What is a Digital Marketing Agency
Created March 1, 2023
Updated March 11, 2024
7 min read

What is a Digital Marketing Agency (and Why Hire One)?

You’ve opened a new business or made a product and you need to get customers for it.

You have tried the old-fashioned way and told all your friends about it. You have been posting every day on your Facebook and Instagram profiles about it.

You printed some leaflets and your friend helped you to stuff them in your neighbor’s postal boxes.

You have waited for a few weeks, and you haven’t seen any results!?

Sure you got some local people interested but you want to go bigger and expose tons of people to your product. Why don’t you hire a digital marketing agency?

Wait, what is a digital marketing agency?

It’s a digital agency (It means it’s run on the internet, duh) that helps businesses reach more customers and develop their brand online.

What Services Do Digital Marketing Agencies Offer?

Digital marketing agencies offer different types of services depending on the needs of the client.

From particular services like building a website or setting up the customer’s social media profiles to something known as Full Service Digital Marketing, which means running everything marketing related online for your client.

Full Service Marketing List

Here is a typical Full Service Digital Marketing service list, it includes: 

  • Website design and development: Creating and maintaining the company’s website.
  • Search engine optimization (SEO): Improving a website’s ranking in search engine results pages (usually Google Search).
  • Content marketing: Creating authentic and relevant content for customer’s business.
  • Social media marketing: Promoting a company’s brand, products or services on social media platforms.
  • Pay-per-click advertising (PPC): Form of online advertising where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their ads.
  • Email marketing: Sending offers and keeping your customers engaged through sending regular emails.
  • Video production: Creating video content for social media and websites.
  • Influencer marketing: Partnering with influencers to promote a brand or product.
  • Analytics and reporting: Measuring and analyzing the results of digital marketing campaigns.

Many businesses are interested in running a Full Service Digital Marketing and leaving it to the digital marketing agency they can trust, so they can focus on developing their product or service.

Some customers go for specific services like SEO optimization of a given website. 

In that case the marketing agency will run an SEO audit and point out all the fixes that can be done to the website to make it target the right keywords and run faster.  

Many times few services will be grouped in a package like SEO optimization and Content Writing service. 

This package works well because writing good content with target keywords is great way to improve your SEO ranking.  

Can You Give an Example of a Digital Marketing Strategy?

Sure, have you heard the old joke: a taxi guy walks into an advertising agency and says “Lemme drive up your traffic!”?

Well, it’s not an old joke, we just made it up! We had to do it because one of the keywords for writing this article was “guy walks into an advertising agency”.

Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency keyword Research

Screenshot from SEMrush, showing the keyword volume and difficulty for ranking.

This keyword has 50 monthly searches and low keyword difficulty which means that if we include it in this article it will be very easy to rank for it. 

This is part of an SEO strategy that will make our website rank higher when you search for marketing keywords on Google.

Also “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency” is one of the most popular episodes from the tv show Mad Men which has won a lot of awards.   

Is There a Difference Between Digital Marketing and Advertising?

Digital marketing is a bigger concept than advertising and involves more strategies and channels to deliver your message and grow your customer base. 

When we think about advertising we usually think about old-school advertising like automotive advertising in tv commercials and newspapers. 

And when we think about digital marketing we usually think more about the various modern strategies that make our brand more visible.

For example the famous Volkswagen commercial “The Force” from 2011, in which a young boy dressed as Darth Vader tries to use the Force to start his parents’ Passat, is a classical example of automotive advertising

This commercial was aired during Super Bowl and was a great success for the Volkswagen brand gathering millions of views. 

Contrary to this Nike and Instagram’s social media marketing partnerships campaign “Play for the World” is an example of a new type of digital marketing.

In it Nike encouraged users on Instagram to share photos and videos of their favorite sports moments, with a chance to have their content featured directly on Nike’s Instagram account.

Nike Play for the World Instagram Campaign

What Are The Benefits of Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency?

  • Expertise: Digital marketing agencies bring people of experience and expertise to your team. They have the knowledge and skills to develop and execute effective digital marketing strategies that give results.
  • Objectivity: Digital marketing agencies can provide an objective perspective on your marketing efforts. They can identify opportunities and weaknesses in your marketing strategy that you are not aware of yourself.
  • Time-saving: Hiring a digital marketing agency can save you time and resources. 
  • Access to the newest tools and technologies: Digital marketing agencies have access to the latest tools and technologies, and they know how to use them to achieve results.
  • Increased efficiency: Digital marketing agencies can help you improve the efficiency of your marketing efforts. 
  • Improved return on investment (ROI): Digital marketing agencies can help you get the most out of your marketing budget. They use data driven marketing to measure and optimize the performance of your campaigns, which helps you boost ROI for your investment.

How Much Do Digital Marketing Agencies Charge for Their Services?

The cost of digital marketing services can vary greatly depending on multiple factors like the scope of the work done for the client, the level of expertise it is involved as well as the different creative processes used like graphic design, sound design, video, content writing and etc. 

The client is usually billed on a monthly fee for a set amount of work, or if the agency is working on a project then every project is negotiated separately. 

In some cases, the fee depends on the performance of a given campaign measured by the number of views. clicks, conversions, generated sales and so on.

And the last model is commission-based, where the agency earns a commission on sales or leads generated by the agency’s marketing campaigns. 

On average, small businesses can expect to pay anywhere from $500 to $5,000 per month for digital marketing services depending on the services they get. 

While larger businesses may pay sometimes up to $10,000 or more. This is just a rough estimate, and the actual cost will depend on the array of services they get.

To get a quote on the service you would like to get for your project please contact Oshara and our team will answer you shortly.

Conclusion

To hire an agency for your marketing needs means to level up in your marketing efforts. Online marketing is not some mystic knowledge that you can’t attain yourself, but it’s always better to get people who have proven experience in the field to help you along.

You can also do this by hiring an in-house team for a salary that will take care of your marketing, but at any rate try to go for the professional help because the market is so saturated now that it’s really hard to figure it own and position yourself on your own.

The main thing in your marketing strategy should always be your target audience, which are your potential customers. You should always have this group when changing anything about your online presence. 

If you need help with your marketing efforts don’t hesitate to contact our experts today! We run the best web marketing agency in Montreal and we have over 10 years of experience under our belt.