Nowadays, digital marketing is inseparable from commercial success in any niche or industry. In the Internet age, building relationships with, reaching out to, and targeting customers is mostly done online.
However, “online” can mean many things; there are plenty of different digital marketing strategies, tactics, and channels that a specific digital marketing professional might use to help their clients.
Considering the vast scope of the umbrella term we’ve come to know as “digital marketing,” it’s no wonder many great agencies focus on individual channels or aspects of online marketing.
With that in mind, we’re going to look at some of the different kinds of digital marketing agencies you might hire.
Full-Service Agency
From a layman’s perspective, most people think of this when they hear the words “digital marketing”. It’s an agency that handles a wide range of digital marketing services. And because of the large number of in-house experts they need to nurture at all times, they tend to be bigger than the other kinds of digital marketing agencies we’ll cover here.
A company will hire a full-service agency to handle every single aspect of a specific project. They’re the ultimate one-stop-shop for any kind of digital marketing need — and they’re also called “omnichannel” agencies because they can handle your digital marketing across all online channels.
A full-service agency will deal with everything from content strategy and creation to reporting and advertising.
Inbound Digital Marketing Agency
As the name suggests, inbound marketing agencies deal with inbound marketing — which is the other side of the coin from traditional outbound tactics. These inbound agencies help their clients position themselves so that customers can more easily find them online, lead them through the buyer’s journey, build trust, and at some point, generate sales.
These methods can yield tangible results, but generally, over a longer period; leads and sales will frequently need six months or even a year to increase via inbound marketing.
SEO Agency
Search engines have become more than a tool — they’re our digital appendage. We search for enough goods and services on search engines that “googling” has become its own verb. And that’s why most digital marketers will tell you the oft-repeated wisdom: if you’re not on Google’s first results page for your target keyword, you might as well not exist.
Luckily, Search Engine Optimization — or SEO — techniques help you optimize your website to be more in line with the criteria used by search engines like Google and rank higher on their search results.
There are entire SEO agencies dedicated to that task, with a large palette of experts that work on tasks like:
- Link building
- Keyword research
- Blog and website content
- Website audits
- Metadata optimization
An entire subindustry has sprung around search engine optimization, and its digital marketing agencies use all kinds of complex tools to stay in line with Google’s constantly shifting search algorithm.
PPC Agency
While SEO is a great example of inbound marketing strategies, it requires time to be truly effective. On the other hand, other short-term stopgaps can quickly generate traffic for your website — but at a higher up-front expense.
That’s what PPC digital marketing agencies do — they manage pay-per-click traffic. There’s a global marketplace of paid traffic, where companies in specific niches bid on their most relevant keywords and receive ad placement above the organic search results.
Also, these paid ads appear on certain social media channels with their own PPC platforms. And the digital ad agencies that manage this aspect of digital marketing are excellent at producing relevant, keyword-filled, and attention-grabbing ads — while also staying in compliance with the best practices of every individual platform they advertise on.
Social Media Agency
Today, most companies are expected to have an active social media presence — another aspect of corporations’ increasingly important “human face.” Naturally, plenty of companies that aren’t intrinsically creative don’t have the in-house talent or resources to maintain their social media presence at a desirable quality level.
That’s why there are entire digital marketing agencies specifically catering to this need. These social media agencies are extremely adept and producing original, enticing content daily while also interacting with their clients’ target audience in their unique brand voice online.
Often enough, social media agencies will also organize influencer outreach campaigns or other forms of affiliate marketing to boost their clients’ brands.
Web Design Companies
A company website is the most important part of any business’s online presentation — which is why web design agencies employ countless creative and professional designers to customize, build, and optimize web pages and entire websites for each client’s specific needs.
Web designers are great at creating functional web pages that also stay within the look and feel defined by their clients’ brands. Some of the services commonly provided by website-focused agencies include:
- Web hosting management
- Web development
- User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design
- Research