Choosing a digital marketing agency in London can be a little bit challenging.

There are many factors to consider, and one of the biggest ones happens to be around quality. You can spend months looking for a digital marketing agency in this part of the world and still have no more than just a few organisations on your shortlist. You really have to get the cream of the crop too, because digital marketing agencies happen to handle your online brand. If they get it wrong, your brand suffers and therefore your revenue will shrink.

One of the biggest issues around choosing the agency is price.

It can often seem sensible to run in and find someone who offers the lowest price. But this is not always the best course of action for you to take with your company and its brand. Instead, there are a series of questions that you should be asking any agency before you start thinking about paying for their services. These questions are outlined in this article here. Think about the questions carefully, and have them in mind before you have any conversations with any agency that looks like it may well be on your shortlist. Even the most glittering and award-laden agency still has to talk about price, and you as a potential client have the right to know the answer to the following questions. Be wary of any agency, by the way, that doesn’t want to answer these questions. There is absolutely no reason why they should not be able to give you some responses.

Your first question should be around what you’re getting for the price. You’ll need to know exactly what you are expected to receive for the price that you pay the agency. This means a detailed outline of the deliverables the agency wishes to give you. You still have the potential to walk away from any deal, so they have to show you that what they are going to deliver meets with your requirements.

Don’t be one of those companies that settle for working with an agency on a time basis, literally paying for their time. Instead, insist on payment for results. It is for that reason that you should be able to ask them for their deliverables statement. If they can create for you a statement that literally lists the outcomes you can expect after a certain period of time, then it must seem to you that they are a serious agency that can bring results to its clients.

Who are you getting?

Then you need to ask who you are getting for that price. If you’re paying a certain amount of money and they stick an intern on the job then that is obviously a cause for concern. You need to know who you are getting for the price you are paying. A top price should correspond with one of their best people on the job. If the price that you pay doesn’t correspond with the level of expertise you expect, then you need to have a discussion around the professional that you want to work on your project. It’s your money, and more importantly, it’s your brand.

Ask also how much time do they expect to spend on your project and your brand for that price. You can even ask for an hourly rate, or expect certain amounts of time per week regarding your project. Because you will not be in the office with them you need to know as a client just how much time they expect to spend. If they can’t give you some kind of at least estimated figure on this, then they are probably not the agency that you need to be working with. Ask them to give you a time prediction and it should make you feel better about handing over the funds.

Finally, ask them about add-ons. If you need to add any extra parts to the project or indeed if they feel that they need an extra on the billing, what is the procedure for getting this done? You obviously don’t want to get a bill out of the blue, so make that clear before you start paying for anything. Set up a contract with them that clearly outlines the notice period for any additional work or any additional billing. That way, no one gets stung.

You have to think about price when you’re choosing a digital marketing agency in London. So don’t be afraid to talk about money, and have absolute clarity in every aspect of dealings with financial issues.

---

Paul Gordon an employee of Agency Inc based in London, he is their head SEO consultant. Paul has been involved with SEO for over a decade and has worked in the digital technology sector for the last twelve years.