Starting a business is a huge accomplishment but this means that there is plenty to worry about. Smaller companies tend to outsource the marketing campaigns as hiring an in-house could cripple cash flow. While some digital marketing companies yield results month after month, this is not true in all cases. Digital marketing companies who participate in shady tactics can actually do more harm than good. It can take a company months to recover from Google penalties and even brand image can suffer immensely. The following are things to look for when outsourcing digital marketing campaigns.
Blackhat Linkbuilding Tactics
Blackhat is a term in the digital marketing world that should be avoided like the plague. These tactics include paying for links without an FTC disclosure to hiding links on a page in the code. The tactics are not only less than ethical, in some cases they are illegal. Blackhat SEO professionals can lead a company to have their website deindexed from Google which is a death penalty for many companies. This will take time and money to recover from this penalty if it does not cripple the company entirely. Take a look at search results about a company as those clients that they have used techniques that did more harm than good will flock to the internet to make sure nobody else is scammed. Digital marketing companies that have rebranded multiple times could be doing so in order to obscure their techniques they have used in the past.
Results That Don’t Seem To Add Up
Unfortunately there are digital marketing companies that rely on the people sourcing work to them to not fully understand how this marketing is done. Results that do not seem to add up or “will take a couple of months to see results” are not great signs of a quality company. A great digital marketing company can help a client in a matter of weeks with clear and concise reporting of results. Asking for case studies done for other clients should be done and avoid companies that will not show results garnered for other clients.
Click Fraud
In niches like that of personal injury attorneys Adwords click prices can be hundreds of dollars per click. Conversions in these personal clients that are earned from the marketing campaign will more than cover expenses in cases that end in a large settlement. Adwords click fraud is more prevalent than most people think as not all companies care if their clients reach their conversion goal with their Adwords campaign. Tracking ROI on these campaigns is imperative in order to maximize profitability. Consult other companies if a current company is not delivering results as wasting money on a contractor that is not delivering results despite taking money month after month is not good for a company, just the below average digital marketing company.
Low Quality Content
There was a time where low quality content could actually benefit a marketing campaign as Google’s guidelines for quality and relevance were not as high. Low quality content that is riddedn with grammatical mistakes and is not relevant to the site it is published on does nothing for a company. This not only wastes money in the marketing budget but it also can hurt the companies search engines rankings. For this reason it is important for a company to ask to review content before it is published with their link incorporated.
Finding the right digital marketing company to outsource a marketing campaign to can be worth its weight in gold. Take the time to research the company and sign short term contracts with a few digital marketing companies to see which one delivers the best return on your marketing investment.
