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4 Differences Between Creative and Marketing Agencies

Do you need a creative agency or a marketing agency?

Look at the most successful companies today, and you’ll see the magic of both agency types at play. 

Take Apple for example. 

Apple’s marketing believes that “design and utility are just two of the reasons behind Apple’s success and certainly give it a competitive advantage.”

But drill down to Apple and its individual products’ success in the market spaces they compete in, and you’ll see that design alone doesn’t do the magic. 

Marketing is just as important.

Apple drives growth with a marketing mix that does an excellent job to create raving fans even before product launches. And the overall sales it commands from its products is a direct result of the company’s marketing strategies. 

In other words, to drive and sustain its growth, Apple uses creative agencies. But before their product launches, they leverage the expertise of marketing agencies.

This is the difference between a creative agency and a marketing agency.

What is a creative agency?

According to Column Five Media: 

“A creative agency is a term for an agency that offers a variety of services that fall under the umbrella of marketing and advertising. Basically, if you need any type of creative strategy, work, or promotion, they can help you get it done.”

Column Five Media is a creative agency that has worked with Intuit, eBay, Google, Facebook, and dozens of other global brands. 

Take a second to look at the definition of a creative agency by Column Five Media, a creative agency, and what does it reveal to you? 

It clearly shows that even a wildly-experienced creative agency admits that its services, or any creative agency’s services, fall under the umbrella of marketing and advertising.  

This definition should tell you something:

A creative agency helps to illuminate the advertising and marketing strategy execution of a company through appealing designs and other forms of creative work. 

What is a Marketing Agency? 

Like Column Five Media, my agency, Neil Patel Digital, has also worked with global brands such as Google, eBay, Intuit, Facebook, and dozens of others: 

Here’s how I define a marketing agency:

“A marketing agency is a business that researches, strategizes, brands, and promotes a company’s products or services. Ultimately, marketing agencies partner with a company to develop, manage, and execute its marketing strategy to achieve defined business goals.”

As you saw in Apple’s example, design and utility (mostly brought to live by creative agencies) play an essential role in making products more appealing to users. 

But the identification of those users, understanding what design choices will appeal to them, the messaging that’ll resonate with them, how, where, and when to reach them for the most impact comes first. 

That’s why I say that marketing (mostly achieved with a marketing agency) is what engineers and sustains a company’s growth. 

Hence, while creative agencies help to illuminate marketing ideas, marketing agencies strategize, create, and deliver the right content to the right people: 

With their defining distinctions established, what are the various other differences between a creative agency and a marketing agency? 

4 Differences between a Creative agency and marketing agency

As I said at the beginning of this article, the difference between these agency types boil down to very fine details. 

Yet the need to know them is paramount, as it helps you to avoid judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree. 

To guide you, I’ll distinguish both by pairing the related services these agency types can help you with when looking to grow your business. 

Difference #1: Market research vs user research

Market research is a core business function. 

Through market research, you can validate a business opportunity, examine the economic forces at play by investigating key industry trends and the competition, and get an idea of your potential market size. 

But the main goal of market research isn’t to give you a solid foundation of the above alone. 

Most importantly, it is to relate the findings from the research to your business case, ensuring that you get a firm grasp of how and where to position your company for growth. 

By using market research to determine “how” to position your business, an agency identifies measures to differentiate your brand from competitors. It also allows them to identify “where” that positioning should happen – something that comes from knowing your prospective customers’ demographics. 

Marketing agencies excel more doing this type of high-level market research. 

Not only are they the ones who usually have market analysts working in-house, they’re also the ones who go on to develop tools that enable this kind of market research. 

For example, the need to conduct SEO research and help people understand their market and competition better is part of what led me to develop Ubersuggest: 

However, although some marketing agencies have in-house user researchers, creative agencies shine the most in the area of user research.  

Market research helps to determine the how and where of your brand. 

But to know why people would care, you must appeal to their interests and address their pain points the moment they spot your brand collaterals, most times without saying a single word.  

Achieving this feat boils down to creating user-focused visuals and design assets that appeal to people’s interests or address their pain points, otherwise called psychographics. 

User-focused design is the core of creative agencies. 

To excel at doing this, they always conduct user research to determine the psychographics of prospective customers, even after market research has identified their demographics. 

This explains why you’ll find UX researchers and UI/UX designers leading the lines for creative agencies. 

Difference #2: Long-term branding vs specific targeting

Have you noticed something about most global brands? 

They hardly change their core branding. 

Yes, they may evolve into trendy visuals as most often do, but the brand fundamentals rarely change entirely. 

Take Google, for example.

The company’s visual identity and logo has evolved tremendously from 1997 to 2015, but its fundamental brand colors, red, blue, yellow, and green remains:  

The reason for this is that branding, usually executed by creative agencies, takes a long-term approach. It involves creating design assets and visuals to depict what your company represents and to articulate your corporate identity even in the years to come. 

But as you see with Google, as time goes by and new market opportunities emerge (mostly identified through market research and by marketing agencies), the need to evolve that identity may arise as you realize the need to appeal to specific audiences. 

And this was the case with Google.

According to a report by The Verge, redesigning their logo to look good on small screens had a profound impact on why Google evolved its visual identity design in 2015. 

In other words, Google, through continuous market research saw the need to appeal to the growing number of people using smartphones to access the internet. 

Google’s example depicts an important difference between creative and marketing agencies. 

Use creative agencies when you need to design and evolve your brand and corporate identity to reflect what your brand represents in the long-term and in changing times. 

But creative agencies focus more on designs, and don’t get into the weeds of studying changing market trends on specific channels. 

And that’s where marketing agencies differ. 

Marketing agencies’ work revolve around seeking new avenues to market your business’ offering, reach specific audiences, and drive growth. Logically, this a necessary first step before embarking on design or involving a creative agency. 

Difference #3: Go-to-market strategy development vs creative direction

Marketing agencies and creative agencies also differ in the area of go-to-market strategy development and leading the creative direction of the strategy execution on various channels. 

That’s another way to say that marketing agencies can help you to identify what channels to market your product or service. They can also help you to plan and decide what content types will drive the most impact. 

But most lack design expertise even when they have in-house designers. 

Creative agencies, therefore, are a better option if you know what channels and content types to create, especially when there’s a need for expert design of the final deliverable of such content. 

For example, a marketing agency may find that your brand will drive more engagement and growth on social media. But they may lack the creativity required to produce appealing content for the social media channels your company uses to appeal to your target audiences on those platforms. 

Creative agencies differ in this area. 

They are the ones to turn to when you need expert design execution specific to a go-to-market strategy typically developed by a marketing agency. 

Difference #4: Analytics vs creativity

There was a myth (although debunked in 2013), which postulated that we have two brains: The methodical or analytical side on the left and the creative side on the right. 

Let’s pretend for a moment that there was some truth in that myth. 

Why?

Because I consider it a good way to differentiate a marketing agency from a creative agency. 

In that case, you can see marketing agencies as the left-brain analytical side because they crunch a lot of numbers in search of logical insights to justify things like marketing spend, marketing ROI, and many others. 

On the other hand, creative agencies deal with the irrational aspects of a business by applying creative thinking and emotionally-driven design development to appeal to intangible human emotions not necessarily measured by numbers. 

Although in business, everything, including efforts by both a marketing or creative agency, eventually gets measured in the long run to justify their investments. 

However, let’s say you want to identify insights into how your advertising campaigns are performing or will perform in the future relative to your business goals. 

Or, you need data insights such as traffic sources, channels driving the most impact for your business, what your sales funnel metrics is saying, marketing agencies are the ones to turn to because these tasks require analytical data crunching. 

If the data crunching by marketing agencies reveals the need to improve your design or recreate them entirely to get them to become more appealing to specific audiences or channels, creative agencies shine better for doing this. 

Creative agency vs marketing agency: Which one should you choose? 

It depends. 

The truth is that both agency types bring excellent levels of creativity to whatever they do. 

Hence, staying with the myth about the left-side analytical brain and right-side creative brain, you can’t do away with one side and expect the brain to perform at full capacity. 

You need both to drive your business forward. 

So instead of asking which one you should choose (because you’ll need one of the two at some point), the question should be when should I choose a marketing or creative agency? 

When you want to develop or improve your branding or brand identity, go to a creative agency. Also, when you want to create or improve design assets to support your marketing campaigns or make your content more appealing, creative agencies can help in these areas. 

However, before you seek creative design help, it’s essential to conduct market research, develop a go-to-market strategy to guide everything they design, and set up an air-tight analytics ecosystem to measure everything every step of the way. 

If this is what you need right now, my ad agency, Neil Patel Digital, shines in this area.

The post 4 Differences Between Creative and Marketing Agencies appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/creative-agency-vs-marketing-agency/

Working With a Digital Marketing Agency Vs. Hiring In House

If you are looking to scale up your marketing, you will need talented people that can take charge of and execute your strategy. 

But should you build your own in-house marketing team or hire an agency partner? 

There are compelling reasons for both, and it mostly depends on your situation.

Read on to find out which decision is better for you. 

The Benefits of Working With a Digital Marketing Agency

Digital agencies are companies that help other businesses perform a specific function such as marketing, development, or design. 

They act as a substitute for an in-house team, serving the same labor function but outside of the organization.

They typically specialize in certain areas, depending on how big their team is and what expertise they have. 

Other ways to think about digital agencies are as an outsourced team or in some cases a group of freelancers working together. 

Here are the benefits of working with a digital marketing agency:

Deeper Expertise 

Digital marketing agencies are more likely to have deeper expertise when it comes to a specific role or industry. This is because they most likely specialize in a certain area or have worked with clients in your space before.

• Specialty – Most agencies specialize in one or two things, such as content marketing or performance advertising. Combined with the fact that they provide these services to multiple clients, it is likely that any given agency has a high level of competence and expertise in their domain. 
• Industry insights – Agencies can work with dozens of clients at a time. Chances are, they’ve worked with a company in a similar situation or industry as your own. 

Diverse Skills

When you hire an agency, you are not just hiring one person. You are hiring a whole team and their network, which can sometimes be ten or more people. 

Although you may be hiring an agency to help you with SEO, you may find that they have team members that can help advise on producing content or even designers that can help improve your user experience.

This provides benefits such as:

• More perspective – A diverse team can help solve problems faster. Diversity allows teams to see things from different perspectives and come up with creative solutions. 
• Flexibility – It may be the case that you need to expand into a different marketing channel or adapt your strategy based on a changing environment. Agencies give you more flexibility with your strategy, so if social media isn’t working you can easily change to something else. 

Scalable

Scaling a business isn’t easy. Two of the key challenges that come with scaling are getting the right talent and getting enough new customers. 

Using the right digital marketing agency can help alleviate these two key scaling challenges. 

On the talent side, you won’t need to think about having to find and hire senior marketing people. You won’t have to build out a management structure for that department either.

When scaling your growth, it’s simply a case of double downing on what’s already working with your agency and fully exhausting that marketing channel. If at some point that marketing channel stops working, you can simply leverage your agency’s diversity to test out new channels.

Transparent vetting

When hiring in house, it can be hard to accurately vet the quality of the hire. For a start, it can be hard to validate the accuracy of the claims on their resume. 

References can be useful, but employers typically stay on the safe side and give a positive reference to avoid any potential legal trouble.

Agencies have it a bit different, however, and clients are very transparent and vocal if an agency has underperformed.

You can easily find and read client reviews about a particular agency on websites such as Trustpilot before deciding to work with an agency. 

Dedicated Partner

The dynamic between working with an agency and hiring an employee is very different. 

An employee understands that they are part of a chain of command. This means that it is unlikely they will be thinking on a strategic level unless they are part of senior management. 

A digital marketing agency is different in that they work with you as a partner. So in many ways, you aren’t paying for an extra team of employees, but more so a marketing partner or even co-founder.

This enables the following benefits:

• Results-driven – Your agency partner knows that if they don’t deliver results, you won’t have a working relationship for much longer. This means that the incentives are properly aligned and there is an urgency to make things happen. 
• Strategic insight – Your digital marketing agency will come in with an outside perspective. This will help you see problems that you didn’t know even existed. They will also be thinking on a much higher level about how to really grow your business.

The Pros of Going In House

Building an in house team will make sense in some cases, and comes with a few benefits. As a general rule, in house teams provide greater control with a tighter, more focused team. 

They Believe In The Mission

When hiring in house, your success will largely depend on how you attract and select potential hires. Finding the right fit for your organization is key. 

Assuming you get the hiring process right, you will ideally be working with people who truly believe in your company and your mission. 

The right employee will be more invested on an emotional level more than any agency partner as they are fully immersed in your company’s journey. 

• Engagement – Highly engaged employees can be one of the most powerful tools a business has. A high level of engagement means that your employees are likely to go above and beyond to help the business succeed, be that through working extra hours or solving difficult problems.
• Talent cultivation – There is no guarantee that you will retain your employees, but if done right you can cultivate your own all-star team. This of course will take many years of active investment, but you could potentially build a powerful team organically. 

Employees Are More Focused

When working with an agency, chances are that the people assigned to your project are likely working with other clients too. 

Juggling multiple responsibilities means that the agency you work with may not be able to give you their full brain power, as would be the case of an employee solely working in your business. 

But keep in mind that focus may not be enough to get results, and even if an agency is working with multiple clients, they may still have the experience to help achieve your business goals.

Brand Familiarity

Building an in-house team comes with the benefit of your employees being fully immersed in your brand. 

This means that they will naturally have a higher level of brand familiarity, and understand why you exist on a more visceral level, compared to an agency. 

A digital marketing agency will of course become accustomed to your brand over time, but it will take longer than someone in house. 

• Customer insight – Better brand familiarity means better customer insight. Your in house team will have a stronger idea of what your customer’s pain points are, what messaging resonates with them and how you can better serve their needs.
• Capabilities – Your employees will also have a more realistic assessment of what your business is capable of in relation to marketing and product development. For instance, they will better be able to leverage the different teams in your organization to enhance marketing activities, such as providing salespeople with content.

Better Control

Hiring in house gives you greater control over the execution of your marketing strategy. 

Although it is generally not a good idea to micro-manage (why are you hiring in the first place?), having your own team means that you will have a better oversight of what is happening.

Many agencies don’t offer that close working relationship and typically have their own processes and ideas about the best way to get things done. 

• Accessibility – Your in house team are always there during working hours. If you are in a physical office space, you get the benefits of much closer collaboration compared to an external agency. But even with remote working, you can easily jump into a meeting with your team as needed.
• Flexibility – Typically with agencies, you agree on a scope of work and enshrine it within a contract. It’s hard to deviate from this scope without incurring extra costs and renegotiating. With an in house team, you have more flexibility to change direction, even though you may be constrained by a lack of skills. 

When Should You Build an In House Team?

Evolutions in the modern economy has opened up new ways of structuring how we work. 

The traditional model of needing employees is being challenged with more flexible arrangements with agencies and freelancers. 

But it’s not a one size fits all situation. Depending on your business and current situation, it still may make sense to build an in house marketing team. 

Here are three scenarios where building an in house team may make sense.

Scenario 1: Venture Funded

If you have just received a large injection of capital, then you will have the money to attract and build the best possible team.

This is even more relevant for early stage startups who can dish out some equity to potential hires so that they can actively poach top talent from other companies. 

Venture funded companies will also be expected to build their own in house team as part of the scaling process, which is a significant reason for receiving the capital in the first place. 

Scenario 2: Access to Talent

If you are living in an area where you have access to the best talent, then building an in house team may make sense to you.

Having a robust network or visibility through your personal brand or thought leadership is also a scenario where it would make sense to leverage that to build a great team.

Having access to the right people is one of the main reasons why you would use a digital marketing agency, so if you could bring them onto your team then it makes sense to do so.

Scenario 3: Difficult Market

Some products and markets can be better executed with an in house team. This is particularly true for very niche or sophisticated markets.

• Innovative Products – If you are working with a very innovative product that is sold at the enterprise level for instance, chances are you will need very technical people that can help with the sales process. This isn’t something that can be delegated to a digital marketing agency.
• Obscure market – Some markets may rely on very specific marketing channels that can’t be scaled in a linear, predictable way. For instance, if you rely on government contracts or seasonal cycles. In these cases, it’s probably better to get in house people who can adapt to your unique circumstances.

The True Cost of Hiring In House

People often have the misconception that hiring an agency is more expensive than hiring in house. 

It naturally depends on the agency you hire and the scope of work, but there are a lot of hidden costs when hiring in house that many people don’t consider. 

When accounting for hiring the best talent, the cost of building an in house team quickly adds up.

1. Recruitment cost – First, you have to set aside a budget to actually finding the right person. This includes costs such as ads, networking events, recruitment personnel and so on. There is also the cost associated with not having a role filled, which could take months.
2. Training and onboarding – Each new employee also has a ramp up time before they reach full productivity. At the beginning, each new hire represents a cost which needs to be taken into consideration.
3. New software – Consider also the costs of tools that your team may need to do their job such as analytics, communication and HR tools.
4. Salaries – The biggest cost of employees comes in the form of their salaries. The better the talent the higher the cost. 
5. Retention – A bad hire can really set you back. In the worst case, they may do damage to your brand and stall your marketing operations. But even if it’s simply not a good fit, you already spent a lot of money acquiring them and you are losing money by not having the role filled.
6. Legal – Employees come with legal consequences. If somebody is proving to be a bad fit after the probation period, it may be difficult to release them. 

Conclusion

Whether you go in house or build out your own team will come down to your unique situation. 

You will have to consider all the variables such as cost, your market and even your ability to build a great team. 

Keep in mind also that it may not have to be a binary decision.

The best route forward may be a combination of some in house hires supplemented with a digital marketing agency. 

The post Working With a Digital Marketing Agency Vs. Hiring In House appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/in-house-team-vs-digital-agency/

How to Work With a Consultant: The Ultimate Guide

While looking through your business objectives, you suddenly feel your organization needs to shake things up a bit. Unfortunately, your in-house team doesn’t have the required expertise to push through change.

So what do you do?

Hire a consultant, hands down.

A consultant can provide your company with specialized knowledge to help solve specific problems, allowing you to gain a competitive advantage.

In a nutshell, they can give you expert opinions, analysis, and recommendations that can help ensure a more objective-based approach to grow your business and maximize sales – all at the same time.

Plus, an outsider’s perspective can likely improve strategizing and troubleshoot problems effectively too.

Our team at Neil Patel Digital has compiled the ultimate guide below to help you understand the nuances of working with a consultant for the best results.

Let’s start by reviewing how you can find the best consultant for your company.

How to Find a Good Consultant – Getting the Interviewing Process Right

Let’s face it: None of us know everything about growing and managing a business.

The scope is big, and covering every part of the syllabus isn’t possible. 

Hence, it makes perfect sense to seek the counsel of experts who are right for you and your business.

And no, no one is going to judge you because you can’t solve your problems, whether it’s reducing expenses or creating an audience for new market entry.

When hiring a consultant, make sure you follow these five simple and important guidelines:

Person of the Highest Character

A good consultant must have an unimpeachable character and be a thorough professional who is willing to put the best interests of your company ahead of their own.

For instance, they must be willing to tell clients things they need to hear but may not want to – even if it means losing business. Ever ready to put their best foot forward, the expert should deeply care about helping their clients achieve their business objectives.

Experience and Expertise

The only way that a good consultant can meet challenges and identify opportunities is when they have years of experience and expertise to create effective strategies. 

The consultant doesn’t need to know your company or industry niche, but they should have the relevant knowledge to understand what to do next to enhance campaign efficiency and deliver results.

Additionally, they should have applicable certifications and technical knowledge. So if you want to launch paid campaigns, find out whether the prospective consultant has the niche-specific qualification. 

For instance, a Facebook ad consultant should know how to use Facebook Pixel, Facebook Ad Manager, and Power Editor. On the other hand, an AdWords consultant should be Google AdWords-certified and know how to improve ad Quality Score.

Creative Problem-Solving Skills

If there is one thing your consultant should be, it‘s an outstanding problem solver.

After all, the whole point of hiring a consultant is to solve specific pain points, along with taking advantage of opportunities.

Most of this is highly dependent on the mentality and excellent analytical skills to create and synthesize campaigns or business processes. Consultants have to be quick and effective learners and have the capability to solve problems through an imaginative and creative thought process.

Spot-On Interpersonal Skills

You need to trust your consultant if you want a successful collaboration, especially since revealing intimate details of your business is a necessity here. 

Think of it as a relationship similar to that between a doctor and patient.

In the absence of complete candor, the consultant’s efforts may not be very effective, and hence, won’t help solve problems. 

So make sure you choose a candidate who you feel you can develop a professional relationship of comfort and trust with.

Effective Communication Skills

Strong communication skills – oral as well as written – is mandatory for a good consultant. 

An articulate thinking process and writing eloquently can also have a positive effect on your company’s target audience.

Communication is a two-way street, though. 

No matter how great a consultant is, they won’t be able to help you until they fully understand the challenges you face, so make sure you’re clear about your pain points, vision, and challenges.

Remember, having the right consultant can create tremendous value. But if you get it wrong, it can also destroy value.

What to Expect When Working with a Consultant

Once you’ve chosen a consultant, there are certain expectations on both sides that you should know to ensure consultancy success.

Onboarding Process

One thing that you can expect from a responsible consultant is availability and responsiveness.

Make sure all the credentials are verified and that the necessary HR paperwork and background checks are properly performed. Once everyone is on the same page, formal documentation should be signed and delivered to the involved parties.

During onboarding, make sure you maintain open dialogue to make the process smooth and fuss-free.

Role Clarification

Everyone involved in the project or task should be clear about what is expected from them and why they’ve been hired. 

You can give the consultant your company‘s mission and vision statements, along with other key documents to help them see the bigger picture.

Don’t be afraid to give the consultant measurable goals. You can work with them to set SMART goals that not only clarify all your expectations but also set parameters to measure the overall progress and performance.

Holding Discovery Sessions and Meetings

It’s almost impossible for a consultant to create any strategy for your company without having an in-depth understanding of your business objectives.

Hence, you have to be prepared to answer a lot of questions from your consultant. In fact, make sure that the consultant does clear their doubts as otherwise, the campaigns will likely fail. This includes:

• Questions about your current benchmarks, segment objectives, and overall goals.
• Questions about customer expectations and strategizing accordingly.
• Questions about KPIs and metrics for performance measurements.
• Question about tactics and various marketing channels for boosting customer engagement.

Once the consultant understands your current situation, they‘ll work out a game plan to tell you your final destination and think of ways to help you get there.

Reviewing the Final Game Plan

At this stage, the consultant will present their tailor-made ideas and strategies to suit your business needs in front of you and your employees.

This, of course, will depend on the project and the consultancy provided by them. For instance, a digital strategy consultant should cover various aspects related to advertising, such as media, public relations, digital marketing, and print advertising.

You can also propose reviews by looking at the presentation and examples from the previous clientele of the consultant. 

Here’s what you can do:

• Ask for performance data for evaluation.
• Discuss campaign elements, especially priority points.
• Spot knowledge gaps and weak points in strategy, and ask for alternatives.

Strategy Implementation and Result Monitoring

Once you give the final go-ahead to the plan, the consultant will then launch the business campaign or start implementation.

After execution, the consultant should collect and analyze data to give you insights about the campaigns. You can allow suggestions made by them to enhance campaign effectiveness or adjust budgets accordingly.

You may not see immediate results, but you can still use the gained insights for crafting better campaigns.

How to Measure Success 

Measuring the ROI of a consultant can be a challenging prospect. More so, because they help in several areas – many of which are measured in long-term growth.

In fact, according to the Predictive Index Consultant Report, nearly 27% of companies don’t want to hire consultants because measuring ROI is too difficult.

The first thing that you should do is approach the consultant-owner relationship with an actionable viewpoint by doing the following:

• Set specific, measurable goals from the very beginning.
• Figure out ways to measure the intangible benefits of their work.

Additionally, you can use certain metrics, such as:

• Open rate
• Click rate
• Bounce rate
• Response rate
• Unsubscribes
• Lead and conversions
• Return on ad spend (ROAS)
• Brand engagement on website by finding out the number of unique visitors, return visitors, and total time spent on the website

Make sure that you select the right KPIs that allow you to analyze your business campaigns effectively. Otherwise, you won’t be able to measure the success of the consultant’s strategy.

For measuring intangible benefits, gauge the difference in your team’s confidence before and after hiring the consultant. You can also carry out an internal survey or reference feedback.

Where to Find Consultants 

We’ve already established that you need to define the problem you’re facing before hiring outside experts. 

Once you’ve done that, you can get on the task of finding the right consultant for your business.

Usually, the best way to find good consultants is to use word of mouth. Talk to your past clients and ask them for references. Ask them about the problems the consultant helped solve, objectives they helped achieve, and whether they would hire them again.

The other way is to post project details on platforms like Reddit, Guru, Upwork, Freelancer.com. You can also select a freelancer profile from these marketplaces.

Another excellent way is to scan the respective consultant on LinkedIn profiles and blog posts. You can learn a lot about their personality, work ethics, and value that you may not identify while interviewing them. Twitter is also another platform to consider.

However, if you want to work with seasoned consultants – something that we highly recommend – you can do a basic Google search. Visit the websites of these companies and fill in their inquiry forms to schedule a discovery call.

Make sure you pay a lot of attention to the consultant’s personality and consulting style. It’s necessary for them to fit in with your corporate culture and gel with your team – just as any new employee should.

Do they listen to you properly? Do they have high emotional intelligence? All these are important questions you should consider before hiring.

Make sure that you do your homework on the prospect, whether a person or firm, to determine their suitability to solve your exact situation.

The worst thing you can do is force a square peg into a circular hole, which will only lead to time, energy, and money wastage. In other words, you’ll end up in the same place you started.

What Kinds of Budgets and Prices to Expect 

A good consultant will always ask the budget before chalking up campaign frameworks or strategies.

Some consultants work with clients having a monthly budget of $400 for ads, while some only go for businesses with budgets greater than $3000 per month.

So you have to decide the kind of money you are ready to spend and then find candidates who have previously worked with similar budgets.

As for pricing, every consultant charges their own fee depending on their expertise, experience, and goodwill. Typically, there are three pricing models:

• Daily rate
• Project fee
• Retainer fee

Hence, you can either offer them a “set rate,“ provide an upfront retainer fee for the work the consultant will do over a specific period, or finalize an hourly rate.

Also, don’t be afraid to negotiate – even consultants expect it.

The Different Types of Consultants 

A consultant often specializes in specific fields where clients need in-depth expertise. This makes them better equipped to solve particular situations by using expert tools and a greater target audience understanding to avert any crisis.

Consultants generally fall into five categories. These are:

Strategy and Management Consultants

These consultants have a market-specific understanding and know the best practices of your industry niche. As a result, they can offer the following:

• Enlarge your market footprint
• Reorganize businesses for greater efficiency and cost savings
• Expand your product offerings
• Helps make informed decisions regarding equipment purchase or company buyouts

Human Resources Consultants

These consultants work specifically on employee needs. 

Whether it’s recruiting top talent, determining compensation to align with company goals, or improving employee retention, an HR consultant can streamline everything using their leadership and communication skills.

IT Consultants

IT is one area that is experiencing tremendous consulting growth.

With the rapidly increasing relevance of technology and tech support, companies have started hiring consultants to facilitate better integration and improve their computer or phone systems, upgrade servers, and ensure efficient storage space.

These consultants are also known as ICT or digital consultants that help clients with the development and application of information technology within their organization.

Operations Consultants

These are individuals or agencies that can help clients improve operations efficiency and performance.

Activities in this segment vary from advisory services to hands-on implementation support for primary functions (sales, production, marketing, etc.) and secondary functions (finance, supply chain, HR, legal, etc.). They can help to improve quality, minimize steps or mistakes, increase margins, and decrease costs.

Sales and Marketing Consultants

As one would expect, sales and marketing consultants primarily focus on the marketing and advertising aspects of organizations. They perform the following tasks:

• Work on positioning statements
• Create effective marketing plans
• Develop a brand from scratch
• Launching advertising campaigns
• Initiating sales process and suggesting improvements
• Establishing social media strategies
• Designing sales training and coaching material

Financial Advisory Consultant

These are consultants who operate in the financial advisory segment. Their main job revolves around working on questions that address financial capabilities as well as analytical capabilities within an organization.

Furthermore, every consultant can have varied profiles, ranging from M&A to risk management to real estate consultancy to tax.

Agencies vs. Consultants – What Is the Difference?

Agency and consultancy: Two words, but they are worlds apart in approach.

The main differences between these two terms ultimately boil down to the following:

Team Know-How

Agencies – whether big or small – are almost always larger than consulting firms. As a result, they have a wider range of creative talent, team members, and skillsets. You are also assured of more resources with them.

Despite the smaller size of consultancies, there is a built-in rhythm that makes them more agile when adapting to rapidly changing business landscapes. They often have specialists in specific fields that can solve pain points – provided it fits their suite of knowledge.

Also, agencies commonly implement more activities, such as advertising, digital or media plan, web designing, and so on. On the other hand, consultancies are more focused at the strategic level, which involves building brands for long-term health and commoditizing strategy execution.

Varying Budgets and Mandate Size

Any reasonable professional will always consider the overall cost to make sure it fits their budget. 

This is precisely why you should decide between an agency and consultancy after determining your business size, budget, as well as the breadth of your mandate.

For instance, if you run a small operation that requires a quick turnaround time, heading consultancies will be right up your alley. But if you have more wiggle room, resources, and time, you can opt for an agency.

We would highly recommend getting roadmaps with key deliverable dates and timelines from respective partners after you finish aligning your budget and timelines. This will help you understand the overall projected costs more effectively.

Brand Vision and Time Factor

If you choose to work with creative agencies, you get the option to choose your partner based off on your vision and past campaigns. They give you hundreds of options to choose from after taking your idea to make things easier for you.

Also, since creative processes go through several rounds of conceptualizations, the turnaround time is a bit longer, but you are assured of high-quality campaigns.

Consulting firms allow clients more latitude to push their vision and opt for a more hands-on experience of collecting data and designing campaigns.

Since consultants usually try to immerse themselves wholly in their client’s team, the turnaround time is typically faster as well. That said, the size of a consultancy can increase time, in case they have a huge reserve of past work.

Offered Solutions

Agencies are popular for creating some of the most engaging, inspiring, and emotional (you can insert more positive adjectives here) brand campaigns. 

While the process is definitely a little longer than working with the consultant, they do specialize in distinct areas that facilitate better strategy execution.

Consultants, on the contrary, dig deeper to solve your problems. You‘re assured of more direct and quicker solutions thanks to their hands-on approach.

The post How to Work With a Consultant: The Ultimate Guide appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-work-with-a-consultant/

12 Expectations to Consider When Engaging a Digital Agency

Hiring and working with a digital agency comes with a lot of considerations. 

Not only will you need to think about how to appropriately vet a digital agency, but also what the working relationship will look like. 

In order to ensure that you are getting the most out of your digital agency – and that you aren’t driving them crazy – consider these factors. 

1) Proposal and Strategy 

When you are initially engaging with a digital agency, you should expect to receive some form of value upfront before you invest in their services. 

This can take different forms such as:

• Proposals – The agency you are speaking with should at the very least prepare a presentation in regard to strategy and execution. 
• Test project – In some cases, it may be worth hiring the agency for a test project initially. This works better with some services such as content, but not so much with something like SEO, which takes longer.
• Audit – Agencies may provide you with a free audit, such as things to optimize with your technical SEO or how to improve your design. 

Getting value upfront will help you evaluate the expertise of the agency and demonstrates that they are serious about helping you. 

2) Niche Speciality

Any agency you engage with should ideally have experience working with other clients who are similar to you in terms of both your specific needs and the market you operate in.

• Market – Not all markets are the same and need different strategies. A B2B company selling machinery parts will need a completely different approach to ethical fashion brands in terms of marketing channels, messaging, and sales cycles.
• Marketing channel – Your digital agency should also have real experience with whichever marketing channel is best suited to you. Remember that you are competing for customers in each channel, so you need somebody who knows the nuances that will allow your message to stand out.

3) Contracts

Understanding the legal side of your relationship with your agency will ensure that you don’t have any nasty surprises. 

When you sign a contract with an agency, here are some things you should expect:

• No guarantees – Naturally, an agency will likely do their best to ensure that you get results. However, you will never find an agency that will guarantee a set of results in the contract. Although they may be competent, there is no way they can know for certain they’ll get you results.
• Fixed period of time – Most contracts are agreed on for a fixed period of time, e.g 3 months. This means that you won’t be able to simply cancel the agreement once you get started, unless there is a clause allowing you to do so.
• No responsibility – An agency doesn’t hold the responsibility for any damages your brand may incur through their marketing activity. This is one of the reasons why you need to be prudent when evaluating different agencies.

4) Cost Expectations

When you are hiring an agency, you are engaging in a form of outsourcing. 

But despite the connotations, outsourcing doesn’t necessarily mean cost savings. If you work with the best agencies, you will have to pay adequately for their expertise. 

Some agencies may promise to do the same work for less, but there is always a logical reason why one agency charges more than the other. Chances are, they have more experience and expertise. 

It’s important to also keep in mind the cost difference between hiring an agency and building an in-house team. Consider how much it would cost you to hire the top talent in a particular field, versus hiring an agency who already has them.

5) Project Scope

Oftentimes, business owners engage with an agency without a clear understanding of exactly what they want. 

Although this is understandable, you should speak with your agency and get a crystal clear idea of what the scope of the project is. 

You will need to consider:

1. Timeline – How long do you see your working relationship with your agency lasting? Is it a short contractual project to complete a content series? Or do you need an ongoing partner to work with indefinitely?
2. Evolving needs – You may hire an agency to take care of your SEO, but soon realize that you actually need help producing great content. You will need to map out all the ways you will need help and account for that in your project scope.
3. Budget – Longer and more complex projects cost more, so you will need to have a realistic grasp of how far your budget will stretch.

6) Results Expectations

Getting results for your business is the ultimate goal when hiring an agency, but it’s important to have a realistic perspective on what success looks like. 

1. Testing phase – At the start of any relationship with a new agency, there will be a period of adjustment and testing before both of you find the right cadence. This could be a matter of months, depending on what the focus is. 
2. Failure management – Even the best digital agencies don’t have any magic powers. Although they may do their best, there are sometimes factors outside their control. For instance, the competition in your market may be very tough. You should accept that there is always a risk of failure when engaging with an agency.
3. Quantified results – With product services like design or programming, the end result is easier to agree on. With marketing, however, there are a lot more variables that can be hard to predict upfront. For instance, a PPC agency can’t tell you exactly how many leads they can get you without running the appropriate tests.

7) Hiring Multiple Agencies

Something you may be thinking about is whether you should hire multiple agencies or just one that can handle everything. 

Working with different agencies has perks including:

• In theory, you will be able to find super-specialized agencies for each of your marketing needs. This should provide better results
• You can leverage and gain insights from different perspectives
• You diversify the risk of relying on one team

But there are some limitations too.

• It can create a lot more work having to manage multiple agencies. If managed badly, performance can suffer
• Not all the agencies may be as good as each other
• It may be difficult to get agencies to collaborate together on a holistic marketing strategy

Hiring multiple agencies can be useful if there is something very specific that you need to solve. For instance, if you are in a niche market and need content creators who have deep knowledge of your market.

8) Personal Workload

When you engage with a digital agency, you are leveraging an external team that can help you achieve your goals. 

However, this doesn’t mean that they are going to take over your business and do all the work for you. Particularly when engaging with a digital marketing agency, you will still have some responsibilities:

• You will need to ensure that your landing pages are well optimized so that you can convert the increased traffic into customers
• There will be tasks that you have to do at the onset of the relationship such as providing access to software, creating customer profiles and so on
• Depending on the type of work you have hired for, you may need to complete specific tasks such as taking high quality product photos or interviewing your team for content ideas

9) Micromanagement 

Micromanagement is typically never a good thing, but you are more likely to pull it off successfully if you are working with a small in-house team.

Working with a digital agency is another story. 

Your digital agency will have their own set of processes and ways of working which you won’t easily be able to oversee and become involved in.

Remember that an agency operates in a different manner to your employees and they aren’t simply there to do as you tell them.

There are also logistical barriers even if you wanted to micromanage an agency. You may only have direct communication with an account manager and not the other members of the team, for instance. 

And not only will the agency not be in the same location as you, but there is a chance that they could be in a completely different timezone.

10) Business Fundamentals 

Here’s the deal.

If you have a bad business, it wouldn’t matter if you hire the best digital marketing agency in the world. They would simply be sending traffic into a blackhole.

You need to deeply understand whether your current challenges are a result of your marketing strategy or a weak business in itself. Before talking to a digital marketing agency, think deeply about the following:

Have you validated your product?

If you barely have any customers, hiring a digital agency probably isn’t the best idea. Find out if there is a strong demand for your product first.

Is there a large addressable market?

Digital agencies will help you build out scalable marketing channels. And to see the best results, you need to have a product and a market that can scale. Selling personalized homemade cookies in your local area probably isn’t the right fit for a digital agency.

Do you have any proof of marketing potential?

In addition to proving that you have a product that sells, you need some inclination that digital marketing channels will work for you. For instance, are their competitors in your space that are doing well online?

11) Agencies Have Multiple Clients

Digital agencies structure their business so that they can work with multiple clients. And like any other business, they are usually trying to grow, which means taking on new clients.

What you need to keep in mind here is that any given digital agency will never put 100% of their resources and focus onto your particular goals.

You will be assigned an account manager, and depending on the work involved you may have direct contact with the team members who are executing on the marketing strategy.

But you will likely not have access to the senior team, unless you are one of their biggest and most important clients. 

It’s also important to keep in mind that even the account manager and marketing people you work with will likely be working on other projects too. It is unlikely you will work with agency members who are 100% focused on your project.

12) Agencies Have Their Own Processes

When you start engaging with a digital agency, you will quickly come to find out that you are essentially integrating with another company.

This means that there has to be a good symbiosis between the different parts of your company and theirs.

• Team – As agencies are mostly about human relationships and not software, you will need to see if your team actually gets on well with their team. Even if it’s a right fit in terms of skills and track record, sometimes different personalities don’t see eye to eye. 
• Culture – You will need to examine the culture and values that your agency partner embodies and see if it meshes well with yours. You may for instance prioritize a more slow and steady approach, but they may focus on results by any means. 
• Processes – You may expect an agency partner that is always on stand by and ready to engage, whereas they may structure themselves more around long periods of deep work. They may be more methodical in how they work, where you may focus more on fundamental execution. You will need to ensure that your processes and styles of working sync up too.

Conclusion

Having the appropriate expectations will set you up for success and a more harmonious relationship with any digital agency you work with. 

The main takeaway here is to understand what an agency can and can’t do for your business. 

As talented and experienced as they may be, they can only work with what you give them.

You will need to ensure that your own house is in order first so that when you do work with an agency they can help you scale up what’s already working.

The post 12 Expectations to Consider When Engaging a Digital Agency appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/digital-agency-expectations/

12 Expectations to Consider When Engaging a Digital Agency

Hiring and working with a digital agency comes with a lot of considerations. 

Not only will you need to think about how to appropriately vet a digital agency, but also what the working relationship will look like. 

In order to ensure that you are getting the most out of your digital agency – and that you aren’t driving them crazy – consider these factors. 

1) Proposal and Strategy 

When you are initially engaging with a digital agency, you should expect to receive some form of value upfront before you invest in their services. 

This can take different forms such as:

• Proposals – The agency you are speaking with should at the very least prepare a presentation in regard to strategy and execution. 
• Test project – In some cases, it may be worth hiring the agency for a test project initially. This works better with some services such as content, but not so much with something like SEO, which takes longer.
• Audit – Agencies may provide you with a free audit, such as things to optimize with your technical SEO or how to improve your design. 

Getting value upfront will help you evaluate the expertise of the agency and demonstrates that they are serious about helping you. 

2) Niche Speciality

Any agency you engage with should ideally have experience working with other clients who are similar to you in terms of both your specific needs and the market you operate in.

• Market – Not all markets are the same and need different strategies. A B2B company selling machinery parts will need a completely different approach to ethical fashion brands in terms of marketing channels, messaging, and sales cycles.
• Marketing channel – Your digital agency should also have real experience with whichever marketing channel is best suited to you. Remember that you are competing for customers in each channel, so you need somebody who knows the nuances that will allow your message to stand out.

3) Contracts

Understanding the legal side of your relationship with your agency will ensure that you don’t have any nasty surprises. 

When you sign a contract with an agency, here are some things you should expect:

• No guarantees – Naturally, an agency will likely do their best to ensure that you get results. However, you will never find an agency that will guarantee a set of results in the contract. Although they may be competent, there is no way they can know for certain they’ll get you results.
• Fixed period of time – Most contracts are agreed on for a fixed period of time, e.g 3 months. This means that you won’t be able to simply cancel the agreement once you get started, unless there is a clause allowing you to do so.
• No responsibility – An agency doesn’t hold the responsibility for any damages your brand may incur through their marketing activity. This is one of the reasons why you need to be prudent when evaluating different agencies.

4) Cost Expectations

When you are hiring an agency, you are engaging in a form of outsourcing. 

But despite the connotations, outsourcing doesn’t necessarily mean cost savings. If you work with the best agencies, you will have to pay adequately for their expertise. 

Some agencies may promise to do the same work for less, but there is always a logical reason why one agency charges more than the other. Chances are, they have more experience and expertise. 

It’s important to also keep in mind the cost difference between hiring an agency and building an in-house team. Consider how much it would cost you to hire the top talent in a particular field, versus hiring an agency who already has them.

5) Project Scope

Oftentimes, business owners engage with an agency without a clear understanding of exactly what they want. 

Although this is understandable, you should speak with your agency and get a crystal clear idea of what the scope of the project is. 

You will need to consider:

1. Timeline – How long do you see your working relationship with your agency lasting? Is it a short contractual project to complete a content series? Or do you need an ongoing partner to work with indefinitely?
2. Evolving needs – You may hire an agency to take care of your SEO, but soon realize that you actually need help producing great content. You will need to map out all the ways you will need help and account for that in your project scope.
3. Budget – Longer and more complex projects cost more, so you will need to have a realistic grasp of how far your budget will stretch.

6) Results Expectations

Getting results for your business is the ultimate goal when hiring an agency, but it’s important to have a realistic perspective on what success looks like. 

1. Testing phase – At the start of any relationship with a new agency, there will be a period of adjustment and testing before both of you find the right cadence. This could be a matter of months, depending on what the focus is. 
2. Failure management – Even the best digital agencies don’t have any magic powers. Although they may do their best, there are sometimes factors outside their control. For instance, the competition in your market may be very tough. You should accept that there is always a risk of failure when engaging with an agency.
3. Quantified results – With product services like design or programming, the end result is easier to agree on. With marketing, however, there are a lot more variables that can be hard to predict upfront. For instance, a PPC agency can’t tell you exactly how many leads they can get you without running the appropriate tests.

7) Hiring Multiple Agencies

Something you may be thinking about is whether you should hire multiple agencies or just one that can handle everything. 

Working with different agencies has perks including:

• In theory, you will be able to find super-specialized agencies for each of your marketing needs. This should provide better results
• You can leverage and gain insights from different perspectives
• You diversify the risk of relying on one team

But there are some limitations too.

• It can create a lot more work having to manage multiple agencies. If managed badly, performance can suffer
• Not all the agencies may be as good as each other
• It may be difficult to get agencies to collaborate together on a holistic marketing strategy

Hiring multiple agencies can be useful if there is something very specific that you need to solve. For instance, if you are in a niche market and need content creators who have deep knowledge of your market.

8) Personal Workload

When you engage with a digital agency, you are leveraging an external team that can help you achieve your goals. 

However, this doesn’t mean that they are going to take over your business and do all the work for you. Particularly when engaging with a digital marketing agency, you will still have some responsibilities:

• You will need to ensure that your landing pages are well optimized so that you can convert the increased traffic into customers
• There will be tasks that you have to do at the onset of the relationship such as providing access to software, creating customer profiles and so on
• Depending on the type of work you have hired for, you may need to complete specific tasks such as taking high quality product photos or interviewing your team for content ideas

9) Micromanagement 

Micromanagement is typically never a good thing, but you are more likely to pull it off successfully if you are working with a small in-house team.

Working with a digital agency is another story. 

Your digital agency will have their own set of processes and ways of working which you won’t easily be able to oversee and become involved in.

Remember that an agency operates in a different manner to your employees and they aren’t simply there to do as you tell them.

There are also logistical barriers even if you wanted to micromanage an agency. You may only have direct communication with an account manager and not the other members of the team, for instance. 

And not only will the agency not be in the same location as you, but there is a chance that they could be in a completely different timezone.

10) Business Fundamentals 

Here’s the deal.

If you have a bad business, it wouldn’t matter if you hire the best digital marketing agency in the world. They would simply be sending traffic into a blackhole.

You need to deeply understand whether your current challenges are a result of your marketing strategy or a weak business in itself. Before talking to a digital marketing agency, think deeply about the following:

Have you validated your product?

If you barely have any customers, hiring a digital agency probably isn’t the best idea. Find out if there is a strong demand for your product first.

Is there a large addressable market?

Digital agencies will help you build out scalable marketing channels. And to see the best results, you need to have a product and a market that can scale. Selling personalized homemade cookies in your local area probably isn’t the right fit for a digital agency.

Do you have any proof of marketing potential?

In addition to proving that you have a product that sells, you need some inclination that digital marketing channels will work for you. For instance, are their competitors in your space that are doing well online?

11) Agencies Have Multiple Clients

Digital agencies structure their business so that they can work with multiple clients. And like any other business, they are usually trying to grow, which means taking on new clients.

What you need to keep in mind here is that any given digital agency will never put 100% of their resources and focus onto your particular goals.

You will be assigned an account manager, and depending on the work involved you may have direct contact with the team members who are executing on the marketing strategy.

But you will likely not have access to the senior team, unless you are one of their biggest and most important clients. 

It’s also important to keep in mind that even the account manager and marketing people you work with will likely be working on other projects too. It is unlikely you will work with agency members who are 100% focused on your project.

12) Agencies Have Their Own Processes

When you start engaging with a digital agency, you will quickly come to find out that you are essentially integrating with another company.

This means that there has to be a good symbiosis between the different parts of your company and theirs.

• Team – As agencies are mostly about human relationships and not software, you will need to see if your team actually gets on well with their team. Even if it’s a right fit in terms of skills and track record, sometimes different personalities don’t see eye to eye. 
• Culture – You will need to examine the culture and values that your agency partner embodies and see if it meshes well with yours. You may for instance prioritize a more slow and steady approach, but they may focus on results by any means. 
• Processes – You may expect an agency partner that is always on stand by and ready to engage, whereas they may structure themselves more around long periods of deep work. They may be more methodical in how they work, where you may focus more on fundamental execution. You will need to ensure that your processes and styles of working sync up too.

Conclusion

Having the appropriate expectations will set you up for success and a more harmonious relationship with any digital agency you work with. 

The main takeaway here is to understand what an agency can and can’t do for your business. 

As talented and experienced as they may be, they can only work with what you give them.

You will need to ensure that your own house is in order first so that when you do work with an agency they can help you scale up what’s already working.

The post 12 Expectations to Consider When Engaging a Digital Agency appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/digital-agency-expectations/

12 Expectations to Consider When Engaging a Digital Agency

Hiring and working with a digital agency comes with a lot of considerations. 

Not only will you need to think about how to appropriately vet a digital agency, but also what the working relationship will look like. 

In order to ensure that you are getting the most out of your digital agency – and that you aren’t driving them crazy – consider these factors. 

1) Proposal and Strategy 

When you are initially engaging with a digital agency, you should expect to receive some form of value upfront before you invest in their services. 

This can take different forms such as:

• Proposals – The agency you are speaking with should at the very least prepare a presentation in regard to strategy and execution. 
• Test project – In some cases, it may be worth hiring the agency for a test project initially. This works better with some services such as content, but not so much with something like SEO, which takes longer.
• Audit – Agencies may provide you with a free audit, such as things to optimize with your technical SEO or how to improve your design. 

Getting value upfront will help you evaluate the expertise of the agency and demonstrates that they are serious about helping you. 

2) Niche Speciality

Any agency you engage with should ideally have experience working with other clients who are similar to you in terms of both your specific needs and the market you operate in.

• Market – Not all markets are the same and need different strategies. A B2B company selling machinery parts will need a completely different approach to ethical fashion brands in terms of marketing channels, messaging, and sales cycles.
• Marketing channel – Your digital agency should also have real experience with whichever marketing channel is best suited to you. Remember that you are competing for customers in each channel, so you need somebody who knows the nuances that will allow your message to stand out.

3) Contracts

Understanding the legal side of your relationship with your agency will ensure that you don’t have any nasty surprises. 

When you sign a contract with an agency, here are some things you should expect:

• No guarantees – Naturally, an agency will likely do their best to ensure that you get results. However, you will never find an agency that will guarantee a set of results in the contract. Although they may be competent, there is no way they can know for certain they’ll get you results.
• Fixed period of time – Most contracts are agreed on for a fixed period of time, e.g 3 months. This means that you won’t be able to simply cancel the agreement once you get started, unless there is a clause allowing you to do so.
• No responsibility – An agency doesn’t hold the responsibility for any damages your brand may incur through their marketing activity. This is one of the reasons why you need to be prudent when evaluating different agencies.

4) Cost Expectations

When you are hiring an agency, you are engaging in a form of outsourcing. 

But despite the connotations, outsourcing doesn’t necessarily mean cost savings. If you work with the best agencies, you will have to pay adequately for their expertise. 

Some agencies may promise to do the same work for less, but there is always a logical reason why one agency charges more than the other. Chances are, they have more experience and expertise. 

It’s important to also keep in mind the cost difference between hiring an agency and building an in-house team. Consider how much it would cost you to hire the top talent in a particular field, versus hiring an agency who already has them.

5) Project Scope

Oftentimes, business owners engage with an agency without a clear understanding of exactly what they want. 

Although this is understandable, you should speak with your agency and get a crystal clear idea of what the scope of the project is. 

You will need to consider:

1. Timeline – How long do you see your working relationship with your agency lasting? Is it a short contractual project to complete a content series? Or do you need an ongoing partner to work with indefinitely?
2. Evolving needs – You may hire an agency to take care of your SEO, but soon realize that you actually need help producing great content. You will need to map out all the ways you will need help and account for that in your project scope.
3. Budget – Longer and more complex projects cost more, so you will need to have a realistic grasp of how far your budget will stretch.

6) Results Expectations

Getting results for your business is the ultimate goal when hiring an agency, but it’s important to have a realistic perspective on what success looks like. 

1. Testing phase – At the start of any relationship with a new agency, there will be a period of adjustment and testing before both of you find the right cadence. This could be a matter of months, depending on what the focus is. 
2. Failure management – Even the best digital agencies don’t have any magic powers. Although they may do their best, there are sometimes factors outside their control. For instance, the competition in your market may be very tough. You should accept that there is always a risk of failure when engaging with an agency.
3. Quantified results – With product services like design or programming, the end result is easier to agree on. With marketing, however, there are a lot more variables that can be hard to predict upfront. For instance, a PPC agency can’t tell you exactly how many leads they can get you without running the appropriate tests.

7) Hiring Multiple Agencies

Something you may be thinking about is whether you should hire multiple agencies or just one that can handle everything. 

Working with different agencies has perks including:

• In theory, you will be able to find super-specialized agencies for each of your marketing needs. This should provide better results
• You can leverage and gain insights from different perspectives
• You diversify the risk of relying on one team

But there are some limitations too.

• It can create a lot more work having to manage multiple agencies. If managed badly, performance can suffer
• Not all the agencies may be as good as each other
• It may be difficult to get agencies to collaborate together on a holistic marketing strategy

Hiring multiple agencies can be useful if there is something very specific that you need to solve. For instance, if you are in a niche market and need content creators who have deep knowledge of your market.

8) Personal Workload

When you engage with a digital agency, you are leveraging an external team that can help you achieve your goals. 

However, this doesn’t mean that they are going to take over your business and do all the work for you. Particularly when engaging with a digital marketing agency, you will still have some responsibilities:

• You will need to ensure that your landing pages are well optimized so that you can convert the increased traffic into customers
• There will be tasks that you have to do at the onset of the relationship such as providing access to software, creating customer profiles and so on
• Depending on the type of work you have hired for, you may need to complete specific tasks such as taking high quality product photos or interviewing your team for content ideas

9) Micromanagement 

Micromanagement is typically never a good thing, but you are more likely to pull it off successfully if you are working with a small in-house team.

Working with a digital agency is another story. 

Your digital agency will have their own set of processes and ways of working which you won’t easily be able to oversee and become involved in.

Remember that an agency operates in a different manner to your employees and they aren’t simply there to do as you tell them.

There are also logistical barriers even if you wanted to micromanage an agency. You may only have direct communication with an account manager and not the other members of the team, for instance. 

And not only will the agency not be in the same location as you, but there is a chance that they could be in a completely different timezone.

10) Business Fundamentals 

Here’s the deal.

If you have a bad business, it wouldn’t matter if you hire the best digital marketing agency in the world. They would simply be sending traffic into a blackhole.

You need to deeply understand whether your current challenges are a result of your marketing strategy or a weak business in itself. Before talking to a digital marketing agency, think deeply about the following:

Have you validated your product?

If you barely have any customers, hiring a digital agency probably isn’t the best idea. Find out if there is a strong demand for your product first.

Is there a large addressable market?

Digital agencies will help you build out scalable marketing channels. And to see the best results, you need to have a product and a market that can scale. Selling personalized homemade cookies in your local area probably isn’t the right fit for a digital agency.

Do you have any proof of marketing potential?

In addition to proving that you have a product that sells, you need some inclination that digital marketing channels will work for you. For instance, are their competitors in your space that are doing well online?

11) Agencies Have Multiple Clients

Digital agencies structure their business so that they can work with multiple clients. And like any other business, they are usually trying to grow, which means taking on new clients.

What you need to keep in mind here is that any given digital agency will never put 100% of their resources and focus onto your particular goals.

You will be assigned an account manager, and depending on the work involved you may have direct contact with the team members who are executing on the marketing strategy.

But you will likely not have access to the senior team, unless you are one of their biggest and most important clients. 

It’s also important to keep in mind that even the account manager and marketing people you work with will likely be working on other projects too. It is unlikely you will work with agency members who are 100% focused on your project.

12) Agencies Have Their Own Processes

When you start engaging with a digital agency, you will quickly come to find out that you are essentially integrating with another company.

This means that there has to be a good symbiosis between the different parts of your company and theirs.

• Team – As agencies are mostly about human relationships and not software, you will need to see if your team actually gets on well with their team. Even if it’s a right fit in terms of skills and track record, sometimes different personalities don’t see eye to eye. 
• Culture – You will need to examine the culture and values that your agency partner embodies and see if it meshes well with yours. You may for instance prioritize a more slow and steady approach, but they may focus on results by any means. 
• Processes – You may expect an agency partner that is always on stand by and ready to engage, whereas they may structure themselves more around long periods of deep work. They may be more methodical in how they work, where you may focus more on fundamental execution. You will need to ensure that your processes and styles of working sync up too.

Conclusion

Having the appropriate expectations will set you up for success and a more harmonious relationship with any digital agency you work with. 

The main takeaway here is to understand what an agency can and can’t do for your business. 

As talented and experienced as they may be, they can only work with what you give them.

You will need to ensure that your own house is in order first so that when you do work with an agency they can help you scale up what’s already working.

The post 12 Expectations to Consider When Engaging a Digital Agency appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/digital-agency-expectations/

How to Create Your First Website Like a Pro

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

You’ve decided to create your first website—great! I’m going to teach you to set up your site like you’ve done this thousands of times before.

What You Should Know About Starting a Website

In order to get your website online, you will need a domain name and a web host. 

• A domain name is where people access your website. For QuickSprout, that would be www.quicksprout.com (also called a URL, the technical component of a domain name).
• A web host is a business that you pay to provide storage for all of your crucial website data.

Bluehost allows you to buy and register both a domain name and hosting plan. 

What If I Want a Free Website?

You can start for free at WordPress.com.

To use the free plan, you will not need to register a domain name or choose a web hosting provider since your website will automatically be generated as a sub-domain of WordPress.com. For example, if you wanted to start a blog about vintage teacups, your URL could be www.vintageteacups.wordpress.com.

If you’re in this for the long haul, keep in mind that your audience will be much more likely to trust your brand if you own your domain name (i.e. www.vintageteacups.com). Investing in domain registration and hosting is the first step towards growing an independent business.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your First Website

Ready to get started? These 8 steps will walk you seamlessly through the process from sign-up to beginner content building so you won’t have to worry you’ve left anything out.

Step 1: Consider your website goals 

Do you intend your website to be a portfolio of your work? A niche blog? An eCommerce site? You can do all of this and more via WordPress, which opens up the world wide web of possibility with its full-powered CMS.

How do you want to be known by your audience? That’s your business name. 

And how do you want them to reach you? That’s your domain name. 

Since your domain name will be a major face of your business, you’ll want to put some good thought into it. 

A strong domain name serves your business goals by referencing your product or service. It should be catchy, memorable, and easy to type. Try for shorter rather than longer names where possible.

How can you come up with the right name?

Let’s take the two businesses we’re working with in this guide as an example. 

WordPress is short, iconic, and evokes images of text (“word”) and potentially a printing press (“press”). It’s clear that their business model is based on sharing content. 

Similarly, Bluehost includes the word “host,” suggesting they are a web host provider. The combination of “blue” and “host” is simple and catchy. 

Both names are highly brandable and easy to remember.

Step 2: Choose your Bluehost plan

The benefit of hosting on Bluehost rather than just WordPress.com is that Bluehost takes care of your site’s security, speed, performance, and updates for you.

We recommend shared WordPress hosting, which gives you access to a server specifically attuned to the WordPress software package. This means that safety, security, and speed are all built in—put another way, managed for you. 

To choose a plan, go to Bluehost’s pricing page. You’ll see this:

Bluehost offers four hosting plans: Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro. At every tier, the plans include a free SSL certificate (adding an extra layer of security to your site), unlimited bandwidth, and plenty of storage. For most sites, the performance of the hosting will be more than good enough. 

Select the plan and that’s right for your budget. You can always upgrade later.

Step 3: Register your domain name

After selecting a plan, you’ll be prompted to register your domain name. 

If you already own a domain name, enter it on the right. You may need to change your DNS records to make sure your domain name servers point to Bluehost, allowing people to access your website. 

If you are registering your domain name with Bluehost, enter it on the left. Domain registration is free for one year with a managed WordPress hosting account. Always be sure to note when your domain must be renewed so it doesn’t expire without your notice, leaving your website inaccessible. 

You’ll be asked to fill in personal information before finalizing your purchase. 

Be sure to choose a strong password for your Bluehost account (preferably not the same one you use to log into any other site). You’ll then be ready to install WordPress.

Step 4: Install WordPress with one click

Connecting Bluehost with WordPress is incredibly easy. In your Bluehost account control panel, navigate to “MOJO Marketplace” and choose “One-Click Installs.” 

This will bring you to the Scripts and Platforms page. After you click the WordPress icon—found under “Blogs” at the top of the page—an installation window will open. Click “Start” to begin installation.

• Choose the domain name on your account where you want to install.
• In “Check Domain,” you’ll make sure your domain name is pointing to your account. This is especially important if you bought your domain name before signing up for Bluehost. If you get a warning that you are overwriting files, you can check the box without worry—since this is your first website, there’s nothing to overwrite. 
• In “Show Advanced Options,” you can choose your WordPress username along with a strong password—or log in if you already have a WordPress account. Check “Automatically create a new database for this installation.” 
• Read the terms and conditions and check the box.
• Almost there! Click “Install Now.”

You’ll now be taken to the progress page. After installation is complete, you will see your site URL, admin login URL, your username and password. Print and store this master list in a safe place.

Time to log in to WordPress! Log in at your admin URL and you’ll find yourself at the Dashboard, where you can begin on the visual design for your site.

Step 5: Try on some themes for size

Also called “skins,” your site theme is like an outfit for your website. The theme you choose will affect your site visuals, content layout, and some of the customizable design features you have access to. 

WordPress has a number of both free and premium (paid) themes.

When choosing a theme, pay special attention to:

• Good design: Is the design clean and organized? Is it responsive to optimize for the roughly 50% of people who prefer mobile viewing? How easy is it to navigate?
• Compatibility: Is the theme compatible with the latest version of WordPress and with popular plugins?
• Back-end: Is there active development on the design? How easy is it to access support and documentation? 

Most themes allow you to try a Live Demo so you can see how it will look and compare its appearance to your design and content goals for the site.

When you’re ready, click “Activate theme” to install. You can always add plugins for additional functionalities or switch themes when you are better accustomed to WordPress.

Step 6: Add some helpful plugins

If your website theme is like a “skin” or outfit that gives the website substance, design, and form, your plugins are the accessories that pull the outfit together. 

Plugins work alongside your theme to provide desirable functionalities, like a comment filter, contact form, or search engine optimization (SEO) toolbox, and are built to work seamlessly with WordPress’s back-end operations. While some are best-suited to a particular type of site, like eCommerce or blog, many are all-purpose. Plugins can be free or paid.

In most cases, you will need a WordPress Business plan or higher to use plugins. Aspects of Jetpack and Akismet (see below) are included with your blog.

Popular plugins:

• Jetpack: This integral plugin enhances your site security, performance, marketing, and design capacity. Site speed, image serving, and SEO are just a few things it can help you with. 
• Akismet:  A “spam-fighting service” that protects your posts, trackbacks, and messages from spam.
• All-in-One SEO pack or Yoast SEO: These SEO plugins help you optimize your site to be found organically in search results when people search for similar products, services, or content.
• WP Forms or Ninja Forms: You can use either of these plugins to build professional contact forms within minutes, without any coding experience required. 

Be sure to vet your plugins before installing: A large number of positive user reviews alongside information about the developer, functionalities, and latest release date can all help you make the best decisions for your site. 

Step 7: Begin building your site content

On WordPress, there are two meaningful distinctions when it comes to organizing your site content, pages and posts.

• Pages make up the main framework of your website, and generally appear in the navigation bar for easy access. There are a number of essential pages you’ll want to add, including your Homepage, About page, and Contact page.
• Posts are individual pieces of content, each with a unique URL, that make up a blog. Many people choose to make their blog a central focus of their website, but you don’t have to. Many businesses keep blogs as a tool in their content marketing toolbox, and WordPress makes it possible to designate as a secondary page (see Step 8).

When you start adding content to your website, it may be helpful to get inspiration from existing websites, both those where you spend a lot of time and sites that have a similar function to yours. Ask yourself:

• How is the content of these websites organized? 
• What are the major pages? 
• How prominent is the blog? 
• Does the site include subpages, and what are they? 
• Where is the contact form located? 
• How do they use media to create an engaging experience?

Here’s how to create your first page (ideally, the homepage):

After creating the essential pages, consider your website’s functionality from the point of view of your future site visitors. Although it may be tough in the beginning to put yourself in their shoes, successful site content is laser-focused on the audience. Ask yourself: 

• What will my visitors want to do on my site? What will be less useful to them?
• How can I structure my pages, content, and media to create a positive User Experience (UX)?
• How can I set up site navigation so that important information and features are easy to find?
• What information do my visitors need to understand my offering?
• What information do my visitors need to trust me? 

Don’t feel pressure to include all possible content at once; less is often more for a new website. Your site will likely change over time based on your evolving business model as well as the needs of your audience. You can always add more content as you go. 

Additional pages

On the one hand, the beauty of website creation is that your site design is completely up to you. Depending on the purpose of your website, however, you may be required by law to include certain content, like:

• Contact details
• Cookie handling
• eCommerce: terms of service, refund policy, privacy policy

Be sure to check the relevant law in your area and update your website regularly.

Step 8: Finalize your homepage and navigation

Do you want your homepage to appear as a traditional homepage or a blog?

WordPress allows you to choose whether you want a static (unchanging) or dynamic homepage (shows your ten latest blogs). The dynamic version is the default.

To designate a static homepage, find the “Site” category in the left-hand sidebar and click “Pages,” then “Add new page.” You can choose a premade layout or click “Use Blank Layout,” as in the photo just above. Then name your page and click “Publish.” For example:

Now, navigate to the “Design” category in the left-hand sidebar of your Dashboard and click “Customize.” 

There are many things for you to play around with here, including adding your Site Title, Tagline, and Icon, adding a header or footer, and changing the site colors. For now, click on “Homepage Settings” and toggle the option for “A static page.” Beneath, you can choose the page you just created.

It’s time to start adding content to your homepage!

Once you add more pages, like About or Contact, they will show up as part of a navigation bar that is designated by your theme. In “Customize,” click on “Menus” to change the page order and location. 

What’s Next?

You’ve just created your first website. Congratulations on this exciting new step!

Now you can start familiarizing yourself with the WordPress interface. While creating Pages and Posts, you’ll be using the Block Editor, which uses Gutenberg blocks to help you add content and make your site engaging and interactive.

Since your website is a representation of your brand, I recommend building your content with a critical eye. At the same time, learning as you go is part of the experience. You can always delete or click the back button—no change is permanent, so feel free to play around.

The post How to Create Your First Website Like a Pro appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-create-a-website/

How to Find Specialized Marketing Agencies

You’re experiencing slight pain in your chest.

So you visit a general care physician who performs a series of quick tests. 

Based on the results, they offer you general advice, but in the end, they refer you to a cardiologist to look into the issue in more detail.

This is a fairly common practice in medicine.

You start seeing a general practitioner, and when things go beyond their expertise, you go to a specialist who has the knowledge as well as equipment to handle your situation better.

Business is no different. More so, marketing.

While you’ll find several end-to-end marketing agencies, it’s nearly impossible to get results without specialized knowledge – something that specialized or “niche“ marketing agencies offer.

Not only are they able to identify and address your unique pain points, but they can also make your business operations more effective.

In this guide, our team at Neil Patel Digital has outlined some vital tips to identify and hire specialized marketing agencies, as well as help you understand how these agencies fare when compared to an end-to-end agency.

How Specialized Marketing Agencies Guarantee Success?

Specialized agencies, with their high skill set in a specific niche, can identify opportunities for success and analyze problems with great precision and detail within any given marketing campaign.

They bring specialized depth and focus into the service offering, which allows them to see potential issues that can be missed by others as well as provide creative ways to implement solutions.

An important thing to note here is that specialized marketing agencies go beyond their deliverables. You can enhance your marketing efforts by correctly leveraging the strategic insights, experiences, and partnerships offered by them.

Due to the greater level of detail and expertise, there is a higher possibility for you to maximize your company’s marketing ROI.

Precisely why you need to think of ways to strategically align your agency partnership that brings your company maximum value.

How to Identify and Hire the Best Specialized Marketing Agency for Your Company?

Before signing up for an agency, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is your company generating sufficient marketing leads?
• Are all your marketing plan elements being carried out efficiently? 
• Is it possible for you to employ new staff to improve your marketing activities? Does your current budget allow it?

If even one of these questions raises concerns, you should go ahead and consider working with a specialist marketing agency.

But… hiring the right agency isn’t going to be easy.

It needs patience, along with practice and some good ol’ trial and error.

Here are a few tips to help you find your next marketing mastermind:

Determine Your Business Objectives and Desired Outcomes

Specialized agencies cater to the specific needs of businesses.

These agencies generally specialize in one or two areas. Hence, the first step of choosing the right specialized marketing agency is to know your business goals and what you want to achieve by working with the agency.

Let’s consider an example to help you understand this better: creating a series of marketing videos.

You want to improve your social media presence and boost engagement on your website. You decide to create a series of marketing videos to achieve this, but you aren’t sure where to start.

In this case:

• Goal: Greater social media presence and increased website engagement.
• Deliverable: Make engaging videos and similar visual assets that communicate your new offer in a creative and fun way to capture your audience’s attention.
• Result: A set of finished videos, along with supplying you with the knowledge to walk you through the process.

You can enlist the services of a marketing agency that specializes in video marketing or maybe graphic designing to achieve this goal.

Similarly, you can choose your agency based on the other types of services you want. Here are a few other examples:

Market Research

These agencies help you make better-informed decisions and avoid costly mistakes by carrying out primary market research, such as surveys, interviews, and experiments, and secondary market research.

Marketing Strategy

These agencies understand the art of creating strategies backed by research, experience, knowledge, and wisdom. They can help you formulate a well-aligned marketing strategy that supports your unique business goals and objectives.

Content Writing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Content writing agencies can create excellent content that is optimized according to SEO principles to boost engagement and conversion. This can include posts on social media networks, company blogs, or creating gated assets like PDFs and whitepapers.

You’ll also find agencies that specialize in optimization, which offer well-written and formatted content to drive traffic through a search engine results page or SERP.

Email Marketing

Email marketing agencies can help you move your prospects down your sales funnel. They send emails that motivate people to buy products and services while keeping your past and potential customers in the loop.

Advertising

Advertising agencies can enhance your audience targeting efforts and amplify your reach by creating attention-grabbing advertisements that force the customer to take action, such as visiting your website, viewing your products and services, etc.

Ultimately, you should choose a specialized agency based on your requirements and end goals.

Skills and Experience

It’s no secret that specialists should have technical skills and experience that actually make them experts at a specific niche.

To help you find the right agency, we have two lists below: Must-haves and Nice-to-haves.

These are the skill sets that are a must for your agency:

Specialized Knowledge

What’s the point of calling themselves an expert if the agency doesn’t possess the necessary business growth and inbound marketing knowledge for a specific niche?

The agency should be able to demonstrate their ability to apply marketing techniques and up-to-date inbound marketing tactics and strategy that can promote business growth.

Tech Savvy-Ness

Agencies should have the expertise to navigate and use a variety of modern tech tools and platforms. After all, it’s the only way that your brand can have a competitive edge over its competitors.

Job Functional Skills

Job functional skills have a broader concept as it goes deeper into the actual role for which the agency is being hired.

For instance, if you want to hire a digital marketing agency, you should take a look at past digital campaigns created by the agency. Ask them to explain the campaigns and how they will apply their knowledge to help you achieve your business goals.

Effective Communication Skills

The agency should comprise members that have excellent written and verbal skills to drive meaningful conversations.

Nice-to-Have Skills

These skills aren’t deal-breakers if a prospective agency doesn’t have them, but if they do, you should give them brownie points.

The following are a few nice-to-have skills:

• Certifications that prove their expertise and ability to implement effective marketing tactics and strategies.
• Previous experience working with clients that operate in your niche.
• Their passion for your target mission.

Partnership Capabilities

Specialized agencies should have strategic partnerships as a means to expand their offerings – one that goes beyond complimentary deliverables.

You see, buying marketing services goes beyond à la carte for clients, which is why specialized agencies have to take the time to foster strong relationships with their partners to create value and efficiencies from the client’s viewpoint.

If you hire an agency that boasts of this synergy, it can be very beneficial for you.

You might have to add another vendor to your list, yes. But the fact that you get excellent content, along with the SEO, rather than subpar work does seem like the better option, no?

Take a Look at the Pricing

There’s a reason why Versace costs 20 times more than Fashion Nova, and in most cases, you get exactly what you pay for.

It’s really that simple.

If your prospective agency is charging unrealistically low rates, it’s probably because they are inexperienced or they just… suck.

And yes, before you ask, many specialized agencies claim to have “expert knowledge” but don’t.

You‘ll also find agencies that charge you an arm, a leg, and a kidney to work with them, which isn’t right too. 

While many can justify their pricing, hundreds can’t.

Treat the Agency Just Like You Would a Potential Employee

When hiring a specialized marketing agency, conduct the interview in the same way you would when hiring a potential employee.

So in addition to going through their merits, make sure they are a solid cultural fit for your company.

The agency partnership won’t be a success if you don’t share similar values or have completely opposite mindsets.

Why Choosing a Specialized Agency is better than an End-to-End Agency?

According to a 2016 Statista study, 24% of US-based companies had hired roughly three marketing/advertising agencies, while 23% were working with two agencies.

That said, the following are the main reasons why you should go with a specialized agency over an end-to-end agency:

Lots of Flexibility

Niche agencies don’t provide a one-size-fits-all focus. Instead, they believe in creating a more personalized and unique marketing plan that can help you stand out from your rivals.

Additionally, they have the resources and methodologies that equip them with expert knowledge about the specific niche, allowing them to be more in tune with your pain points. This, in turn, enables them to deliver a much more effective strategy as well.

It’s this flexibility that helps them adapt to your needs and requirements constantly, and offer dynamic solutions through their relationship with you.

More Personal Attention

As mentioned before, working with a specialized agency will make your experience more personable.

You’ll be in direct contact with specialists who are fully dedicated to your brand. Moreover, you‘ll have direct oversight interactions with people who are working on your marketing campaign, irrespective of their position.

Such agencies work on various campaigns, which makes them proficient in offering a completely different perspective to yours. You can also expect new insights and opportunities that can generate fresh ideas.

In addition to this, the overall flow of information and communication is also much better. With the questions delegated more efficiently, you get your answers faster too.

Greater Suitability for SMBs

Specialized marketing agencies and small- to medium-sized businesses can have an excellent working relationship built upon commonality. 

Both the agency and company are trying to grow and expand, which makes them more invested in each other. Having overlapping roles is another motivating factor that ensures successful outcomes for both parties.

Most of the time, these agencies monitor their growth based on your success since they aren’t only in it for money. They genuinely want to build meaningful relationships for a sustainable business.

Unlikely to Outsource Tasks

Multiple end-to-end marketing agencies outsource their work. 

We don’t claim it – Hubshout stats do. For instance:

• 48% of full-service agencies outsourced PPC services
• 28% of full-services agencies outsourced content marketing services.
• 68% of full-service agencies outsourced SEO to a white label SEO provider

These agencies focus on a few single areas of marketing expertise and then outsource the work from white label partners. In short, there is no guarantee that the agency will actually be doing the work for you.

Specialists, on the other hand, do not outsource. 

Why? Because you don’t have to.

They have all the specialists they need right there in the organization. When you work with a specialist marketing agency, you get access to a specific set of services that are usually absent from general marketing and communication teams.

Consequently, you know exactly what you‘re getting into and who will be working on your project. 

You can focus on your areas of expertise, while the agency can focus on those specialized services to help you achieve your business goals.

More Creative and Innovative Ideas

This is honestly the best part of working with a specialized agency.

End-to-end agencies use the same strategies and methods for each of their clients. 

Time is naturally very crucial for them, which is why if they see one marketing test working well, they tend to use it for every customer they take on.

Contrarily, specialized agencies don’t take advantage of time trials. They build a customized strategy that is adjusted according to your suggestions and demands – all aimed at establishing your brand reputation.

Still, End-to-End Marketing Agencies Aren’t a Bad Choice Either

An end-to-end agency or a fully integrated marketing and advertising company that can provide you with a complete list of services, including:

• SEO
• Systematic planning
• Social media
• Digital marketing
• Paid advertising 
• Interactive marketing services

They are larger in size and can easily handle all your advertising and marketing requirements, helping you make the most out of marketing. 

Here are a few reasons that your company may want to pursue an end-to-end agency instead:

Knowledge of Latest Trends, Systems, and Software

End-to-end agencies, also known as full-service agencies, are well accustomed to the latest trends and technology. 

They know how to target the right offers, use analytical reports and data correctly, and the right tools that can help you target your audience at the right time.

Cost-Effectiveness

Agencies are hands down way more cost-effective, and sometimes the only way that companies with smaller budgets can afford professional services.

Usually, specialists charge a higher amount for their expertise and knowledge, which can be way out of budget for most brands.

Scalability on Demand

You can scale your marketing activities up and down according to new products, seasonalities, and so on.

When you have an in-house team, you have to hire and train to scale up or layoff staff to scale down; with an end-to-end agency, you simply pick the phone.

Expertise and Experience

Working with full-service marketing agencies lets you work with a pool of talent who have experience working with various clients, technologies, and industries. They have broader skills that can help build and launch a comprehensive marketing campaign to drive results.

Think of the agency as a deep pool of specialists.

There is also no secret that today marketing involves content, branding, social media, paid ads, and SEO. Handling this requires bandwidth and the right know-how – something that end-to-marketing agencies can offer.

Time-Saving

Irrespective of your business size, you do need an effective marketing strategy.

This needs a strong team, and when you choose to work with a full-service agency, you have a team that can focus 100% of their knowledge and expertise in developing your campaign as efficiently as possible.

Indeed, end-to-end marketing agencies may not provide you with the same level of expertise as specialist marketing agencies. But if you opt for a major marketing company that offers full service, you do get the best of both worlds.

At Neil Patel Digital, we have the expertise and experience to provide comprehensive marketing and advertising strategies tailor-made according to your needs. We offer:

• SEO
• Paid search marketing
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Data, analytics, and insights
• Programmatic advertising

Whatever You Do, Don’t Forget to Ask Questions

Regardless of the marketing agency you choose – whether generalists or specialists – make sure you ask the right questions.

Who is working on your account? What are the specialties? How will you clear your doubts? What results can you expect? What are the KPIs? – ask everything.

If you really want to take your business to the next level and are ready to think big, contact us here and let us help you disrupt your industry.

The post How to Find Specialized Marketing Agencies appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/specialized-marketing-agencies/

12 Best Landing Page Examples

Let me ask you a question…

Would you rather have a beautiful website or a website your customers love?

From a business perspective, you shouldn’t go for either.

Your answer must be 100% I want a high-converting website.

Because if people buy, then they both like it and you can safely and predictably scale your business.

Many people get in the trap of creating designs they like while their perfect client avatar is so much different than what they would imagine.

And that can be easily noticed when you click on ads you see on social media.

You might like the ad itself but most times the landing page on the other side is not what you want to see.

The connection between your traffic and your landing page is called an accurate message to market fit.

You want your message to perfectly fit your market so you can start with a winning funnel that’s only bound to go up from there.

Because if you mess up there, you would be optimizing and tweaking little components that will barely get you to break even.

But if you nail your message you would be getting customers left and right without even knowing why or how they came to you.

It’s your most powerful weapon and most businesses do it completely wrong.

So to help you out and guarantee your immediate success, we’ll be going over the best 12 landing page examples that you should use to scale your business.

We’ll go over each one’s strengths and weaknesses while making sure you find one that fits your exact business.

After this post, you’ll be able to come up with high-converting landing pages like magic.

But before we do that, we must go over…

What Makes a Great Landing Page

That question solely depends on your needs.

So let me ask you a couple of questions that will help you clear your mind and think in the right direction.

#1 What do you want to accomplish with your landing page?

Your most common options are:

• Getting people to opt-in in exchange for Free value on a subject
• Directly selling a low-ticket product like a book or a mini-course
• Free Trial offer for a monthly service or software
• Free + Shipping offer where you count on upsells to make a profit

You’ve got to know exactly what offer you want to present in your landing page before creating it.

And of course, there are other offers you can make but the idea here is to clarify what is the one that you want to use for your business.

If you’re not sure, there would be multiple examples further down the post.

Now for the next question, you need to ask yourself…

#2 Are you committed to this project or are you just trying out an offer?

Building a high-converting landing page is not an overnight hustle.

You might find yourself optimizing a non-profitable landing page for months before it starts generating real returns.

And if you’re not ready for that, then I recommend you quit before you even start.

Yes, you can get a lucky shot and hit a homerun from your first try but counting on it is delusional.

Be ready for the long game so you catch the long-term gains that are so much sweeter than the momentary satisfaction.

And for the final question…

#3 What’s your budget?

Before you begin designing your high-converting landing page, you need to prepare a solid budget.

You can’t expect everything to go smoothly throughout the process.

Problems are going to occur and most times the easiest and fastest way to solve them is to pay someone who is an expert in the field.

That can be a developer, a Funnel designer/builder, an Ad specialist, or a CRO consultant.

Either way, you should be ready to pay someone to do it right so you don’t face the same problems over and over.

In marketing and life, there’s a rule of thumb that suggests you should finish your work and then let someone else judge it.

Obviously, for landing pages, the way is to run some ads and see if the traffic converts.

If it does, you raise your ad budget and try to scale.

If it doesn’t convert initially then you should let a professional take a look at it.

And even if you already hired someone to build it for you, don’t expect him to help you here.

Yes, he can optimize your page but you’ve got to keep in mind that people have an emotional attachment to their work.

That’s why you need a third party to help you out.

And especially when it comes to optimizing a landing page for conversions, you must consider the idea of hiring an agency.

Big marketing agencies nowadays have had hundreds if not thousands of clients who had been in your exact situation.

That’s why hiring a marketing agency to help you increase your conversion is the best bet.

And talking about CRO (conversion rate optimization) there’s no better choice than NP Digital.

It is simply the best marketing agency for both SEO and CRO.

If you’re at the stage where you want to optimize your existing landing page but you don’t know exactly how to do it…

Then you should book a quick call with a professional where you’ll unravel the secret conversion optimization methods your business needs.

And now for the main event…

The Best 12 Landing Page Examples

These are the 12 Best Landing Page Examples we could find.

We’ll be judging them for conversions, offer, design, and customer experience.

#1 Get Response

Get Response is an example of a simple yet interactive landing page example.

You can see the Get Response team are bold as they’re the only software in the industry that uses an interactive headline.

The yellow sign you see on the image below changes between the words growing, leads, and sales.

That makes it for a great attention-grabbing headline that just makes you read on.

Also, they use a friendly, positive face which is something we don’t see very often in business that is not centered around a personal brand.

That of course is not a bad thing. It automatically builds trust and makes it easier for people to sign up for their software.

#2 Slack

Slack is always on the top of its game when it comes to landing pages.

They are constantly optimizing for conversions and that’s the best way to find your winning landing page.

Their current one is once again, extremely interactive, has a big eye-popping headline, and also shows how easy it is to use the software with a quick 5-second giff.

Straight from the get-go, you can see they value customer satisfaction and if you’re still not sure, scrolling down will lead to non-stop credibility and results that prove their authority in the marketplace.

#3 Intercom

Intercom’s main objective on this landing page is to get you to opt-in with your email.

Keeping it to email only is a great way to increase your opt-in rate.

A big, positive headline that puts you in the right state of mind to act now.

The images they use perfectly represent the headline’s main USP.

You can see an overall friendly environment and you just have to opt-in if you got to this page.

#4 Lyft

Lyft has been riding up the charts in the past years and their website, landing page, and their overall online funnel is not lacking behind.

They focus on attracting new drivers that want to control their own life.

And promising your employees freedom while working for you is the best way to snap the best candidates from your competitors.

We know Lyft has used multiple landing pages in the past but their current one shows real professionalism.

Once again, we see a giant, attention-grabbing headline. This time with a question to anticipate curiosity and thought process in their prospects.

And check out the button “APPLY TO DRIVE”. It implies that it’s not 100% sure you’ll be able to get the position.

Making it so your clients have to compete to get a hold of your attention makes it so they try harder in the job itself.

#5 Zoho

Zoho’s landing page is a great example of a more complicated but still extremely powerful messaging.

They use more text than the average software in the industry but that’s not necessarily bad.

For their specific case, they need to convert the prospect to begin a free trial which automatically builds tension in a prospect because he knows it will come a time he’d have to pay.

And converting someone to pay is way harder than just getting their email.

That’s why using more text in their messaging makes it for a powerful copywriting punch that maximizes free-trial registrations.

#6 Squarespace

Squarespace tops the list for the least amount of text in their landing page design.

At first, you may think that is not enough to convert someone.

But once you see that they’re a website builder you can see how the design and the quick and powerful messaging are all you need to sign-up.

They know their prospects mainly struggle with complicated codes and want to show a safe space where they can relax and drag and drop their winning website design.

#7 ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign solely focuses on showing you how their software brings the best customer experience possible.

And if you’re a business owner, you both want to be treated well and want to help your customers in tough times.

Their headline hits 2 birds with one stone and once again there’s no useless text or design.

Everything leads to the big green button and you starting your free trial.

#8 Hubspot

Hubspot is one more CRM that tops out the list today.

They, just like ActiveCampaign, show you that using their software will both help you and your customers feel better throughout the process.

Knowing that their ideal customer’s main objection is that learning a whole new CRM from scratch might be hard, tedious, and maybe even impossible, helps them narrow their message straight to the point.

#9 Shopify Plus

Shopify is one of the most well-known platforms in today’s online space and they know it.

As they’ve been rapidly growing throughout the years, they’ve been able to test out multiple landing page designs to find one that converts.

And the Shopify Plus’s landing page shows for it. 

Their main goal is to book a consultation call with their prospects which takes more than just a couple of words.

They have the budget to shoot professional videos for all of their products and services which helps transfer valuable information to their prospects in the fastest possible way — video.

Down below you see powerful credibility and if you take the time to watch the video, you’re most likely going to book a call with them.

Videos are a deadly weapon in the right business’s hands and Shopify proves that here and pretty much with anything they do.

#10 Webflow

Webflow shows the insights of the software immediately when you land on their landing page.

You can see instant credibility from big websites that have used their services and also you can begin for free.

That breaks any tension the prospect might have.

On top of that, you can see that their software is similar to Photoshop.

So if you’ve ever used Adobe’s products, you immediately know this work will be a piece of cake for you.

#11 ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels uses its software to convert you for a free trial.

And even if you have any skepticism you can play around with the funnel pages and buttons to see the responsiveness of nowadays funnels.

You can see that they use more text than the average website/funnel builder.

But once again they’re trying to convert people to start a 14-day free trial which is not an easy task.

They also use powerful videos that sell directly to their ideal customers.

And the best part is the analytics they’ve slapped on their landing page.

It’s a bold and powerful move if done correctly.

The way these analytics are crafted makes it so they are constantly being updated and it’s not just 100K+ users as you might see on other platforms.

ClickFunnels values its customer’s success stories and is always there to record each result.

It’s one of the harder landing page designs to pull off but if you do it, your conversions will skyrocket.

#12 Conversion Lab

Conversion Lab has been using this landing page design for years now.

We’ve noticed they split test different button CTA-s like book a call, get a free consult, and many more.

Keeping their Founder on the main page of the website builds a long-term relationship many businesses nowadays miss out on.

They clearly state their services through their persuasive headline and even if you’re not ready to book a consultation call with them, a pop-up will appear collecting your email.

Email follow-up is a great way to ensure that a high percentage of prospects that land on your website will end up booking a call with you.

That is all for our list today.

To conclude what you need to know when building your landing page…

• Find what your best customers struggle the most with and then directly destroy this objection with a short and punchy headline.
• Use credibility and videos if possible.
• Know your goals — Is it to get their email, phone, ook a call, start a free/paid trial, or something else?
• Clear and easy to follow Call to Action

And always, always optimize in the process.

You can NOT be perfect from day one. Every business on this list tests their pages dozens if not hundreds of times before concluding a winner.

And even then, they still optimize.

Have you tried building a landing page before? How’d it go — did it convert well and what were your biggest breakthroughs when doing it?

The post 12 Best Landing Page Examples appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/landing-page-examples/

How to Get More YouTube Views

Marketers who use YouTube are often in search of tactics for generating more views for their videos.

While not the only metric that determines the success of a YouTube marketing campaign, generating a decent number of views for your videos is something that you should definitely try to achieve on this social media platform.

After all, what’s the point of uploading a video, if nobody is going to watch it, right? Especially your target audience.

Nevertheless, only 9% of small businesses use YouTube, even though it has over a billion users.

So, if your videos aren’t getting enough views, there’s a good chance that you’re missing something, as competition isn’t at peak levels on this media platform just yet.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at tactics that you can use in order to generate more views for your YouTube videos.

We’ll cover some of the fundamentals that will help you over the long term, but also some unique tactics that you can put into action that will help generate quicker results with your target audience.

By the end of this post, you’ll have a high level of confidence, when it comes to knowing what needs to be done in order to generate more views for your YouTube videos.

Let’s begin!

Great Video Content Gets More YouTube Views 

This might sound obvious, but it’s something a lot of people ignore in social media.

If you want your videos to get more views and greater search results, you first and foremost absolutely must create great content.

If you can do that, generating more views for your videos will be a heck of a lot easier.

Go over to InVideo and check out all of the different solutions they offer for people looking to quickly and easily edit amazing videos. You don’t need to have experience as a video editor in order to leverage their tool. It’s easy to use and should be part of any marketer’s arsenal of tools.

People will share your video content on social networks if it is good, so your viewers will end up doing a lot of the promotional work for you.

Since I don’t know your business or your audience – I can’t tell you exactly what you should be doing, in order to create great content.

What I can tell you is this – great content is often content that provides exceptional levels of value.

It’s important that you don’t get caught up in the wrong things, when looking to create great content in getting more YouTube views.

People often worry about content length and production quality.

Sure, content length might matter, to a certain extent. But, are you really going to stop watching a 1-hour video, if it’s providing immense value?

In fact, it’s worth remembering that the average viewing session on mobile is 40 minutes.

Value trumps everything for search results, especially high production quality.

I’m sure that you’ve experienced this for yourself – where you’ve watched a long YouTube video that wasn’t overly produced, right to the end, because it was so informative.

You may have even done that for a webinar – which, in a sense, is similar.

In fact, the video below ranks near the top in YouTube search results for ‘how to make a website.’

It is highly rated, and get this… it’s over 2 hours and 30 minutes long!

It’s not overly produced, it’s just high value that meets the need of its target audience.

Here is its ranking.

If you look above it, you’ll notice that the other video is also very long.

So remember, content length isn’t something that you should obsess over on this social network.

The same goes for the production value of a video.

YouTube Views Don’t Depend on Video Production 

More and more marketing companies are investing in YouTube, which means that there are many highly produced videos out there, but you don’t necessarily have to join that pack just yet.

YouTube is a forgiving media site if your content is good.

When your videos start to get some traction, then think about investing in fancy production and camera equipment to help you get more YouTube views.

To begin with, just make sure that you cover the basics with this social media platform.

If you’re creating a ‘talking head’ video – make sure that everything is well lit and that the audio is clear.

If you’re creating a screen capture video, ensure that the resolution is high and the audio is easy to hear.

If you’re creating a slideshow, create something simple and visually engaging. Use strong images and minimal text on your slides. You can use a tool, like Haiku Deck, for this. A custom thumbnail also helps people remember your brand.

For More YouTube Views, Focus on Value Above All Else 

Remember – providing value should be your guiding principle.

If you want to learn how to provide value, you have to learn more about your audience – and, more specifically, what they like.

If you want to learn what content your audience likes, then take a look at the existing content that belongs to your niche.

There are two approaches you can take.

The first is to take a look at blog posts that have done well in your niche.Then, create incredibly informative videos, based on those blog post topics.

You can find such blog posts, using Buzzsumo.

Or, you can just take a look at other YouTube videos that have done well in your niche and create better videos that provide more value and deeper levels of insight.

If you’re an expert in your niche, then it shouldn’t be hard to create better videos, when using other videos as inspiration.

If you find yourself struggling, however, just take a moment to assess what could have been done to improve the other video.

• Did it ignore something that was actually important?
• Did the video fail to fully explain certain sections?
• Did the video fail to provide actual results/case study information?
• Was the pace too slow –or was it too fast?
• Was there too much information on the screen – or not enough?
• Could diagrams have been used to better illustrate a point?
• Maybe some data could have been used?

You may even want to review the comments about that video.  See if there’s anything that the audience felt was missing.

You can also use the YouTube Search engine to help you come up with content ideas.

Say I’m in the business of teaching people ‘how to build a pond,’ or building it for them and I’m looking to do some content marketing.

I can just type ‘how to build a pond,’ into the ‘YouTube Search box.’  Then. I’m presented with content ideas.

Not all of the ideas are relevant, so I might select the first option and see what else comes up as a result of ‘Autosuggest.’

If I go with the option of ‘how to build a pond in your backyard,’ I’m presented with some helpful ideas.

I can then repeat that process, using other keywords, if I want to come up with even more video ideas.

It might also be a good idea to cycle through the alphabet, after having chosen a ‘base’ keyword.

So, this time, I type in ‘how to build a pond a’

And, as you can see, there are plenty of video ideas here that look relevant. I can use those to create super niche video content that will resonate with a certain demographic in the social media platform.

If you have an existing audience on YouTube, consider asking your audience what they’d like you to cover next.

More often than not, your audience will provide you with ideas that you can use.

The great thing about these video ideas is that by acting on them, you can be sure that there will be an audience for them.

If you have done a good job with creating great content that meets people’s needs, you’ll find that organic views will be easier to come by.

Remember, YouTube is a media site that wants to improve the user experience.

The best way that they can do that is by presenting their audience with content that is great.

If your content is great, it will achieve an increased number of comments, shares and positive ratings.

Following all of that, there’s a good chance it will rank higher in search results. There’s no official word on this, but it’s definitely part of the mix.

After all, as mentioned by Brian Dean, YouTube doesn’t have to rely entirely on Backlinks to rank videos in the YouTube Search engine – they also have a ton of detailed user experience data to help them.

This user experience data is arguably much more powerful in letting YouTube know where it should be ranking content.

So, if your videos produce a great user experience, there’s a good chance that they will perform better in the rankings, too.

Optimize Your YouTube Video to Get More YouTube Views 

Optimizing your video can help make it so that your video appears when it should and where it should. This includes the search listings and the ‘related video’ suggestions.

If you want to optimize your video, there are four things that you must take care of.

• Title
• Tags
• Description
• Thumbnail

It’s easy to over-complicate this and over analyze everything.  Try to keep it simple.

Write Better YouTube Titles 

For the title, it’s important that you don’t try and make it like ‘clickbait.’

If you’ve created your video around a keyword, make sure that your title clearly explains that your video covers the keyword in question.

So, if I created a video, based on the keyword ‘how to bake a chocolate cake for beginners,’ my title might be…

How to Bake a Chocolate Cake for Beginners – Spent $5 and 5 Minutes cleanup

Note: If you want to write great titles, you might want to work out what it is that your audience doesn’t like or fears, in relation to the topic in question.

In the example above, people might worry that it costs a lot to bake a cake and that cleaning up is a pain. If I address that in the title, the video then becomes that much more enticing.

Use YouTube Tags

For the tags, provide some keywords that relate to the topic of your video.

Try not to use more than 10-12 tags with this media site. You’ll lose your target audience and dilute search results data.

Picking the right tags will help your video appear in the ‘suggested videos’ section when someone is watching a related video.

Now, let’s take a look at the description.

Create an Accurate, Optimized YouTube Description 

When writing the description, it’s important that you don’t try to ‘outsmart’ Google. Don’t keyword stuff and don’t rely on any ‘tricks,’ that you might come across.

You could end up over-optimizing your video, which can have the opposite effect. 

Your aim with the description is to clearly describe what the video is about and what people will learn as a result of watching it.

If you look at the top results returned for a YouTube video search, you’ll notice that there will be a wide variation, in terms of what the descriptions look like.

That’s because, as mentioned above, user experience also plays a big role in ranking the video. So, while your description is important, don’t get too stressed out about getting it ‘right.’

That being said, if you absolutely need a checklist for writing your descriptions, here’s one that you can use, courtesy of Brian Dean.

Here’s what an example description looks like.

But, as I said, the top-ranking videos all tend to have varying styles that they use for their description.  You don’t necessarily have to follow what is above.

Just provide the story behind your video, what it covers, and what people will learn as a result of watching.

Note: If you want to do something that will improve user experience, consider providing ‘timestamps’ in your description, so that people can quickly get to interesting sections of a video.

YouTube Thumbnail Optimization 

For the thumbnail, there are a number of approaches that you can take. I’ve covered how you can create engaging YouTube thumbnails in this post. A custom thumbnail becomes part of your media platform branding.

For the most part, you can experiment with the following.

1. Use images of people in your custom thumbnail
2. Edit your thumbnail to include text overlay, using a keyword, based on the topic your video covers
3. Include an image that reveals an interesting section of the video – for example, the end result of a ‘how-to video.’

You will tend to find that you’re able to generate the best results when you combine some of the above.

Here’s an example of how you can use an interesting image and relevant text overlay.

As you can see, the custom thumbnail isn’t overly dramatic. It includes some text, related to the video keyword and an image of an interesting section of the video.

Here’s an example of using the image of a person, with text overlay and even possibly the ‘end result’ that is to be achieved, too.

You’ll want to experiment here, of course.  But, those two examples and the tips provided should be enough to let you know what tends to work well.

Experiment With Ads to Drive YouTube Views 

Ads might sound like a little bit of a cop-out here. I get it; you might not want to pay to play the YouTube view game.

Running YouTube Ads is definitely one of the best ways to generate the right kind of views for your videos.

YouTube Ads lets you target your ideal audience and make sure they find out about your video.

It takes a lot of the guesswork out of the whole process on this social media platform.

Running ads allows you to get some real-time feedback, in terms of how good your video is, speeding the process of working out whether or not you have an engaging video on your hands.

If you find that people are watching your video to the end and sharing it a lot, then you know you’re on the right track, in terms of the strategy that you’re using to actually create videos.

So, where to begin?

Note: I’ve covered in detail here, how you can create YouTube Ads.

When it comes to YouTube, there are essentially two kinds of ads that you can run.

1. Ads that appear before, or while people are watching YouTube videos – ’Instream Ads.’
2. Ads that appear in the YouTube Search listings – Search listing Ads.

I recommend that you experiment with both.

Using YouTube Search, find videos in your niche that are related to your specific video topic and jot down their URLs.

Then, target those videos, using the placements option.

So, let’s say that I was starting a business that taught people ‘how to bake’ and I’ve just created a video, based on ‘how to bake a cake.’

I head over to YouTube and type in ‘how to bake a cake.’

I then note down the URLs of these videos, in a Google doc.

I then enter in these URLs, when setting up the targeting for my ads.

Of course, not all of the videos list have ‘monetization’ enabled, meaning that you won’t be able to show ads on all of them.

But, if you start with a list of 10-15 videos, you should have good delivery to your target audience.

If you want to target within the YouTube Search listings, then you obviously need some keywords to target.

To find relevant keywords, use the YouTube search box.

Enter in a keyword that explains what your video covers.  Then, write down other relevant keywords that are provided by ‘autosuggest.’

As you can see below, if I enter ‘how to bake a cake,’ I’m presented with relevant keywords worth targeting.

I’ve highlighted some that are potentially worth my while.

Note: The assumption here is that I’m teaching people how to bake a simple cake. That is why I’ve chosen those somewhat basic keywords.

If I want even more relevant keywords to target, I just select one of the ideal keywords and then press the ‘spacebar.’

And, I’m presented with even more keywords to target.

As I mentioned above, you can also cycle through the alphabet to find other relevant keywords.

Then, I just need to note these keywords in a Google Doc and input them, when setting up my ad targeting.

Promote Your YouTube Video Everywhere 

Just because you’ve created a YouTube video doesn’t mean that you can now only promote on YouTube.

Post links for your YouTube content to all of your other digital assets, including your email list or your Facebook page, and other social media sites.

If you know of some influencers who might find your video useful, you may even want to let them know, via email, that you’ve created something that they might enjoy.

Consider posting a link or snippet in your Instagram stories.

Don’t be afraid to let the world know that you’ve got something new to offer.

Increase YouTube Views By Building a Subscriber Base

You’ll also want to focus on building a subscriber base for getting more YouTube views on future content.

If you can get subscribers, your videos will automatically get a good chunk of views, as soon as you post them. If these views represent a good user experience, your video might also do a better job at ranking, too.

Here, I’ve covered how you can get more YouTube subscribers.

Aside from creating good content, there are some key steps that you can take, to get more subscribers.

Mention, at the beginning and end of your video, that subscribing helps get the video out to more people in your social network.

By actually saying it, people may be more inclined to take action.

You can also make an effort to create content consistently.

Creating more videos will ensure there are more ways for your content to be found. This, of course, can help improve your subscriber count.

It also gives people a reason to become subscribers, as they’ll want to know when you publish new content. 

Note: If you can create ‘Evergreen content,’ then the content you create will pay dividends for a long time, as it will still be relevant for people in the future.

This means that the video will drive subscribes, long after its creation.

Conclusion

For many, getting more YouTube views sounds complex and obscure.

Hopefully, you now have a better sense of how to get more viewers to your videos.

There are many avenues that you can go down. The most important step is to create good quality content about topics important to your viewers.

If you can take care of that, everything else you do to get more Youtube views will be much more effective.

Do you have any tips when it comes to generating more YouTube views? Share what works for you in the comments section.

The post How to Get More YouTube Views appeared first on Neil Patel.

source https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-get-more-youtube-views/