Introduction
Hiring a digital marketer can be stressful and even feel overwhelming at times depending on the size, scope, and scale of your business compared to what (if any) business objectives you’re hoping digital marketing will obtain for you.
You want to make sure that whomever you hire is experienced, qualified, and can help you organize what’s important in a timely and deliberately organized manner.
Learn from the mistakes of others, from the other blog posts I’ve made here (and some of the stories I’ve given) and the countless times I’ve seen small business owners, startups, and even larger enterprise-level businesses go under due to making (costly) mistakes they couldn’t bounce back from as they’d anticipated.
Digital marketing is not the second coming, it’s not the overnight miracle cure everyone wants it to be, but it can catapult your business into the first page of Google search results and get you exposure you probably want (and hopefully are ready to accommodate) once there.
What Do Digital Marketers Do?
An experienced, professional Digital Marketing Specialist (as opposed to the neighborhood hobbyist or DIY template generator most business owners turn to first) will be able to help you put your business goals and objectives into perspective, prioritize those into realistic “to do” lists, and then diagnose problems within the organization s/he can use web technologies to solve, while using their experience to help you get started so you can start bringing in more leads.
First, there’s a sizable amount of information they need to go through with you such as:
- Goals or lack thereof
- Budget (which is usually a huge stumbling block as many don’t know or are unable to budget realistically)
- Scope of Project Compared to Stated Goals
- Setting Deadlines within a Project Development Schedule
- Collecting Content / Images
- Analyzing Local Demographics / Competitive Landscape
- Determining Competitive SEO
- Determining the Look and Feel of the Size
- Determining Branding / Logo / Font
And that’s to get started.
So, it’s important to bear in mind the profound difference between a template installer who can meet you at a local coffee shop to someone who is focused on achieving time-bound, valuable objectives and resolving problems for you in a way that ultimately makes you more profitable and brings in more customers.
Credentials matter when you as a business owner want to get more done on a larger basis and management profitability is tied to objectives being met.
Digital Marketing Specialist or Expert Credentials
Some of the credentials or factors you should look for in judging a Digital Marketing Specialist are:
- Some level of related of similar or complimentary education.
- Testimonials from clearly verifiable, real people (not models or people without full names).
- Some experience speaking to professional associations about Digital Marketing, SEO, and Content creation and marketing.
- At least a minimum of five years’ experience working for marketing and advertising agencies
- A portfolio of live and even past client sites s/he can refer you to and discuss.
- Experience working with business owners from different walks of life.
- Experience with SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, planning, working with (and in) businesses, sizing images, and what I call “getting your hands dirty” with digital media practices.
- A desire to establish open, clear communication with you, the client, and a determined focus on helping you achieve certain business goals.
Why This Matters
At the end of the day, these things matter because hobbyists may have a few of these criteria, but they won’t have or be able to provide all of the above, so the more quality criteria you can achieve here the more likely you are to work with someone who cares and can also deliver on what you need done in a serious manner.
Cheap, low-ball prices may look appealing or even be too hard to resist, but if you have a site with no SEO that nobody ever can find, its value is pretty minimal and your ability to reach new markets is severely restricted.
In Closing
Digital Marketing Specialists live in every city in every nation, while they may go by other titles, and those you work with can have the ability to slow or even handicap growth, while those who are intimately familiar with the ins and outs of building and running digital marketing campaigns for businesses small and large, who have a broad scope of knowledge and hands-on experience, can be an invaluable resource for your business.
You can easily go from feeling invisible and wondering if your business will make it another quarter to having more phone calls from new customers than you ever thought possible – but it all comes down to who you work with and why you decide to partner with them.
Focusing on achieving goals and meeting standards is a surefire way to make sure you derive the greatest ROI from your investment.