When you are trying to figure out what kind of services to offer at your digital agency, a reasonable question to ask is whether you should specialize or offer a wide range of services. While it is understandable to see value in both routes, nowadays when business are looking to hire an agency to work with, they are going to want multiple services through the same vendor. Knowing this, there really are (at least) 5 services that every agency should offer their customers. While some of these might be out of your comfort zone or a skill you have not hired or navigated for just yet, it is wise to build up the knowledge and experience with each of these, so that your clients do not have any good reason to go to one of your competitors.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is one of the key focuses of top digital marketing agencies today. With online search results being one of the top ways for customers to discover new business, SERPs have never been more important. While any small business owner can work on their own SEO, having the ability to offer customized SEO services is critical for a successful digital agency. Some of the areas that agencies can help there clients’ SEO are: (1) e-commerce, (2) local optimization/rankings, (3) conversion optimization, (4) reputation management, and (5) lead generation. While these areas are all key services to offer, you also want to make sure that you make clear what your customers will be able to regularly access (in terms of analytics):

  • Weekly/Monthly updates
  • Access to KPI reports
  • E-commerce revenue stats
  • Conversion tracking
  • Alerts and reminders
  • Split testing
  • Monitoring and reports
  • Google Analytics optimization

Content Services

It has become common knowledge that writing a blog and filling a website with SEO friendly content is one of the best strategies to improve website presence. Offering content development services is one of the must-have digital agency services. Many business owners struggle to assign content development tasks to their employees (or manage a blog themselves) so offering content development that is customized to your customers is key! Digital agencies should focus on optimizing:

  • Article headlines and titles
  • Link building
  • Media: images, videos, and infographics
  • Effective formatting and presentation

Email Marketing

Similar to content services, email marketing and its associate analytics are often not tasks that small business can or want to handle on their own. For some, not having to manage their own email marketing, especially understanding and adjusting strategy based on analytics, is the reason businesses turn to agency. Consider explicitly offering:

  • Email design and curation
  • Performance analytics
  • List segmentation
  • Increasing ROI and monitoring Google Analytics

 Social Media Marketing

Being able to successfully reach and post meaningful content to an audience is a skill. Social media management is an important piece of the digital marketing puzzle. It is a balancing act between considering the target audience and widening your reach to increase your CTR. Different social platforms have different audiences and different purposes, so presenting your portfolio with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and Tumblr is important.

PPC Campaigns

Pay per click campaigns are incredibly important for increasing CTR, driving sales, and boosting traffic. Unfortunately if you are not knowledgeable of the ins and outs of PPC you can wind up wasting your business a ton of money. This is one of the key reasons that business owners and marketing managers turn to skilled digital agencies to handle their PPC campaign. Google is the top digital advertising platform for PPC campaigns, but you should show your knowledge of Bing, Yahoo, and other PPC platforms as well.

BONUS: Pick a unique area of specialization

While the 5 areas discussed are common across some of the top digital marketing agencies in the world, what really sets an agency apart is the areas of specialization that can be offered. Consider some of the services and areas of expertise that would add your agency an extra layer, which will make you able to stand out against your competitors. Here are some examples:

  • Graphic design
  • Brand management and consultations
  • Strategic Consulting
  • UX Design
  • Media Planning
  • Service or Product design
  • Website Design
  • CX Consulting
  • Video Production Services (hint: this is our secret weapon)

You can see how these “bonus areas” of specialization can add a unique element in addition to offering the standard or expected services for digital agencies. If customers can feel like your team has additional area of expertise to help them grow their business, it is going to be easier for them to choose you time and time again. After all, having one agency that really understands your mission in control of all different aspect of your business is a huge benefit.

The Takeaway

There are certain services that customers are going to expect digital agencies to offer, such as (1) search engine optimization, (2) content services, (3) email marketing services, (4) social media marketing, (5) PPC campaigns. The specifics of these services should be clearly laid out and defined on your website so that customers can easily identify that you can help them with the exact things they are struggling with.

Even if customers do not know what they need when they seek out an agency, it is a digital agency’s job to show them how these 5 services are connected and necessary for success. As mentioned it is also important for a digital agency to have a competitive edge. Consider offering services that are additional to this list of five so that you stand out from other top agencies.

How do these five services play a role in agency success? Are some more important to master than others? Let us know in the comments section below, we would love to hear from you!

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