25,000 individual companies, cultures, costs – each one competing for success. Which means that there are thousands of websites, hundreds of thousands of digital projects and doubtless millions of cups of coffee consumed by these agency creatives every single day. Given the current competition, where do you start?

As a business owner, the pressure of marketing your services can be a real problem. Say you’ve decided to use an agency to help along the way, where do you begin on picking the right one? Do you turn to recommendations, reviews, trusted directories, searching Google or just simply looking at who has effectively marketed your competitor? These are the common routes that most companies use to find us and I am sure this is similar to other agencies too.

But just because you’ve found an agency that seems right, how do you know that they’re right for you? The first thing to recognise is you don’t. Just because they have a super cool website, happy clients that have reviewed them positively, or trusted directories are flooded with their latest work and reviews doesn’t mean that they’re always going to be the perfect pick for your business. I’ve seen it with my own eyes when going to see a new prospective client that just because you have gained huge success for a business out there, doesn’t necessarily ensure that you’ll achieve the same for them. Likewise, having a big branded name on your books doesn’t always mean you must be the best. It just doesn’t simply work like that.

I believe we have the formula to create an effective digital marketing campaign and build trust with clients. It’s starts with the most amazingly simple step. That first step is honesty from your agency. Honesty in regards to whether or not they truly believe they can make a difference. Here at Kubix, we are part of that decision making. We don’t just accept any business that approaches us, and in fact, we probably say no more than we say yes. I don’t see the point in taking a business on who has limited, overpriced products and bad imagery with no intention of improving, for example. Likewise I would turn away a business owner whose website has a poor user journey but who is hesitant on making any improvements until he sees the cash coming in through the website. In situations like these, it’s better to be honest.

“Sorry,” we explain, “But we simply can’t help you right now.”

We leave them with a list of improvements. Give them the list they need to sort out the basics. And then see if it’s worth returning to them later down the line.

Sometimes you get the complete opposite. You get a client who is willing to move heaven and earth and do whatever it takes to sell their products, but you soon realise from your online research that their product or service is simply not in demand. Once again it’s better to be honest and decline the campaign. I feel this honesty is best for both parties. An agency must take into consideration internal morale. When it comes to working on a website and not seeing the results, this doesn’t bode well internally. Likewise on the client side you would soon have a disgruntled customer who isn’t a referrer and certainly won’t endorse your brand and may even go the extent of doing the opposite.

When both the agency and client have done their due diligence and the agency knows they can help, it’s then about understanding how. One factor I genuinely feel that agencies provide is the consistency. We know what it takes to bring success to an online store. To achieve this, we work through our internal checklist like a menu from a restaurant, adding packages, extras and a dash of spice as and when the campaign needs it. In comparison, you might hire two in-house marketing executives. But would they be able to strategise in the same way as a full-scale agency? It’s unlikely. You might hear them in the office: “Hey boss, today we are going to look at creating you a package which will allow us to spend three hours on content. On Wednesday we will spend two on hours on social media posts.” But where’s the discussion behind these, or even the purpose? The statistics? This slapdash approach won’t work for long. The way we work at Kubix is trying to get under the hood of your business as if we worked for you. Some of our greatest successes have come from thinking outside of the box. Cliche? Not as much as you might think. Acting and feeling like you work with your client works. This business mentality – empathy – gets you very, very far.

Once the conceptualisation and planning are both set in place, it’s about embarking on the journey together. A journey that is both transparent and built on educated, informed decisions that are thoroughly tracked, reported and measurable. Using SMART targets might be a tried and tested strategy by now, but the number of times we’ve taken a new client into the Kubix family and been shocked at the reporting techniques, the cloak-and-dagger exchanges and lack of true substance is countless. No financial targets set, just a bunch of keywords and some cool technical jargon like “Conversion rate optimisation report” and “Majestic link reports”. What about what they spent as a business? And what sales were made in return to the target set? Or asking what their profit margins are so you can effectively report on their business. That’s what keeps your clients, trust me. An agency that brings you a return on investment and isn’t scared to get a strategy and try the absolute hardest to achieve it. Whilst writing this, a new client to Kubix who is three months old into our agency called me to thank us. They’re eight days into the month and only 50% percent away from their target. And these are the conversations you should be having. If not, get in touch and try us.

You need to ensure that if your business needs extra support, then you understand what that looks like. We recently had a client approach us and their SEO agency wouldn’t fix any of the issues they’d found, as they were not also on the development retainer plan which was an extra £595 a month. The changes that they needed were minimal and would have taken approximately 3-4 hours. I found it amazing that the agency wouldn’t invest in that client – especially in the the early infancy of the campaign. Those changes would have made a difference to the market and in return would have kept the client. Instead, they came to us, and are now super respectful of their requests but are always supported knowing that we both have the same interests at heart.

No matter which of the 25,000 digital marketing agencies you choose to work with for your business, it’s important to feel the guidance and support. Because if your business succeeds, then ours does too. If you are looking to increase sales to your business, then get in touch. Kubix can help you identify your business goals online, and you can put us to the test to try and get the results you truly need (and grow your business).

‍