Best Digital Agencies – September 2019 Reviews

A digital agency is basically a company that offers everything from multiple Internet-based solutions to their clients to web design and development or server hosting. They also cater to the latest demands of a mobile app technology, blogging, and/or social media management. Usually defined as ‘An agency that specializes in delivering creative and technical development services with a strategy to create better experiences for users.’ It is considered a newer version that combines design and digital platforms.

The services mostly include web design, email marketing, creating microsites, brand management – on experience side and advertising, PR, content marketing, digital marketing, SEO, etc. on the marketing side. Phew! The list just goes on!

It may be easy to get confused between  digital marketing agencies and a digital agency but both provide extremely different types of services. Let’s get the two sorted.

More than an Ad Agency:

You might think of digital agencies as an ad agency because they work on ad campaigns, but they’re not. Simply put, Ad agencies deal with traditional media and sometimes extend their services to digital media. While a digital agency is more inclined towards highly engaging digital creatives and digital marketing campaign management. For example, creating an hashtag for a campaign and making it trend with their resources. One fine example of the same would be Coke’s campaign of #ShareACoke replacing ‘Coca-Cola’ with the hashtag followed by a most common names in the country, while in India they specified a relation like Father, Mother, etc.

An extension to your web design agency:

Have you ever wondered why you sometimes choose to shop from one online platform even if the price of the product is same everywhere? Web design and your experience in using it is the answer. Web design agencies limit their scope of work to web design, digital agencies include user experience on web platforms. They see the bigger picture of their clients and end users’ needs. UX or user experience is essential for the conversion of audience to loyal customers. While the website interface should be attractive, the user experience should be smooth and easy for the consumers to be back. For Example, Amazon has the biggest consumer base simply because of the easy navigation, easy payment procedure and above all easy shopping experience.

Content Marketing Agency + Digital Marketing Agency + Brand Strategist:

Combining all the three, your digital agency brainstorms to create an appealing brand strategy to engage with the user available on multiple media platforms. They further run your campaigns and make social media live appealing content that tune in with the customers’ desires and drives sales. A brands instagram or twitter these days has a quick response to queries and a dissatisfied customer. While other brands like Nutella and Dominos use humor to engage their audience and customers in general. Brand strategies like ‘Giveaway Campaigns’ or ‘Giveaway engagements’ help immensely in promotion. One of the easiest example would be Forever 21 doing a giveaway campaign every now and then. They generally follow a pattern of following them and tagging two friends to and share a story to win the goodies.

Creative Thinking:

You tend to remember the product that has unique advertising because creativity is the key to draw the attention of the customers in this wide pool of brands. A good digital agency is made up of creative thinkers. They are the stars behind rapidly growing digital world and believes in providing intuitive interfaces. As mentioned above, how brands use humour to engage with audience or consumer. Nike brings the most inspiring stories along with their tag line as their hashtag “Just do it”. They not only inspire us but also motivate us to achieve our dreams and goals.

While the major focus in on social media marketing, you cannot overlook the importance of emails and print media. According to a study, if you think email is not dead, you will be missing out on over 2.586 billion email users worldwide. Majorly we see business owners fail while planning digital strategies; additional help can get you started in the right direction. Here’s a list of reasons why you need a digital agency.

Gets you started in the right direction:

A while back you thought a digital marketing agency and a digital agency is the same, imagine walking into a business with confused fundamentals. A digital agency can help you to plan a digital strategy that meets your organizational goals. You can then plan your digital presence accordingly.

Invest in the right places:

Once you have your strategy in place, it gets much easier to look for the right platforms. Align your business goals with your strategy to get maximum returns. An experienced agency would know well about the right social media site to invest. For example a venture like Souled Store is highly active on Instagram where they can display their products easily.

Market share for your online audience:

There are tools available that can give you an idea about the demand for any product or services using the main digital platforms like Google. One good example that can be given is the Keyword Planner. It’s search volume would give you a clear idea about the demand of any particular products and services. And you can work exactly towards what the customers want.

Competition with other market players:

If you do not be present online with engaging content, you might start falling back in competition even with start-ups. Because each startup is conscious about its presence on digital media. Digital agencies can be your savior amidst cutthroat online competition. It won’t be long enough when the tech-savvy generation of us forget about you due to lack of interaction. Generally why rivals have campaigns side by side. If Funfood has started a campaign to engage their customer, it;s most likely that Veeba will too.

Online value proposition:

A well-defined value proposition will help you to stand out on crowded digital platforms. You can differentiate your brand and be connected with your audience and build brand loyalty. You can create a competitive content marketing strategy with your online value proposition and create high-quality content that engages your audience across all social and digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to name a few.

Helps to know your customers:

Because digital platform allows your users to review, comment on your content easily, you would be able to directly get in touch with your customers and know them better than ever. Direct communication always keep air clear from doubts and preconceived notions. The more you connect with the audience the more they will trust you and return to you.

Helps you to work on integrated marketing:

Everyone knows that digital works the best with traditional media, but if you do not have an experience of working on digital platforms, you might not be able to work on this integrated approach. A digital agency would craft a strategy that fits well for integrated marketing for you so that you become a hit on each media. Coca-Cola recently deleted all their posts on Instagram and since 13th November their entire Instagram account appears red and black; colors associated with the brand.

Sync between marketing and digital resources:

Even if you have digital resources, it becomes difficult for them to get in sync with the marketing department. Especially when marketing department works on long-term strategies and digital resources are meant to do new things every day. If you are not a pro in working with digital platforms it is impossible for you to know what is trending and adapt to it. So, a digital agency could help you to be in-sync with marketing department by working on a long-term strategy and creating content that works with it.

Keeping up with technology advancement:

If you are working alone, you would not be able to keep pace with daily evolving technology. A digital agency can dig deeper for the latest trends and new technology on behalf of you. So it’s like gains from all the sides.

Planning

Keeping the risks and responsibilities on the mind, the planning is done by the digital agency and your marketing department. They make sure to plan with predefined timelines and short-term
goals to reach the vision.

Knowing your customers

Knowing the user’s mindset is as important as making the digital channels live. Let’s take a glance inside the process of knowing your users

❖ User Research

Researching the right audience makes you aware of who they are, how they shop and how they behave in specific situations. You can get your user research done by some popular user research methods like:

➢ User interviews

Get real facts from the people who matter, talk to them and get unbiased reviews. Here are the steps to perform user interviews.

● Start with generic questions to get to know them
● Reveal the personality of the users
● Ask questions related to your products and digital platforms
● Ask what kind of digital experiences they prefer

➢ Surveys:
Perform a survey for primary research. It should give you an idea of the overall market or industry in a generic way.

➢ Questionnaires:
Prepare questionnaires with questions you wish to know from the real users. If you combine results of multiple questionnaires, you should be able to get an idea of your users’ point of view about your product and improvements that they are looking for.

➢ Card sorts:
sorting cards could help you to build the site architecture and this methodology brings more insights pre-design the users’ expectation of functions and usability of the performance.

➢ Tree tests:
Tree tests can help you to get an idea about how your users might navigate a sample menu structure. And this is helpful for discovering the data about their site usability and response.

➢ 5 second tests:
5 seconds tests are used to get you information about the first impression of your digital product or services.

➢ Usability testing:
Usability tests are useful to see how your customers are engaging with your content or interfaces. It can help you to discover the issues and help you to resolve them quickly.

There are 3 types of usability testing,

● Explorative usability testing: exploring and identifying the area or functions that can be improved
● Comparative usability testing: test one design or technology with the other one to reveal which one brings better engagement and responses.
● Assessment usability testing: if your online product needs to access performance and check its productivity, this testing is useful.

➢ A/B testing:
These two variants would help you to choose the best one among the two.

➢ Clickstream analysis:
If you want to learn what is the best possible outcome of your digital platform, this test is useful. You can know where your users prefer to go when they are on your digital platform using clickstream analysis.

❖ Market & Competitive analysis

You should know what your competition is doing and how it is benefiting them. You can learn from your competition and other market players if there is anything that can make you stand out.

Market analysis can get you an idea about your long-term strategies would help you to win the market and make better conversions. You should study both – market leaders and non-performer companies. So that you can be sure about what you should not do.

❖ Sandbox

Sandbox is a testing environment that you can implement for your digital platform at various stages of the project life cycle. By implementing Sandbox environment to your project’s strategy, technology, and design stages individually, you will be able to get the best out of your products with necessary revisions.

The three sandbox zones are:

● The strategy zone: Need to know how to bring your concepts into reality? Sandbox will help you work out the path to growth, strategize UX issues, and help you work out every step of your project.

● The technology zone: You may have a concept, but are uncertain if it is technologically feasible. In the Sandbox, you should have the unusual opportunity pick the brains of top technology experts – who are exceptionally qualified and talented in all aspects of online technology. It includes a programming analysis, tech review, R & D, or other issues.

● The design zone: You may be uncertain about what all you need in your website, app, microsite, or other marketing or online product but you are not having the relevant skills for it. Sandbox should help you achieve that goal by bringing the image in your mind to reality.

❖ Customer Journey Maps

This stage is dedicated to talking with the customers and using the business intelligence. When you talk to customers try to know them, see how they are using your products and services, ask for their feedback. The agency tries to know maximum about their lifestyle and connect with your product/ services. Using this insight, the customer journey maps are created for the content on various stages of the event.

❖ Design

The agency creates a visualization of how the strategy looks. The UX and prototypes are created wherever required during the design process.

❖ Development

Development of digital solutions and the content management system is started in this stage after the design stage.

❖ Testing, Content Creation and Prelaunch

Testing of the digital solution, content creation experiments prelaunch takes place in this phase.Testing for any digital interface is required before going live.

❖ Migration & AMP; Launch

Migration of the digital solution and Google along with the launch takes place.

❖ Support & Optimization

Post-launch support and on-going optimizations are performed.

Strategy

According to the business goals, work on a vision that everyone understands and can work on. Strategy planning requires customer insights, market research, and competitor analysis. Once the strategy is approved and accepted, the next stage is to plan for meeting the vision. Let’s see how you can work on your strategy:

❖ Online positioning

You might know your market and your users, but you might not know the insights of where they engage and what leads to buying decisions. Research on what helps them to make a buying decision. Accordingly, you should be able to work on a clearly defined marketing strategy for online positioning that not only brings new customers but also retains the old customers. Producing Search Engine Optimised content, funneling, analyzing the customer behavior are just a few drops in the ocean of the digital world. There is a whole new mammoth size work that goes into creating a proper digital presence.

❖ Brand Development

Brand development can be termed as a chain process where every step is in succession to the other. To start with, create a digital strategy that supports your brand values and make it stronger. A strong brand brings repeat business, gets you more visibility. And if your brand visibility is consistent, you get an edge in the competitive market. With a powerful brand in place, you can introduce your new products effortlessly. As always people tend to trust the brands more than they see more on a regular basis.

❖ Media Planning

The right use of digital channels for advertising can bring you desired results. A strategic plan for digital marketing makes it possible to get the highest ROI with attractive ads and right placement. It’s all about how you explore the media in your favor.

❖ Site Architecture

If you want a website that performs well and brings you right traffic, site architecture is important. Website architecture consists of the planning and design of technical, functional and visual components of a website, in its pre-design phase. It is used by website designers and developers as a means to design and develop a website. Create a site with right navigation, know your audience and convert them effortlessly.

❖ Wireframe

Wireframing is important as it will help you to bring your concept alive for the first time. It will allow you to create a structure for your business online. If done right, wireframing can help you to plan well in advance and save on overall development costs. A step that cannot be overlooked.

Because digital agency includes all the above important things for your project, you need to select the right agency. Here’re the steps to choose the right digital agency.

The team:

Business from the digital agency’s end might be handled by a director, manager or the business owner. What matters is your team’s repo with the people who are working on your project from the agency’s side and innovation that they bring to the table. You should consider the agency that you feel comfortable working with. You might only be communicating with the account manager only, but in reality, there would be a team that works for you to get results. Collective efforts of a team are behind every successful project handling and completion.

Specialists:

You need to see who is going to work on various tasks involved in your project. A designer, a developer or a digital marketer. See if they’re qualified and experienced enough to build your platform and run your business.

Results:

There is no need to hire an agency if they’re not bringing results. Yes, the agencies need to experiment frequently about the projects. They need to experiment with several factors to get the desired results. But after the experiments, they should be able to deliver the desired results. Your money is valuable and should not ever be wasted on something that doesn’t give good results.

Trust:

Companies spend hundreds and thousands of dollars for running their digital campaigns, and so will you. A good agency should be able to utilize your marketing spends without wasting it. They should be keeping their promises and working transparently.