Originally written by Robyn Bloch | Revised & updated by Carina Claassens

People don’t expect your company to be perfect. They expect you to provide solutions – Debra Ellis.

A 2011 Mail and Guardian news headline read Cockpit Fraud Fears Grow over India’s Fake Pilots. The massive fraud scandal in India not only concerned fake pilot licenses, but all types of professional qualification validity. The article states that there are hundreds of phonies in India flying under false pretences.

The story, seemingly completely unrelated to digital marketing, does in fact teach us a valuable lesson.  The digital and online marketing fields are emerging at a very fast pace and there are many agencies out there who claim to provide comprehensive digital marketing services.

A lot of the time, like the pilots in India, many of these agencies have little or no experience. They are trying to jump on the band wagon called “digital marketing” without the proper expertise.

To avoid being taken for a ride you should empower yourself by learning the basics about the field. If you know what digital marketing is all about and the processes it involves you will be able to make a better choice when choosing the right digital agency for the job. By knowing as much, or even possibly more, than the digital agency, you will be able to communicate more effectively with them. More importantly, you won’t be misled into signing up for something unnecessary by their use of fancy industry jargon.

Many agencies claim to specialise in social media or content marketing. From IT companies to traditional PR and advertising agencies to web developers. Even Joomla implementers are now content marketing “experts”. Digital marketing requires a total different skill set to what these specialists are used to. Unless adequate training and real life knowledge is acquired they won’t be able to provide what a professional digital marketing specialist can. The difficulty with digital marketing is that there isn’t necessarily a formal qualification required to be a successful digital marketer. Due to the rapid changes in the marketing world companies had to adapt and new ways of marketing were learned. The true experts went through the traditional to digital shift, gaining a much needed real life knowledge about the digital marketing world and what it has to offer.

What Should a Digital Agency Offer?

Data included in the UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2013 shows that more than half of agencies (52%) now offer a ‘full range of digital marketing services’, an increase from 45% in 2012 and 42% in 2011. The report is based on an online survey of more than 500 client-side digital marketers and agencies. It covers search engine optimisation, PPC and social media marketing.

Because of the wide range of agencies out there it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, especially if you’re not sure what to look out for. When you choose a digital marketing agency to manage your content make sure to check out the following:

• Case Studies:
  The company should be able to demonstrate how it successfully provides value to its clients through content and social media.
• Blogging:
  Look at the company blog. If the blog isn’t regularly updated with fresh and relevant content, how can you expect them to manage your blog successfully?
• Social Media:
  What do the company social media platforms tell you? How many (valuable) followers do they have, how often do they update the accounts and are they fully engaging with their following? If they can’t grow their own following, can they grow yours?

It’s all about creating content that is interesting and relevant, content that people would want to share, talk about and link to. If a digital marketing agency can create content of outstanding value, it will be evident in all of the above factors. Remember, people don’t like to be taken for a ride, as soon as they realise that a company has been over selling itself, they’ll start talking about it. If a company doesn’t look good, it probably isn’t. Customers become loyal if they get more than they paid for, and this will show in all the figures.

All of this might seem a bit inapt to the untrained content marketer, but these three factors are the main indicators of just how well a company knows its digital marketing.

This can be compared to journalism – sure, everyone can publish a blog and make their writing available to millions of people, but that doesn’t mean that the content is accurate, of a quality standard or even relevant. You can give yourself whatever title you want – but in the end it all comes down to the value that you provide.

Sound Idea Digital is a complete digital marketing agency. For more information, contact 012 66 44 227 or email to info@soundidea.co.za

Carina Claassens is a Writer for Sound Idea Digital l carina@soundidea.co.za l @SoundIdea | Sound Idea Digital l www.soundidea.co.za

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