Know the 5 main challenges to Agencies in Digital Marketing
Knowing the main challenges in Digital Marketing agencies is a good step to who aims to grow in this area that gained great popularity throughout the job market.
Therefore, Resultados Digitais and Rock Content (from Latin America) performed, between August and September 2017; research with more than a thousand participants to collect data that resulted in the Landscape Of Digital Agencies 2018.
The goal was collect data about the agencies profile, the main offered services, the adoption of digital strategies from the own company and obstacles that need to be overcome.
In this article, we focused, specifically in the most pointed challenges according to the results of the research and in solutions that can be helpful in case they are a part of your reality. Check it out!
Price the services of Digital Marketing
According to Panorama, one of the most appointed challenges from the agencies, in general, is to put a price on the offered service.
Of the participants, 43,2% showed difficulties defining the optimal price for each project and finding ways to add value in what they are selling to the customers. For many agencies, pricing tends to be linked to the costs generated by the development of its services, taking into account production costs, hours worked, profit margins and deliveries determined from fixed packages.
However, these do not have to be the only factor influencing when it comes to budgeting for customers. Of course, the costs involving the production makes a lot of difference, although it must be linked to the value that your agency wants to generate for their customers. If one of your biggest challenges is pricing too, start thinking about the impact you wish to make on your costumer’s business through the Digital Marketing services offers.
2. Increase the numbers of recurring costumers
One of the challenges of Digital Marketing agencies presented in the research was to raise the numbers of customers that are recurring or that close long-term contracts. This problem, occupied the first place in the ranking of obstacles to be overcome in 2018, was registered for 63.3% of the participants that aren’t looking only for new customers, but also to get loyalty from those who already are in the agency.
This brings us, once again, to the question of seeing value in the agency deliveries and in the outcome, it generates through its services. A possible and highly advised solution, for example, is the adoption of Inbound Marketing strategies for your own brand. Through well-planned and developed content, you can reach new opportunities with potential customers who recognize you as a specialist in Digital Marketing and are aligned with your goal.
This way you can generate information and value so that they get to you, understand how the service work and how they will get a return on your marketing investment. The survey data showed that the agencies that invest in their own communication get 3.25 times more visits and 2.74 times more leads than others who don’t implement these strategies.
3.Proving the value of Digital Marketing to potential customers
The same way you need to show the value of your services to your customers, you also need to prove it to the audience you aim. Not all people understand what Digital Marketing is and how it can help leverage their business. Therefore, this obstacle gained second position in the ranking of ‘Challenges in providing Digital Marketing’ of Panorama, affecting 42.4% of the agencies.
The growth in this problem compared to 2017 was 6.2%, showing that many potential customers still don’t understand how digital services work. Again, the solution appears through the adoption of Inbound Marketing strategies for the agency itself. The relevant content offer will gradually make them understand the importance of Digital Marketing, recognizing the value of their solutions and see how they can align the services to their reality.
4.Rising the income from digital services
Panorama also points out that 62% of the agencies that participated in 2018 face the challenge of increasing revenue generated by Digital Marketing services. Along with the data, 59.5% of them also responded that their goal is the increase of customers for digital projects. Solving the second hurdle would help make the first one easier, for sure. Nevertheless, both depend heavily on the value the client sees in the service the agency offers.
Once again, we hit this key because it is extremely important for those who want to sell more and for those who want to retain customers. If you can demonstrate the importance of Digital Marketing to potential customers, they will understand the value of your services and will contract based on this rather than pricing. Likewise, if you deliver results and they meet the expectation of your customers, you will be able to plan strategies to increase your revenue from the deals you already have.
If that is your main obstacle, how about taking advantages of these opportunities to make your agency take off and gain the trust of your audience?
5.Improving customers retention
One of the major challenges of Digital Marketing agencies is still customers retention. Of the total number of participants in the survey, 50.6% identified this problem as a big obstacle to overcome during 2018. Panorama indicates that this issue may be directly related to the lack of alignment with customers’ expectations, demonstration of results that lead to the opportunity of new business and the understanding that success is not immediate.
For this reason, 64.2% of the agencies adopted as the main strategy to solve this problem the presentation of monitoring project’s reports. With exposing metrics that are aligned with your company’s customers success, you‘ll show to them that you are there to generate opportunities. This way, you can also involve him in tracking results and strategy, making him understand what actually happens and open doors to loyalty.
The results can be presented according to the frequency that you think is ideal, but 68.4% of the participants choose to send monthly reports to their clients. It is worth emphasizing other ways to improve customer’s retention as pointed out in Panorama. In addition to aligning with customer’s expectations and reporting, your agency can focus on delivering proven results early in the project so the client sees hiring as a good investment.
The production of educational content is also an excellent option since the client will gradually understand how the services are developed and how they can generate results for his business.
Other challenges of Digital Marketing Agencies
In addition to the main challenges of the Digital Marketing agencies mentioned above, some other obstacles were pointed out that still need attention to solve recurring problems. Among them are mainly internal improvements that can upgrade the supply of quality projects.
Of the total, 56.8% of the agencies, for example, mentioned that the services provided needed improvements, while 39.8% wanted to increase the Digital Marketing portfolio. Another challenge that worries agencies is related to knowledge: 31.7% of them want to overcome barriers related to the training of the team.
One possible solution to these small internal difficulties is the encouragement of studies and the constant updating of the changes taking place in the field. Digital Marketing constantly evolves, so you have to keep up with your trends and innovations to always offer the best services to your customers.
That’s a way it’s worth remembering once again: the value and quality of an agency’s work is beyond any price, so make it the greatest ally of your success. Now that you know what the main challenges of Digital Marketing agencies are, how about applying our Customers Marketing Checklist in your company and standardizing your processes to boost your results?
What is and How to Create a marketing Persona
A good digital marketing strategy is based on the audience you want to reach: those who advertise in an untargeted way are losing money where there is no interest and at the same time failing to reach who has everything to become a customer.
Think about it. When we surf the internet we are bombarded with lots of information, including advertising, which makes it impossible to assimilate everything we see. (For this there are algorithms, right?)
Realizing this, the current marketing – that puts the customers as the protagonist – uses an increasingly personalized approach, which is why we hear so much talk about buyer persona, a tool that has already become indispensable in any successful strategy.
However, before we talk about what a persona is, we must differentiate three common terms that pop up when it comes to recognizing the public of a company: target audience, ideal customer and persona (buyer person).
What is your target audience?
The target audience is a sample of potential consumers of a product or brand, gathering their demographic, socioeconomic, and behavioral information. In this survey, general information about the group is given, such as age, gender, educational background, purchasing power, location and consumption habits.
Example of Target Audience
Women, aged between 25 and 35 years, living in the state of Minas Gerais, with higher education and income between R$3.000 and R$ 5.000. They already own their home and now are planning to finance a vehicle.
What is an ideal client
The ideal customer or ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is a description that sums up your best customers, the one who has already bought or constantly buys the products, identifies with and is engaged to your business.
The data to assemble an ideal customer profile are level of engagement with the brand, frequency of purchase, how much you recommend the product, average purchase ticket.
Example of an ideal client
Woman located in the southeast region of the country. They knew the product soon after the launch and have been customers for about two years, with a purchase cycle of an average of 3 months. They have already evaluated the product on the site and follow the social networks of the company. Average tickets of R$300.
What is persona
The buyer persona is a fictional character. However, its information is constructed from real data, which allows a more humanized and personalized representation of the buyer.
While the target audience and ideal client are constituted in a generalist way, representing broad plots, the persona presents personal and psychological characteristics that represent a smaller group with similar qualities and behaviors.
Some of the buyer persona’s data are name, position, professional challenges, aspirations, lifestyle and personal beliefs, what media they use, a moment of purchase day in which they are.
Example of a persona
| Persona 1 | |
| Name | Luciana Almeida |
| Personal Information | 24 years old, Communication undergraduate student. |
| Professional information | Luciana works at home, she conciliates her college, work placement and freelancer work. |
| Medias | She uses Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Reads Folha de Sao Paulo News, Rock Content, Resultados Digitais, and HubSpot’s blogs |
| Aspirations | Get enough clients to open a company and become a reference in Digital Marketing. |
| Pains and Need | Close sales, organize bills, create and analyze reports from social media, organize herself to research and write blog posts about different topics, come up with action plans so her clients’ bills can be always better |
| How can we help | With Reportei, wasting time with reports of social media from each client won’t be necessary, consequently, there will be more time to write blog posts and analyze the results. The shared content from Reportei can also help better results and indicators understanding. |
The importance of defining a persona
Now that you already know what a persona is, you must have understood how it helps to target the right strategy to reach the aimed people and thereby get the expected (or even greater) return from the company.
The creation of personas is a fundamental step on digital marketing strategy since from this you will determine, among others:
- The formats of the content you need to produce;
- The language and style of these contents;
- The topics that deserve more of my attention in the strategy;
- Define guidelines that will be written;
- At what point in the buying journey you need to focus;
- Which media will you propagate the content?
How to pick up the persona’s information
After seeing the example of our persona Luciana, you must be wondering where you will get the information you need to build yours. As we said, the persona is created with real information, so you can start with what you already have.
Do some interviews or questionnaires to your customers’ base, even if they are just a few, it’s already easily possible to get valuable information. You can also search for and select users on social networks that have similar or page-like patterns.
In this blog post “Content Marketing” you find great examples of questions to use in your questionnaire.
Even differentiating the approach from the target audience, the ideal client and the persona, the choice of one does not exclude the other. Quite the contrary, having a few clippings of target audiences and ideal clients can be helpful when it comes to raising your people!
Creating a buyer persona
We come to the practical part where you will learn how to create a buyer persona. According to Reportei’s Social Media Planning Template, you need to define the following information about yourself:
- Name;
- Personal information;
- Professional information;
- Media;
- Personal and professional aspirations;
- Pains and needs;
- How your business or product can help you.
Name
Create a fictitious name for yourself. It may not seem important, but remember that you must humanize it, so choose a nice name.
Personal information
Add additional information like age, what the persona’s lifestyles, habits, hobbies, etc.
Professional information
Define what position it occupies, in which branch and company you work (or work from home) or if the person can reconcile work with study, for example.
News
In which media do you seek information? With what technologies does it access these contents? Who’s the influence? Answer all of these questions as well.
Personal and professional aspirations
Describe the person’s beliefs and where she wants to reach, both personally and professionally.
Pains and needs
Explain the major challenges for your persona to achieve what you want (or solve some problem) and what your frustration is during the process.
How your business or product can help you
Think about how your product or company can solve the pains and needs created in the previous topic.
An important tip: you can also highlight the criteria of the purchase decision of the person and at what time of journey it is, being possible to create different personas for each of them.
5 Moments: The Routine of a Social Media Analyst
The usage of social media is growing more and more. As a result, the need to organize the routine of a social media (a multifaceted professional that brings together a range of knowledge and work tools) also grows.
Why advertise on social media
If you produce content for a website or a blog you may have already encountered the following situation: you think of an interesting agenda, try to write a full text, do keyboard research, optimize content for SEO, everything perfect, the way it should be.
Later you analyze the metrics of your post and see that its reach is much lower than you expected. That is, few people have found and read that carefully made content. It’s frustrating, isn’t it?
7 SEO Tools for Agencies: Free and Paid
Mainly by helping to define effective strategies and improve results more quickly, SEO tools have become an extremely important information base for agencies developing site optimization and content production projects.
After all, without acquiring data and suggestions for improvements that many of them offer, it’s harder to get out of the dark and find the right answers to the needs of your customers.
The importance of goals in your Digital Marketing Plan
Do you, a freelance or professional in the field, have ever stopped to think that digital marketing is a process? By following the steps of this methodology it is also possible to achieve various goals, according to what you most need for a particular marketing plan.We can define as “process” a sequential set of actions for a common purpose. A football player, for example, goes through a set of activities and training to improve performance in the field. (Calm down, I’ll explain where we want to go!)
Reach vs Impressions: Do you know the difference between these metrics?
As we have said in other posts here on Reportei’s blog, metrics are very important measurement systems for measuring and evaluating the performance of your social media strategies. However, with so many social networks that, in turn, count on several metrics, it is normal to be confused by some important terms when analyzing the data present in social media reports.
4 digital marketing tools for competitive analysis
With the evolution of studies and planning of actions directed to the digital media, the tools for analysis of the competition is gaining more and more important in the lives of the marketers.
6 Steps to Create your Blog’s Editorial Calendar today
If you have been following the Reportei’s blog, you should have seen our latest posts, where we talked about the importance of defining a Digital Marketing Plan and also the personas in your strategy.
After these two initial ― and crucial ― steps, you can already manage the next steps in your marketing plan. Creating a blog is one of the first steps taken in many successful strategies. Do you know why?
