Hiring a Marketing Agency: The 7 Questions You Should Ask

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Searching for the right marketing agency is a process. We understand—there are a lot of options. How can you know which one is the best? Like any relationship, they need to earn your trust, and you want to feel confident before selecting the right one. Before you grant them the power of connecting with your audience, spending your marketing funds, and accessing your client information, you need to feel assured in your decision. To make the process easier, we assembled the top seven questions you should ask your contenders before hiring a marketing agency.

1. What Are Your Industry Specialties?

Are you a B2B or B2C company? Do you have a niche? While some marketing agencies don’t promote specializing in one area, discussing their most popular industries or projects is worth mentioning. If you want to improve SEO, and the agency focuses primarily on media relations, be sure to keep your goals in mind and not settle if you want an agency that has more experience in your current priorities. 

Having conversations about common client types also allows you to ask if they are currently working with any of your competitors. Knowing possible conflicts of interest at the beginning will prevent potential development or implementation roadblocks that could negatively impact your service.

2. How do you Communicate with Clients?

One of the greatest benefits of working with a marketing agency is having insight into marketers’ perspectives. However, you want to be sure that these suggestions and ideas are being effectively communicated with you.

Even if you’re new to agency business, you have an idea of how often you need updates or what your communication preferences are. Asking for reporting and dialogue habits will help determine if that’s what you want in an agency partnership. Most agencies will listen and correspond to your preferences. That being said, it will be helpful if your priorities align. That way, both sides are comfortable, resulting in more effective processes and results. 

3. How Much Will This Cost?

Yes, talking about money can be uncomfortable. However, these conversations are necessary early on to determine your options. You don’t want to go with the least expensive option because they’re the cheapest, and you also shouldn’t proceed with the most costly if there’s no valid reasoning. 

Describe what you want and ask them what that range looks like, but continue to dig beyond that. Determine how pricing is structured, what resources they’ll utilize, what percentage goes toward efforts vs. billing, etc. Once you have the numbers you’re looking for, compare with a few other finalists and determine what seems the most valuable to you. 

4. What Do I Own before Our Contract Ends?

There are some instances where the client does not own any of the content that the agency developed for them. This could include photography, graphics, coding, or other branded resources that you may assume are yours. It is imperative to discuss this information upfront so that you know exactly what you are agreeing to. Just in case the relationship or project goes awry, you want to know what is legally yours to avoid issues. 

5. Who Will I Be Working with Directly?

Building a foundation with your leading account holder(s) is beneficial for communication, expectations, and trust. Asking who you will be working with allows you the opportunity to research the individuals on LinkedIn and discover their professional background, including experience and longevity. While newer executives shouldn’t be discarded, it may give you peace of mind to find senior team members who will assist you with your account.  

6. Can I see Your References?

Just like when you’re shopping online or deciding on a restaurant, reviews and photos give you what you need in your decision-making process. In your agency decision process, request case studies, testimonials, and examples that they find valuable. If ROI is important to you, ask specifically for projects with metric-centered results, like audience growth and CTA conversion. If you’re re-branding or need graphic design assistance, focus on visible transformations, like logo or website portfolios. 

7. What Are Your Expectations of Your Clients?

Is there a limit on revisions? Are there certain times that are off-limits? When is an appropriate turnaround time for approval? Talking about expectations for you as a client helps you distinguish how much or little you want to be involved or if your priorities coordinate. 

At the end of the day, you’re the client, and they are working for you. If their expectations aren’t reasonable for you, don’t settle. There are plenty more fish in the sea. 

Bonus: Ask yourself: What does my gut say?

We sometimes tend to ignore gut feelings, and we usually regret that. Maybe an agency looks good on paper, but you lack the chemistry with your account executive. Don’t dismiss your intuition, even if your brain is thinking something else. 

Throughout the process, you’ll learn the agency’s values, culture, and leadership, and you will quickly find out if there are certain details that you can’t get past. Trusting your instincts will only lead to better opportunities. 

Thinking About Hiring a Marketing Agency?

Hiring a marketing agency involves many factors, and it can be daunting signing the dotted line. We want you in the right marketing hands just as much as you do. Green Apple Strategy helps companies strategically tell their stories and successfully implement their goals through our comprehensive set of services. Schedule a consultation today. We would love to see if we’re the right fit for you!

Should I Hire an Internal Marketing Team or Outsource to a Local Agency?


Marketing is crucial to the success of a business. It helps you meet your sales goals, increase your brand awareness, and tell your story. Though many understand the importance of marketing’s role in growing a business, few are sure of how to go about it. Should you hire an internal team, or should you outsource to a local agency? For the most robust, effective marketing strategy, we recommend outsourcing. Let’s talk about why.

In this article, we’ll cover a few reasons to consider outsourcing, including:

  • Staying ahead of the curve
  • Getting more out of your marketing budget
  • Having a comprehensive marketing team without searching for employees
  • Focusing on your core business operations

With an outsourced marketing agency, you can…

Stay Ahead of the Curve

A marketing agency lives and breathes innovative tools and effective strategies. They are working daily to research new methods, test the effectiveness of a tactic, and identify the best way to connect with your audience. Not only do agencies stay ahead of the latest trends, but they also invest the time into learning about your internal operations and your target audience’s expectations and needs. 

Agencies live in the marketing mindset, whereas internal teams are living inside of your industry’s world. When you outsource your marketing, you know that you’re working with a team that will identify your vision, build a strategy, monitor that strategy continually, and do everything in its power to deliver results. 

Get More Out of Your Marketing Budget

Can you believe that hiring an external marketing team could actually make your budget stretch further? When you think of it in terms of overhead, you can skip hours of searching for an internal employee and the countless dollars you would spend hiring, training, and managing that new person. 

Having an agency on retainer also ensures that your marketing strategy will not be put on hold when someone leaves your team—allowing you to continue growing even during times of turnover. Finally, consider the continual training costs necessary for professional development, such as conferences and classes, and industry organizations’ membership costs.

All in all, agencies bypass your overhead costs and provide you access to a diversely talented and well-trained marketing team that always has a finger on the pulse. 

Have Access to a Comprehensive Marketing Team without Hiring 

An agency removes the need to hire someone to fill every role—content, digital marketing, graphic design, photography, web development, and so on. You will have access to each of these skills, all in one place. It’s as simple as that. In Green Apple’s case, we approach each new client strategy by handpicking a team of marketing professionals to fit your business’s specific needs. We serve as a full-service, one-stop-shop for all things marketing, and you’ll find that it takes the stress off your plate. Rather than piling marketing tasks onto your to-do list, you know that an agency is already five steps ahead of you. 

Focus On Your Core Business

Your business’s core operations are where you want to spend your time. If you’re a roofing company, for example, you don’t want to spend your days wading through marketing tasks, nor should you have to. When companies have the internal capacity to tackle their core focus, that’s when they reach their highest potential. An agency identifies that potential and makes sure that your marketing aligns appropriately. You, on the other hand, focus on what you know and what you love doing. We take care of the rest. 

Are you ready to take your business goals to the next level? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation. To have marketing insight sent straight to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter—The Core.

How to Discover What Customers Think Without Asking Them

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Here’s something that successful businesses recognize in today’s increasingly noisy world: To earn the attention of potential customers, you must truly understand what they think. This is why empathy is more important than ever for marketers. Without taking the time to understand what motivates your audience to take action, you run the risk of simply creating noise. 

Many businesses are trying to get inside the minds of potential customers by asking more intentional questions during the sales process. That’s a great first step, but it only provides a small sample size. What happens when you can’t ask every single customer what they think and feel about every little situation surrounding your products and services?

This is where taking time, whether it’s an entire day or a two-hour brainstorming session, to consider how customers think and feel can be incredibly valuable for your team.

5 Questions to Discover How Customers Think Without Asking Them

As you look to put yourself in your customers’ shoes for a day, here are a few questions to unlock what they might be thinking when it comes to your products or services: 

  1. What do your customers say and do? Think about a typical day in the life of your customer. What do they spend their time doing? How do they behave in different settings—with their boss, with coworkers, and with friends and family? These questions help you think about all the different decisions they might have to make in the course of the day.
  2. What do your customers think and feel? Now that you’ve considered their day, it’s time to consider how those activities and decisions make them feel. What are their dreams, worries, and daily emotions? What makes them happy, sad, scared, emotional, and angry?
  3. What do your customers hear? Think about all the various ways your customers gather information. Who do they hear from? What media are they influenced by? What are the primary messages they’re being bombarded with day after day? Knowing this can help you identify how to reach them and rise above the noise. 
  4. What are their biggest challenges every day? What frustrations and stresses do they encounter daily? What risks and threats do they face? Knowing the fears your customers experience allows you to speak into the various ways your brand can help resolve them. 
  5. What opportunities exist if they succeed? All customers have heroes in the stories of their minds—and it’s not your brand. It’s them. What do they need to be successful and achieve their goals? How do they measure success? Knowing what will make them feel like even bigger heroes is a powerful way to capture their attention. 

As you and your team walk through these questions, write down every single answer you think of. Look for patterns. Most importantly, don’t forget to use the answers to these questions whenever you’re considering new products and services, crafting new marketing materials, and so forth. These questions will ensure that your deliverables resonate with your customers.

How Can You Find the Right Agency Partner?

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Let’s face it: Finding the right agency partner can be unnerving. You spend a lot of time, energy, and resources researching various agencies, putting together a brief or request for proposal, and meeting with potential partners. But, what if you choose the wrong one? Speaking from an agency perspective, I’ve met with hundreds of business leaders looking to partner with our firm over the years. And, the ones who end up turning into the most mutually-beneficial relationships have specific things in common. The businesses that end up finding the best fit all take certain steps before signing on the dotted line. A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Agency Partner If you want to increase your chances of finding the right agency partner, here are three essential steps from businesses that have done well:
    1. Make sure your team is on the same page. It’s essential that key stakeholders on your team have aligned around the same expectations. Are you in agreement on the type of agency you need (e.g., agency size, category expertise, capabilities)? Have you set clear goals? Have you defined characteristics to know whether or not an agency would be a good fit? What are your long-term expectations for the relationship? These are all questions to be answered before you start the search process.
    2. Make it easy for agencies to know exactly what you need. While a formal RFP might not be necessary, it’s important to set clear expectations for potential agencies on the front end. This includes a summary of the challenge you’re facing, specific objectives, deliverables, expectations for the relationship, budget, and timing. It’s worth taking the extra time to ensure you’re providing clarity before you meet with potential partners.
    3. Make time for a face-to-face dialogue with prospective agencies. Once you find a few agencies that fit your criteria, it’s important to get a better sense of the agency style and culture. Setting up a time to meet face-to-face with an individual or team at the agency will make it a lot easier to decide if you are a good fit for each other.
Whether you’re looking for an agency to partner with for all your marketing efforts or needing help on a specific project, finding the right agency is not easy. You want a partner who is energized by your challenges, passionate about your brand, and motivated by your business. Taking these steps will ensure you’re doing as much as you possibly can on the front end to choose an agency that will become an indispensable partner for your business.

3 Ways to Create a Strong Partnership with Your Marketing Agency

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Partnering with an outside marketing agency is a common business practice in almost every industry. Whether it’s outsourcing a website design or partnering with an agency on an ongoing monthly retainer, a majority of businesses work with a marketing agency at some point along the way. 3 Ways to Create a Strong Partnership with Your Marketing Agency How do you guarantee the relationship with your marketing agency is mutually beneficial? Here are three things I’ve learned after being on both sides of the table and spending the last decade in the agency world:
  1. Have a Collective Focus on a Common Goal
Successful partnerships require an extreme focus on a common goal. What is your business trying to achieve? How will you ultimately measure success? Making sure your marketing agency is aware of your goals will help them identify the best ways to support it.
  1. Get Buy-In from Across the Business
Without buy-in from across the business, it’s difficult for a marketing agency to support your business as effectively as it could. Finance simply sees the agency as a line item that can be reduced. Sales teams see the marketing agency as more of a project handler rather than a true partner. Creating buy-in from across the business requires making sure everyone within your organization is aware of the work the agency is doing. It also means allowing the agency to have insights into some of the challenges your business is facing in different areas, in case there are ways they can support.
  1. Establish Clarity and Alignment Around Expectations
Effective agency partnerships involve constant communication, and almost all the hard work is done upfront. Without alignment around expectations and having the trust of the leadership team that the investment is worth the effort, partnerships can fail before they even get started. Clarifying expectations around everything from results to how you handle email communication is key to making sure both parties maintain their sanity during the partnership. At the end of the day, partnerships come back to the people on either side. If there’s clear communication, mutual buy-in, and a shared goal, the people on both teams can collaborate together as if they both worked under the same roof.

3 Ways Internal Sales Teams & External Marketing Agencies Can Thrive Together

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Marketing should exist to be a strategic asset for business development. That includes equipping the sales team with the information and tools they need to be successful. But, creating the kind of collaboration that’s necessary for a thriving partnership isn’t always easy—especially between an outside marketing agency and an internal sales team. Oftentimes, a marketing agency works directly with one person on projects, either a business development leader or a marketing manager. Most of the work that’s being done by the agency isn’t directly connected to the day-to-day activities of the sales team. As a result, the sales team often wonders what the marketing agency is doing…and the marketing agency is wondering why the sales team isn’t taking advantage of all the work they’re doing. How Internal Sales Teams & External Marketing Agencies Can Thrive Together So, how do you create a type of culture where an external marketing agency can thrive with your entire sales team? Here are a few keys I’ve learned over the past few years…
  1. Make Sure Your Sales Team Feels Supported by the Work the Agency is Doing
Having a partnership where your sales team knows and trusts your marketing agency is key to an effective partnership. When sales and marketing agencies work together, there’s a certain amount of marketing that needs to be done for reps within the organization. While most marketing agencies work on specific projects or marketing campaigns, one way they can provide value to the sales team is by doing all of the heavy lifting for the “marketing work” that sales reps should do. This includes getting your agency to help with things like email scripts, sample social media content, and buyer personas that your sales team can use to be more effective and efficient.  
  1. Find Ways to Keep the Communication Lines Flowing
It’s critical for a marketing agency to communicate on a regular basis with relevant, important information that can help sales with customers and potential deals. Find ways for your sales team to connect with your marketing agency, whether it’s setting up monthly or quarterly meetings, weekly phone calls, etc. This provides an opportunity for your marketing agency to make sure sales is aware of all the activity that’s going on. It also provides your marketing agency with an opportunity to identify the biggest obstacles your sales team is facing so they can help create solutions for them.
  1. Inspire Both Teams with Success Stories
Celebration is another important key to collaboration. Highlight the success your sales team is having with your marketing agency. Let your sales team know about the projects and key learnings your marketing agency has discovered through their work. Finding times to celebrate the collaborative wins between your external agency and the internal sales team is key to ensuring the two teams are locking arms rather than pointing fingers.

The 3 Biggest Factors for a Successful Business/Agency Relationship

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In today’s world, it’s not uncommon for a business to partner with a marketing agency, even if they have a full-time, in-house marketing team. Whether it’s a specific project or ongoing partnership, many businesses realize they simply don’t have enough time and resources internally to accomplish everything that needs to be done from a marketing perspective. However, marketing agencies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes; each has its own unique philosophy, approach, style, and strengths. Some are better fits for your business than others…and vice versa. While many businesses choose an agency because of their impressive creative portfolio or industry experience, the truth is that there’s a lot more that goes into a successful business/agency relationship. In many ways, it’s the intangible factors that make the biggest difference on both sides of the relationship. The 3 Biggest Factors for a Successful Client/Agency Relationship So, how can businesses and marketing agencies work together to form a relationship where everyone wins? Here are three key factors:
  1. Chemistry Across the Entire Team
When you hire a marketing agency, you’re ultimately hiring the people who work at that agency. As with all relationships, chemistry matters. Part of determining a good fit comes down to selecting an agency that can operate as an extension of your team and roll up their sleeves to work with you, not just for you. That includes the leadership level and those responsible for executing the day-to-day project management tasks.
  1. A Common Approach to Business
Do you tend to take more risks or play it safe when it comes to growing your business? Are you looking for new and innovative ways to achieve your goals, or are you looking for someone to help execute tried-and-true principles? Answering these questions is essential for choosing the right agency partner. Partnering with an agency that has a general philosophy and approach to business is different for use will only cause frustration for both parties.
  1. Sweet Spots that Align with Your Greatest Needs
Although most agencies consider themselves to be full-service, each has a “sweet spot” where they tend to excel. It might be web design, content creation, sales support, or public relations. Determining your greatest marketing need, even if you’re looking for a long-term partnership, is critical for finding the best possible fit. As someone who’s worked in the agency business for over a decade, I’ve seen my fair share of unhealthy client/agency relationships. No one starts working with an agency hoping it becomes a burden. Taking the time to evaluate these qualitative factors (in addition to their portfolio or experience) will help you identify the right agency for your business and ensure everyone benefits from a successful partnership.