What Does a Digital Agency Do? The Ways an Agency Can Help

When you run a business or own a brand, you'll naturally wonder how to maximise the benefit of digital marketing. But it's a complex and ever-evolving world that can feel overwhelming at times. Should you focus on PPC advertising, social media development, SEO or app development? Should you try to do everything at once or focus on a couple of key strategic digital channels? And can you do it on your own or should you start looking for a paid search agency or local SEO experts? This is where the benefit of a digital agency comes in. In this article, we will talk about how a digital agency can help clients and the benefits of their services. If you have been asking yourself 'what does a digital agency do', we're here to explain!

What are digital services

Before asking 'what does a digital agency do' it helps to ask 'what are digital services' and to understand their importance to your business. Digital services span all manner of internet-enabled marketing, e-commerce and related business activities. For example, key digital services offered by a digital marketing agency would include online advertising (also known as PPC), search engine optimisation, or SEO, website development, content management, social media management, online PR, e-commerce, customer research and plenty more. This field is always evolving as new technologies emerge. We've covered this more fully in our 'what are digital services' guide: [insert link when live]

How Do Digital Agencies Help Businesses?

So, what does a digital marketing agency do to help businesses? Digital agencies act as specialist, strategic partners to help your business or brand to get the most from its digital marketing investment. Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, involves promoting brands to target audiences via the internet and other digital mediums, from email and online advertising to multimedia, text and social media advertising services. Agencies work with businesses on a flexible, partnership basis to deliver these specialist skills. They might act as an extension to a business's existing marketing team, or provide a fully outsourced service. They also tailor the service to the client's needs. For example, some businesses may simply need digital marketing consultancy and research to position and guide their tactical delivery. Others may require practical and hands-on expert help to deliver an existing strategy. Some clients may wish to fully outsource their marketing function to a trusted agency that can deliver the digital marketing remit and buy in assured support for offline activities to integrate all marketing activities. When considering 'what does a digital agency do', it helps to understand some of the dimensions of the agency service. Here are some of the primary benefits that businesses enjoy when they choose to partner with a digital marketing agency.

Connecting them to New Markets and Customers

Digital agencies use a variety of strategies and tactics to connect businesses with new markets and target customers. This is the core objective for most businesses and brands, that are seeking customers and conversions or sales. Agencies might do this by creating a targeted and integrated marketing plan. Tactics could include online advertising, social media engagement on selected platforms, online PR on selected media outlets, targeted email marketing and even out-of-house display advertising on digital boards. The agency will measure results and refine its approach to meet client goals and objectives at all times; ensuring that the budget ROI is achieved.

Developing Long-term or Short-term Strategies

Digital agencies possess extremely knowledgeable teams who work at the cutting edge of the digital industry. This makes them very well-placed to support businesses and brands with their strategic marketing development. Agencies often work with business decision-makers to help them devise powerful digital marketing strategies that integrate with offline marketing plans. They may deliver focused training for business decision-makers, or help to guide and facilitate marketing strategy sessions. As ever, the service offered to clients is bespoke and entirely flexible around their needs and objectives.

Improving Data Gathering & Interpretation

What does a digital media agency do to support data and insight? Digital media agencies have access to a wealth of up-to-the-minute secondary industry and competitor data, and the skills and specialist expertise needed to commission and deliver primary research for clients. Data and insight underpin all successful marketing strategies, and many businesses choose to outsource this focused area to specialists with particular knowledge of the field. Digital agencies leverage published sources, fact-check, assess competitor activity and carry out bespoke research to help businesses target their marketing to the best effect.

Bringing together Different Experts to Meet Unique Needs

Perhaps the most valuable benefit that digital agencies offer is a large team of knowledgeable experts who specialise in certain technical fields, such as PPC and online advertising, social media management, content development and SEO. When you use a digital marketing agency, you gain immediate access to this in-depth knowledge and expertise. This allows you to fast-track your marketing success and obtain a better ROI.

Applying the Latest Best Practices

What does a digital agency do to support knowledge transfer, upskilling and best practice development within your client business? Again, the agency experts constantly invest in their own knowledge and expertise to stay ahead of the curve. These digital marketing professionals work hard to stay at the cutting edge of their specialist fields, as the remit of an agency is to always have the latest skillsets on offer to clients. This saves client businesses time and money, by removing the need to maintain and constantly develop an expensive in-house team if they choose not to.

Do You Need Help from a Digital Agency?

For most businesses and brands, the answer to 'do I need help from a digital agency' is going to be yes. Whether you're interested in very specific services like video advertising or a comprehensive marketing services, agencies offer completely bespoke support packages based on your needs and budget so that you only buy the support and services that are right for you and your objectives. Good agencies also seek to partner for the longer term, taking time to get to know your business and to understand it. This helps them to recommend the best courses of action and digital marketing focus activities to get the best possible return for your investment. By choosing the flexible support of a digital agency, your business also gets to remove the need to support a fully in-house digital marketing team, which can be very expensive. It is often a better option to buy these specialist skill sets as and when you need them. After all, that is what the agency model is there for, and it certainly works.

Your next steps for digital marketing

Hopefully, you're no longer asking 'what does a digital agency do', and now have a clear idea about the value and role of these valuable business partners. Keen to learn more about digital marketing as a discipline? Reach out to Revelation Digital today.