What Is a Digital Agency and How Can It Boost Online Growth?

What Is a Digital Agency?

A digital agency, a digital marketing agency, a web agency, or an online agency brings a variety of technical skills to the table with the aim of boosting its clients’ online presence. Such agencies usually employ multiple specialists, provide different services, and formulate and implement different online marketing strategies. In addition, they might rely on using different digital mediums based on analytics and user behavior.

If you look at the digital agency vs. media agency or digital agency vs. advertising agency comparison, you’ll notice that the latter tend to rely more on traditional marketing methods. A digital agency, on the other hand, specializes in promoting businesses online. When it comes to the digital agency vs. web agency comparison, both refer to the same type of business.

You may think of a digital media agency as an advertising agency that is well-equipped to handle the changing requirements businesses have to deal with because of advancements in internet-based technologies.

Good digital agencies make use of the latest technologies and marketing techniques to bring together different aspects as such graphic design and copywriting with the aim of improving user experience (UX). Results typically come with an eclectic mix of creativity, technology, and problem-solving.

Data released by Statista indicates that around $616 billion was spent on digital ads worldwide in 2022. The number is set to cross one trillion dollars by 2027. In addition, online ad spending in the U.S. stood at $225 billion in 2023, up from $210 billion in the preceding year. While types of digital agencies account for these staggering numbers, not all are equally good.

The best digital agencies have a deep understanding of how different online mediums work and what they need to do in order to successfully increase their clients’ online presence. Besides, they make the most of online interactions and try to provide as much value as they can to their clients’ target audience.

Why Hire a Digital Agency?

Succeeding in the online world requires knowledge of various digital tools, technologies, and trends. Unless your business already has a strong digital marketing department with a manager, a strategist, web designers, web developers, and content creators, working with a digital agency might be in your best interest.

Not only does a good digital marketing agency bring with it the expertise that your business needs to grow online, but it also gives you the ability to focus on your core business. In addition, good web agencies remain up-to-date surrounding the latest strategies, tools, trends, and best practices.

If you compare the cost of hiring a web agency with setting up an in-house digital marketing department, you’ll see which way the pendulum swings.

What Does a Digital Agency Do?

For anyone wondering “What does a digital agency do?” the simple answer is it helps promote your business in the online world and increase sales. However, there’s more to the things digital agencies do for clients than creating websites or adding posts on social media platforms. Here’s what you may expect a digital agency to do should you choose to partner with one.

Monitoring

This stage involves research surrounding aspects such as:

• Who is your target audience?
• What is it looking for?
• How often do people look for your products/services?
• What type of content does your audience like?
• Which platforms does it use the most?
• What are your existing conversion rates?

Diverse Mix

A good digital marketing agency relies on more than one way to deliver your message to your target audience. Consequently, you may expect your overall digital marketing campaign to include:

• Website design and development
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing
• Social media marketing/advertising
• Email marketing
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
• Video production
• Marketing automation
• Mobile app development
• Podcasts

Campaign Development

This stage involves web design and development, identifying suitable forms of media, creating content, meeting schedules, and making sure the campaign is robust enough to work across different types of devices based on client specifications.

Running the Campaign

In running a successful online marketing campaign, you may expect your web agency to touch upon aspects such as identifying users, determining what/who they follow, what they spend the most time doing on the internet, which digital media work best for a particular type of service or product, the location of users, as well as the actions they perform on your website and those of your competitors.

The Results

After an agency analyses the results of its efforts, you may expect to receive in-depth reports surrounding various aspects of the overall marketing campaign. Given the findings, it may choose to make tweaks to its strategies with the aim of further improving the campaign’s effectiveness. This is an ongoing process that every good digital marketing agency follows.

Things Digital Agencies Do for Clients to Boost Growth

Irrespective of the size of your business or the industry it belongs to, you need to look at the long-term picture if you hope to find success in the digital landscape. While endurance plays an important role, so does ensuring that you keep up with changing times.

Given that the online world continues to evolve rapidly, with some big businesses already turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to improve customer experiences, hiring a digital agency that stays on top of the learning curve might be in your best interest.

1. Stay on Top of Digital Marketing Trends

One thing you can be sure of when it comes to online marketing trends, digital marketing strategies, and updates in search engine algorithms is that they are subject to change every so often. For instance, there have been several major Google algorithm updates since 2003. Besides, minor updates happen on an everyday basis. When you hire a good digital agency, you can rest easy knowing that it will not only keep up with the latest changes but will also implement them in your overall marketing strategy.

2. Increase Organic Traffic

Your website serves as the backbone of your online marketing efforts. As a result, the goal of a digital agency is to generate as much high-quality organic traffic as possible to your website. Digital marketing experts pay attention to different aspects such as search engine algorithms, inbound marketing, and user journeys to come up with suitable strategies to boost organic traffic.

3. Generate Qualified Leads

Good digital agencies strive hard to attract qualified leads, and this leads to better conversion rates. They do this by understanding the functioning of your business, your goals, your objectives, your target audience, and your sales funnel. They also make use of multiple tools such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), and content marketing to deliver desired results.

Good digital marketing agencies realize that different tactics produce varied results based on where a lead might be in your sales funnel. Consequently, it is able to deliver the right message through the right medium at the right time. After such leads make their way to your website, there is an increased possibility of them carrying out desired actions, be it making a purchase or following your blog.

4. Expand Your Brand’s Reach

Just about every business can find customers online. Given that the main aim of digital marketing agencies is to boost their clients’ online presence, they know just what it takes to reach out to a bigger target audience. Among other things, the top digital agencies focus on increasing reach by developing buyer personas and interacting with your target audience through one or more social media platforms.

5. Identify Strategies to Boost Revenue

The top U.S. digital agencies use different tools to determine where most of your leads come from and then focus their efforts on identifying and implementing strategies to increase sales. The tools they have access to give them the ability to track the progress of multiple campaigns at the same time. By analyzing the data they get, they make suitable changes to their strategies or even devise new ones.

When it comes to web agency tools, the most commonly used ones include workflow automation tools, project management software, productivity platforms, social media management tools, SEO management software, and business analytics/KPI dashboards.

6. Save Time, Money, and Effort

When you work with a digital agency that offers all the digital marketing services you need under a single umbrella, you don’t have to worry about interacting with multiple agencies to get your work done. Once you leave the online marketing part of your business in the hands of trusted professionals, you get more time to focus on other aspects. Besides, the long-term benefits of hiring a good digital media agency typically outweigh the costs you incur.

The Role Your Agency Plays

All the top digital agencies aim to boost their clients’ online presence by focusing on three main aspects.

• Learn about your business. Before a web agency can get to work, it needs to get as much understanding about your business as possible. The initial interaction should focus on getting in-depth information about your brand’s products/services, goals, target audience, and competition. Only after identifying a target market and narrowing down on who your ideal customer is should an agency move to develop marketing strategies.
• Get the branding right. A crucial element of succeeding in the online world is getting your branding right. The overall brand development process has an agency working on different aspects such as your website and logo as well as the use of suitable slogans and imagery. While branding helps build recall value, it also gives your business a competitive edge and helps develop customer loyalty.
• Increasing return on investment. By ensuring ongoing testing, analysis, and changes in strategies, good digital agencies help increase your return on investment (ROI). Through all the efforts that a digital agency puts into the process, it aims to generate more leads, increase conversions, and boost revenue.

How Much Might It Cost to Hire a Web Agency?

If you compare digital agencies, you will notice that their pricing can vary significantly, and how much you need to spend depends on multiple factors. For example, the services you’re after have a direct bearing on the cost. Other factors that may affect costing include, but do not limit to:

• The size of your business (bigger businesses tend to have higher budgets)
• The experience and expertise that comes with an agency
• Scope of deliverables
• Desired turnaround time
• Complexities in marketing strategies

How to Select a Digital Agency?

Since not all digital agencies are equally good, the one you select has a direct impact on the success of your marketing campaigns. Your choice needs to account for factors such as your goal, your budget, and just how involved you wish to be during the entire process. Other aspects that need your attention in selecting a web agency that works well for you include:

• Will you have a single point-of-contact or might you need to interact with multiple people?
• Does the agency have specialists to work on different strategies (SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, and so on)?
• Has the agency worked on projects of similar scales?
• Which design and development tools does it use?
• How does it measure success?
• How often might you expect progress reports?
• How does its pricing work?
• What do previous customers have to say about its services?

Conclusion

Now that you know what a digital marketing agency is, what it does, and how it can help boost your brand’s online presence, you need to select one that feels like a natural extension of your business. The agency you partner with should not only reflect your core values, but should also share your vision and function as an effective shareholder in the growth of your business.

Since your business might not be well-equipped to manage the wide spectrum of digital marketing, turning to a web agency might be just what your business needs. After understanding the specific needs of your business and how it functions, your digital agency will formulate strategies to maximize outreach. What you may then expect is a streamlined growth in revenue.