5 Red Flags on an Agency Website
When you’re paying an agency to bring your business your success through digital advertising, you expect them to be the experts in their field. But as you probably know by now, not all agencies are created equal! Here’s 5 signs that an agency might not know as much as they claim, and you might want to look elsewhere.
Red Flag #1: Poor Web Design
Bad web design is one of the first red flags you should look out for when shopping around. If you can’t get around their website easily, it takes forever to load, or the organization just doesn’t make sense, you should consider passing on this agency. For SEO (Search Engine Optimization), a great website and relevant landing pages are absolutely necessary. If they can’t even handle that for their own website, how can you expect them to take care of yours? Check out this article from our friends at 85ideas.com for some of the worst examples of web design on the web today:
https://85ideas.com/blog/bad-website-design/
Red Flag #2: Not Data or Research Based
If you’re making the decision to pay someone else to market your product or service, you want to know you’re getting the best ROAS possible. You want some level of assurance that these people know what they’re doing, and have some level of expertise in their field. If they’re just guessing at what keywords to use for your PPC ads, or what bidding strategy to use, they’re not going to do any better than you would if you ran your page yourself. You want to make sure that they know how to collect data, research your industry, and be able to reasonably predict what kinds of ads will do well. You want to have some level of assurance that your ad campaigns are going to be successful under them, and while nothing is ever certain, data-based predictions go a long way.
Red Flag #3: No Blog Posts
Not having a blog on their website is one of the biggest red flags there is, and I’m not just saying that because, as a writer, it hurts my feelings (although it does a little bit). From an organic SEO standpoint, it shows that they either have no idea what they’re doing, or are trying to hide the quality of the blog posts they can write from you. SEO works best combined with consistently posting relevant, interesting articles on a website. Having consistent blog posts is one of the best strategies to gather organic web traffic. If they aren’t following this practice, you should be walking, no, running the other way from this agency.
The other reason it’s a red flag is because in an agency’s blog posts, you can see that they really know what they’re doing. If you can read blogs on their website about current issues, trends, strategies, etc, you can get a sense that this agency really does know what they’re doing. Blogs build credibility, and for good reason. If you’re shopping for copywriting services, this also gives you a window into the kind of quality you’ll be getting from that agency. Luckily at Basilisk SEM we are proud owners of the weekly BLOGILISK.
Red Flag #4: No Social Media Presence
The year is 2021. If my grandma can have a facebook, anyone can. I’m not saying an agency needs to have an account on every social media platform, but having a presence of some kind is absolutely essential in today’s world, especially in digital marketing. Social media is one of the best ways to gain brand awareness, loyalty, and it allows you to put on a personable face to your consumers. Any digital marketing agency that doesn’t see the value in that isn’t an agency you want to use.
If you’re looking for social media ads or social media management, it’s a double red flag. How are you supposed to trust that they know how to do these things when they can’t even run their own channels? You can’t.
Red Flag #5: Grammatical Errors, Irrelevant Content, and Poor Writing
Any digital marketing agency worth their salt knows that the quality of the content you put online is everything. It seems basic, and it is, but it’s also so important. The devil is in the details, as they say. If your grammar is poor, people will question the credibility of the content you’ve written. Irrelevant content just brings down a website’s SEO score, and their credibility. And, if their writing is bad, it’s not even worth pursuing further. Every aspect of marketing involves some kind of writing component. You have to be able to consistently nail this component when you’re creating content, or your ad just won’t be effective. If you want an effective agency, go with one that can write a good clean article.