IS IT BEST TO USE A DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY?

I don’t need to do any digital marketing. If you’ve said that and believe it, you’re probably one of the thousands of businesses right now on struggle street. Sure it’s not your fault a pandemic has hit, but have you done everything within your power to mitigate risk and find new customers? What do you know about digital marketing?

If you deny digital marketing is not a big part of your business, you’re 100 percent reliant on a single revenue source and good old word of mouth, which in today’s mask wearing world is pretty much redundant.
Marketing and in particular digital marketing should continue to be a massive part of your business even when the chips and markets are down, but what do you do when people aren’t buying? How do you stay top of mind for when they do, whenever that may be?
What exactly should I do?
It’s so confusing: SEO, SEM, Social media marketing, EDM’s, remarketing, affiliate, retargeting. Have I lost you yet?
Can I do it all myself?  What is the best digital marketing agency in Melbourne? etc
Sure you can, but is it worth it? Should you know what each channel makes you in dollars and cents. 100 percent yes.
Big disclaimer. I’m a partner at a digital marketing agency, Zib Digital in Melbourne and I am blown away everyday by how underperformance runs rife in this industry, it’s disgusting. 
Travis Telfer, founder of Growth Marketing U agrees.
Growth Marketing U, empowers businesses to be able to run their own marketing so that they don’t need to hire an agency or if they do, they can hold them accountable and have them perform better.
Growth Marketing U runs workshops targeted towards small business, medium business and entrepreneurs, to empower them with the skills and knowledge to run their digital marketing strategy as effectively as possible for a low budget.
‘’It's important these days to be armed with marketing knowledge as a business owner because the market that we live in now is more customer-centric than ever before,’’ Mr Telfer said.
‘’Most of the time the only people that know your customers in a business are the people in the business.’’
Mr Telfer said underperformance is a massive player in outsourcing to marketing agencies. It's not because agencies go out to underperform, but it comes down to the relationship between the business and understanding the customer is where you get your best results, and agencies are too disconnected from the business to be able to understand the consumer to get the best results.
‘’We do things differently through teaching skills which are usually the biggest knowledge gap,’’ he said.
‘’On the day, an average person will come into a workshop, we teach you the skills but also chunk it in a way where we help you implement it on the day so you leave the day, not only with the skills, knowledge to do and help grow your business internally. But also to continue with into the future.’’
Here are Mr Telfer’s top tips to finding the right agency for you.
1. One is the agency's ability to push back. Based on what they believe the best strategy is, having an agency that pushes back against the client is always a great sign of expertise in this space. And it also means that they're not looking at you as a number, they're looking at you as someone that they really want to get results for. 
2. The second thing is transparency... Transparency and numbers. I don't mean transparency in the numbers that look good, I mean transparency and the numbers that matter, you know the ones that affect your balance sheet. They're the numbers that matter. Even if they're not that great, an agency that presents that data to you is one that you can trust. 
3. Learn. They take the time to learn about your business if they invest the time to understand the customer journey and behaviour they will understand how to connect to them through marketing efforts.
4. Clients. I look for their evangelists and the clients on their books, not, the logos on their website. I look for actual real-life living breathing clients that you can reach out and get their experience first hand.
For more information go to Growth Marketing U.