back to the user with an answer. People can contact the company day and night, and it’s better than the traditional FAQ page on a website. The Chatbot has more personality and is more interactive than FAQ pages.

Another company provides a platform for building chatbot experiences for both websites and social channels. They explain that AI is crucial in making the user experience frictionless. “To build useful chatbots you need more than just programmable decision trees. Deep learning is key to support the many variations in how people ask for things.”

9.2. Influencer Marketing

Companies across the globe are increasingly adopting influencer marketing as a way of advertising. It is a strategy used by marketing agencies for steering online communication of their products and services. In recent years, companies have started large-scale use of influencers because of their effectiveness in reaching target groups and increasing awareness of brands. Experiences have shown that influencer campaigns benefit companies. Well-planned and carried out influencer campaigns seem to reach voluntarily and speak to the audiences with amazing efficiency. It is for this reason that the number of blogs and video publications is growing annually, that the bloggers diversify and make real efforts in order to reach bigger audiences. The audience who follows a blogger virtually believes the person and comments are filled with enthusiasm. Most importantly, the audience demand for authenticity, which means that as followers have a tendency to adore influencers, they build a perception whereby at one point the influencers become part of the audience.

Social networks are swarming with influencers today, who influence and manipulate consumer purchases. Influencer marketing works thanks to real-life salespeople who make their pitches while cooking up their favorite meals, vacationing at exotic places or just gossiping about the latest celebrity happenings. These brands joined every step of their consumer journeys to prove themselves as more reliable and influential than traditional ads. The brief explains that the brand is creating the policy of collaboration with internet personalities, in order to launch sponsored campaigns via influencers working with a certain brand based on the concluded agreement. The marketing agency launching the campaign is responsible for guaranteeing the brand pays the influencer. Influencer marketing is a type of online promotion of products or services supported by influencers to its fans and followers. It’s a form of paid advertising based on careful selection of individuals with large communities of followers.

10. Evaluating Agency Performance

The evaluation of agency performance is a crucial element of the ongoing client–agency relationship. Digital marketing is by nature fast-moving and complex. Campaign execution, enhancement, and ROI are elements that require the client and agency to work closely together. As such, relationships may develop that blur the lines between agency and client.

Establishing clear KPIs at the outset of the relationship helps to set the foundations by which the relationship may be assessed. It also helps to define boundaries by which transparent conversations can be held at any point during the relationship. Maintaining a focus on commercial outcomes is important, but so is equally evaluating how the relationship is performing and whether both parties feel confident in its ability to provide a necessary level of support.

Both qualitative and quantitative KPIs are essential to evaluating agency performance. As digital marketers jog through the campaign cycle, it can be easy to lose sight of marketing goals. For this reason, KPIs based on tracking delivery against these goals should be established. These can include website visits, click-through rates, costs per conversion, conversion rates, leads generated, newsletter signups, increase in earned media or PR, increase in brand value or reputation, number of positive brand mentions, increase in app downloads, increase in customer satisfaction scores, and increase in inquiry volumes.

However, perhaps the most significant part of evaluating agency performance concerns the more qualitative elements of the ongoing partnership. Engagements like strategy and planning meetings, creative design and brainstorming sessions, campaign development, and quarterly reviews can ratchet up or decrease the collaborative nature of the relationship. Companies and agencies often end up performing very differently across agencies when certain creative requirements are called for. It’s important to highlight the value of creative leaps that come out of trusting partnerships.

10.1. Key Performance Indicators

When it comes time to evaluate an agency’s performance, it’s important to have the right processes and methods in place. Key performance indicators are an invaluable tool for evaluating and optimizing the performance of your agency. For many agencies, success is defined by a combination of quantifiable metrics and intangible factors, such as great communication and collaboration. While KPIs are no replacement for these factors, they can be very useful in providing a quantitative basis for evaluations and decisions.

Every digital marketing agency approaches content promotion and management somewhat differently. Likewise, every client has different objectives and priorities. That said, we have compiled this list of some of the most common and the most useful KPIs for evaluating your agency. As the old saying goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Using a systematic approach to define KPI objectives helps your agency measure the results it gets. However, simply measuring results is of little usable value unless you take the next step and use those measurements to steer your agency’s tactics going forward.

Even more useful than standard benchmarks, customized goals will help ensure that the KPIs set by your agency for each unique project keep your progress on track and serve your unique business interests. These goals can use the previous year’s performance, current industry standard benchmarks, and any outside environmental factors that might apply. It is also important to remember to set realistic expectations according to these goals. Aiming for 80% year-over-year growth in an already-popular social media account is worse than setting out to maintain that popularity.

10.2. Client Feedback Mechanisms

Marketing agencies increasingly recognize the value of effectively measuring their performance. However, the best way to analyze improvements and ensure optimal results is to ask what their clients think. This includes initially asking clients how they will measure performance, with possible measurement tools including growth in new customers, growth in website traffic, growth in purchases by customers, improved search engine page rankings, and improvements in social media engagement. In addition, reports that convey the metrics in a clear manner, which could ultimately help agencies attract and retain clients, should be developed. The report contents are related to the agency input. For example, if influencers are part of the proposed plan, detailed and actionable instructions on how to best utilize the influencers should be provided to the clients. Monthly results in the form of documented metrics should be shared with clients, along with any other specific data relating to the client’s particular goals. Meeting to explain the findings will also help to lessen concerns, as well as proving that the expected progress is being made, or, if not possible, the reasons why.

Open communication between the agency and its clients is vital and a sure pathway to success. Optimally, the agency representative who communicates with the client should be the one who runs the client’s campaigns and knows the client best. Although video calls allow for effective communication with marketing agency teams who are often located in different countries, they do not allow agency teams to communicate with their clients, as possible in an actual meeting. After some time has passed since the initial implementation of the marketing campaign, scheduled meetings with clients will help reinforce the relationship between agencies and consumers. This allows both parties to see what is working well and if there is a need to revise the plan.

11. The Importance of Branding in Digital Marketing

There are likely many people that already sell services and products similar to yours. If your business is just like all the others in your market, it can be challenging to gain the attention of your potential buyers. This may be why businesses build a brand identity that sets their services apart from the rest of the competition. As consumers navigate the internet searching for information, the decisions they make rely on visuals and impressions of each business. If your brand does not stand out among the others, you run the risk of losing your market’s attention and trust.

The hard truth is that a brand is likely one of the first impressions you will make on consumers. If potential customers do not associate authenticity and quality with your brand, they will instead gravitate toward a business that has taken the proper steps to creating a distinct brand identity. By carefully creating a brand identity unique to your business, you will passively market and promote your brand to potential customers. A well-thought-out branding strategy will speak for itself whether in your logo, your website design, or your social media posts. Embedding your brand into the visual identities of your business means that customers can effortlessly gather core values and principles of your business, giving your brand a distinct tone that consumers can recognize.

12. Ethical Considerations in Marketing

Marketing is an area of research that asks questions about how marketing affects consumers and societies and what ethical constraints should be placed on marketing strategies to minimize possible negative effects. Ethical issues apply to the processes of marketing, the content of ads and associated communication, and the implementation of marketing strategies. Marketing, like many other types of practices, can be done in a more and less ethical way.

There are many ethical considerations in marketing. Marketing can at times be very self-serving. People who undertake work in marketing do so in order to earn a living, but are often eager to please their clients, sometimes at the expense of others. Most individuals who undertake work in marketing have no ill intent. But sometimes marketing practices can have a very damaging impact on individuals and society as a whole. Marketing is about communicating with consumers and trying to persuade them to buy products or services, often for reasons beyond their actual needs. The power that marketing could potentially wield is quite significant, and very often consumers are on the receiving end of very persuasive messages. It is unethical for marketing communication to mislead consumers about the benefits and risks associated with a product. This principle applies to all types of marketing communication, including advertising, public relations, and sales promotions. All promoters have the responsibility for preparing messages that are truthful, accurate, and fair to all segments of the population. However, marketers are often not very transparent in their dialogue with consumers.

Marketing is also driven by a profit motive, which makes it possible for consumers to gain access to products that they want and need, but also urges marketers to use ethically questionable advertising practices. It would not be ethical for marketers to knowingly promote a product that would have negative health consequences, for example, advertising harmful products to children. From a market perspective, voluntarily restricting oneself to advertising that is beneficial to society has a positive effect. But marketing can also be used to dissuade healthy behavior, such as the use of negative advertising in political campaigns or attacking the ethics of someone’s business decisions without focusing on the issue.

12.1. Transparency with Clients

Transparency and synergy in teams improve creativity and ensure wonderful results. Building successful partnerships with clients is the most important element that defines the agency/client relationship. This experience is much more than a business transaction; rather it is a human experience which creates memories that last throughout your entire organization. To translate this relationship into memorable marketing communications efforts, business alliances must be based on trust.

Integrity creates a sense of responsibility. From the time you become a client until the time that relationship ends, being open and honest goes a long way in creating lasting partnerships. Clients should trust that agencies will represent their interests no matter what. This does, however, go both ways. Trust must be earned. The senior executives of a client organization must have confidence that their agency is committed to their success. There are far too many horror stories told of agency personnel who are on their phones in an internal meeting, hanging out at bars, or taking clients in that client’s budget. Clients have to know that agency employees are worth the funding they receive.

Impartiality ensures that the agency is making recommendations solely in the client’s best interest. As agencies get involved in other markets, transparency about these relationships is necessary in order to avoid any conflicts of interest. Agencies and clients can sometimes find themselves in difficult situations where there is a question if all parties are acting solely in the client’s interest. It is important that both parties are aware of questionable activities early so that all parties can take the appropriate steps to clarify the actions that must occur. If a decision must cause concern, it is better to act early than to face an insurmountable breach of trust after the fact.

12.2. Responsible Advertising

Currently, marketing agency professionals are responsible, together with the companies that hire them, for consumer exposure to advertising messages of all kinds, on several occasions a day and through different channels. Therefore, the ethical treatment of consumer data, respect for cultural and local values, and the appropriateness of the messages are topics of great relevance in advertising campaigns. Building advertising strategies on false promises, perpetuating stereotypes, exaggerating the characteristics and benefits of a product, normalizing the suffering of people or their removal from society, promoting unsustainable solutions for future generations, and targeting vulnerable and unprotected people with predatory ads are some of these ethical dilemmas. Alongside the theme of traditional advertising, some topics have become particularly relevant in digital marketing communications, such as the exaggerated creation of content for a company’s own channels; organized reputations, reviews, or ratings for a product or service; as well as phony social influence by dedicated profiles, known as influencers.

To mitigate the adverse effects of advertising on consumers’ lives, the idea of responsible advertising embodies the principle of social responsibility, not only due to the direct environmental and social impact of advertising practices but also because these practices influence consumer behavior. For instance, there are several calls for agency codes of conduct that would act as compliance guides: that is, the values and principles that guide the actions to be taken in concrete situations. In this study, we build a deeper understanding of such principles and values with an exploratory qualitative analysis of expert insiders. Findings reveal that agency insiders should be responsible for the thinking behind the campaign, the thinking as a business generator, taking care of ethical issues; for issues of copyright ownership and data privacy as present and future legal concerns; for not underestimating the knowledge of the public about the subject of the campaign; and for the shared reflection process, a mechanism to establish discussion as a corporate culture within agencies.

13. Building Long-term Relationships with Clients

Marketing agencies largely engage in projects. That is, an agency interacts with a client to fulfill a specific and previously defined set of services, which is expected to result in some advantage for the client. Upon completing the project, the professional relationship between agency and client may or may not continue. In many cases, one-off projects frequently lead to increased revenues and profits for both parties. At a basic level, the brief collaboration with influencers can provide brands with a boost in their online visibility and product sales, while bringing additional earnings to influencers. However, by fulfilling only basic client needs using common or “easy-to-pull-off” activities, we believe that marketing agencies may miss the opportunity to reach higher value-adding statuses. Statuses that, besides bringing stronger financial and perceived value, may also position them above other players in the market.

By establishing more powerful relationships with clients based on mutual trust, agencies can move towards more valuable service quote requests from clients. These may evolve into more complex service requests, such as long-term media relations, influencer monitoring and relationship management, and social media monitoring, that lead to better client performance and joint financial success. As a consequence of the intense and long-lasting nature of the marketing communication relationship, a few agencies have been playing monopolistic roles in their clients’ business by offering multi-service packages across decades. Over time, the relationship deepens and becomes interdependent. Trust, both individual and organizational, evolves throughout the relationship and strong affective bonds are created.

14. Conclusion

Digital marketing strategies have become essential for companies aiming for increased success in an increasingly competitive environment. However, the tools and techniques necessary to develop an efficient digital marketing strategy are increasingly complex and specialized. This makes it difficult for small- and medium-sized companies to develop their own digital marketing strategies without external help. For this reason, the role of marketing agencies in the development and implementation of digital marketing strategies has become increasingly significant. By hiring a marketing agency, a company can obtain the expertise, tools, connections, and previous experience necessary to develop successful digital marketing strategies that would not be available if they were developed internally.

In this paper, a detailed analysis of the role of marketing agencies in digital marketing strategies was presented. Consequently, a content analysis of twenty relevant interviews was performed in order to answer the following research questions: “Do marketing agencies develop digital marketing strategies? “What is the real role of marketing agencies in the digital marketing strategy of companies?” and “Are digital marketing strategies developed by a marketing agency really different when compared with a marketing strategy developed internally by the company?”. The analysis of the interviews indicated that marketing agencies not only develop and create digital marketing strategies, but that they are also an essential element for the successful implementation of digital action plans, especially for small- and medium-sized companies that lack knowledge and internal means to develop them successfully. The results also allowed the authors to present conclusions and relevant implications for both marketing agencies and companies.