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Are you considering hiring a marketing company in Vancouver? You must have many questions on your mind, especially if this is your first time venturing into the unknown world of hiring other people to do marketing that you may be doing all right now (or someone else in your company who is not an actual marketer). Do you feel that it’s time to get your marketing done in a professional, strategic way, so you (or your team members) can focus on what you/they do best? Great decision! Please read on for some FAQs that might be on your mind today.
Do you charge hourly for your work? What is your hourly rate?
Our pricing is project-based, not hourly. When providing a quote, we use an internal rating system of the effort that goes into an account from 1 to 100, depending on the account’s needs and the project’s complexity. It may take less time for a more efficient or experienced marketer to do the same task and achieve the same results in the end as a less experienced person would in a longer time frame.
Our philosophy is to charge clients for the results we deliver, not the time we spend on their accounts.
We do however track the time we spend on accounts for our internal efficiency optimisation purposes.
Do you provide marketing strategy and execution?
Yes! Execution is included in the monthly marketing retainer upon completion of the audit and strategy. We usually start our work with an audit of your current marketing standings. Depending on your needs, this may include an audit of your website (performance, user behaviour, SEO, conversion rate, etc.). We then move on to the marketing strategy, where we determine the most profitable marketing platforms for your particular business, and your specific goals. Execution may include Google Ads, Social Media (Facebook and Instagram) Ads, SEO and ongoing Social Media Marketing.
All of our monthly retainers have a solid reporting and feedback loop system in place, to make sure you are always clear on what we are executing and what results we are achieving for your business. Some of our clients prefer more reporting, some less – we determine the frequency of communication and reporting, based on your business’s cadence.
Here’s a sample marketing campaign launch timeline for a new client:
What is included in advertising management for brand awareness and website traffic increase?
It depends on the marketing strategy we define. This could include ongoing optimization of Google and Facebook Ads. From writing copy to designing winning visuals, to analyzing which ads performed well and which didn’t, and why and how we can improve month over month.
Various factors determine the success of a paid advertising campaign. Please take a look at some of the articles that we wrote over the last 14 years about paid advertising for more insights.
How many months of ads are needed to see positive results?
First off, we will determine what “positive” means to your business. For some businesses, that would be leads, for others, brand awareness, and sometimes, it could be a combination of both. So, it definitely depends. Let’s look at an example below, if we were looking to increase traffic to your website.
When will we see an increase in traffic?
We should see positive results (i.e. increased traffic to the site) pretty much right away – within the first month.
To give a rough estimate and an overview of our process – we would target interests and keywords related to your product or service. For instance, for a business that sells art supplies we would use keywords such as “art supplies” or “scrapbooking supplies.” The exact keywords and interests will be determined during the marketing audit and strategy stage by researching the trends and competition, as well as analyzing your current website and your site’s user behaviour via analytics.
We find the most popular keywords and use them to attract people who are using these keywords when searching for a product or service similar to yours and will direct them to your website. Here’s a quick example of the keyword-finding process below.
Assuming a $500-$1000 per month of advertising fees, what would be the range of percentage increase in traffic from your past experience?
- Advertising platforms usually charge us per click (website traffic) or per thousand impressions (brand visibility/awareness). We would be using a mix of campaigns (this is what we would discuss during the marketing strategy stage) to make sure we find the perfect combination of lead generation and brand visibility campaigns.
- Take a look at some examples below for different types of clients and different types of ads. We would love to elaborate on this over the phone, if you find this data interesting! These screenshots are showing clicks (traffic to the site), impressions (how many times the ads were shown), and CPC is the cost per click, etc. These are some of the numbers we use to determine if a campaign is successful or not.
Is it possible to set a target percentage of increase in traffic and in sales?
We can predict the increase in traffic, but we cannot predict an increase in sales without any previous advertising data. This will be the work we will do in the first few months. We will collect data, analyze the data collected and then make data-driven decisions in regard to all marketing decisions.
Can we agree on some KPIs before accepting the proposal?
Yes, absolutely, we can agree on the KPIs that we will be measuring based on your expectations. This is exactly why you would want to hire a marketing agency. We are business people first and marketers second. Marketing is just a tool we use to help you grow your business, but our thinking always starts with business fundamentals.
Marketing KPIs Examples:
- Leading KPIs: brand visibility (KPIs – impressions on Google and reach on FB), brand awareness (KPIs – clicks on Google and engagement on FB).
- Lagging KPIs: Sales (add to cart and purchases).
In conclusion:
If you hire our marketing agency to become your small business’s marketing department, our job will be to add clarity and consistency to your marketing every month so that you can make data-driven decisions in your business. You will know exactly what’s working and what’s not working in your marketing. On a monthly basis, we will lean more into what’s working (based on facts) and move away from what’s not working.
I hope this answers some of the FAQs you may have had as you are considering hiring a marketing agency!
Please let us know if you would like to chat over this. Get in touch with our marketing agency in Vancouver – we would love to help you get the clarity your business needs to grow!
Feel free to email us any questions you may have – we love a good collaborating atmosphere with our clients, where we can think fresh and look at different aspects of our work!
Happy growing!