How to Choose an Online Marketing Firm

This is one of those posts that got rejected by a client because of "overall writing style". I have no idea what this means. I've posted a comment on the client's profile to see if I can receive additional clarification and information on this rejection reasoning. Hopefully, I'll get a response in a few days (Zerys needs to approve the comment. Once that's done, the client will see it and respond, ideally). How do clients expect people to improve with feedback like this? If you don't like the darn article, just tell me that it sucks. If you didn't like the writing style, then tell me what you would have liked to see, or what you didn't like about the writing style. Since the client rejected the article, it's mine now and I'm going to publish it here. Nearly every business needs help with online marketing to some extent. Since it's hard to get by without engaging in some form of online marketing, there are tons of companies out there ready to offer services and to provide this solution or that solution for your Internet marketing woes. How do you sort through all these companies and pick the one that can best meet your needs and deliver the best results? Here's how to choose an online marketing firm that's right for your business:

Know What You Want to Achieve

Before starting any research, know exactly what you want to achieve with the help of an online marketing firm. Knowing what you want to achieve increases the chances of success. If you don't have set goals that you can communicate to a potential partner, then it will be difficult to determine if they've really helped you or if they are doing what needs to be done to improve your online marketing.

Knowing your goals also makes your research much more purposeful. If you need help with social media, for example, then you want to research online marketing firms who have had success in helping clients with their social media marketing. You also want to find companies who do a good job managing their own social media efforts as well (if they can't keep their own profiles updated, how will they treat yours). It's okay to ask for samples if a company doesn't have them readily available on their website or for download. Sometimes, a company won't want to put too many details about their clients on the web for the entire world (including their competition) to see.

Strong Support

Once you find a couple of online marketing firms that could work for you, contact them and see how long it takes to get back to you. Does the firm engage in an ongoing conversation, or do they just reply to your original email? This is an indicator of the personal service and attention you will receive from the company, and if they are willing to be helpful and to learn about your business. If they go straight for the sale, or if it takes a few days just to get any sort of response, then you know that firm isn't worth your time and money. However, if they offer pointers and explain how certain online marketing tactics would help you achieve your goals, then it's a better fit.

Experience in Your Industry

This isn't crucial for every business, but would be important to those in very niche or technical industries i.e. healthcare, financial services, technology. It also might be a good factor to use to narrow down your list of online marketing firms. Experience in your industry can be incredibly helpful because these agencies can take less time to get things done simply because time isn't needed to do additional research, to source an expert, and to learn about the industry. Their services are more expedient and will reflect a strong understanding of your industry. The company already has the information to execute a campaign and/or to offer services that can reach your target audience.

Don't Be Cheap, and Don't Pick the Cheapest

Sure, you can pay $5 an article or $20 a month for SEO services, but this doesn't necessarily mean that you'll receive the best online marketing services out there. There are too many stories out there of people who took this route, only to get hurt by Google's Panda and Penguin updates and are still struggling to reclaim their former glory. Yes, know your budget and stick to it as much as possible, but also make sure that your budget is competitive. With online marketing, you get what you pay for. If you're not wiling to pay for it, then you risk having the junior staff assigned to account or pushing away quality talent that would be worth those few extra dollars.

Choosing an online marketing firm isn't easy. There are so many to choose from, each offering different services and pitching a different solution to your needs. To choose the one that's best for you, know what you want to achieve and find a firm who's willing to learn what you want to achieve and to provide the solution that does that. If you can find a company that's worked in your industry and has a good price, then all the better.

How Do You Define Quality Content?

And is more quality necessarily better or desired?

This is a question that I struggle with every time I have to work with Zerys, or that I think about having to work with Zerys. Zerys is a project management tool designed specifically for content projects, with a built-in marketplace of thousands of professional writers. There's some great writers on Zerys, and out there in general, but it seems that for every great writer there's at least one horrible writer competing against them, wanting to do work for me but really just making me incredibly frustrated (I could do a whole post on the stupid things these people write and expect to get paid for).

But, they somehow got into the system, which makes me wonder about this idea of "quality content". When it comes to the content that's needed for content marketing projects, you of course want stuff that's quality. But, I do think that part of the definition of quality is something that's just good enough to engage the reader and to accomplish the marketing goal. I also think that quality content should include formatting, such as subtitles, bullet points, numbered lists etc. There aren't enough writers (and even clients) out there who understand how these small things bring great value to a blog article or a web page.

Quality is Objective, To a Point

Everyone can agree that quality content doesn't have any spelling or grammatical errors. Quality content makes strong arguments and backs those arguments well. Quality content is easy to read and doesn't have awkward phrasing. After that, quality is subjective. Things like tone, length, and perspective, and what's preferred, differ from person to person. Those things change depending on the comment format and the specific marketing goal. The objective parts of quality have no excuses. Those parts can be fixed and improved upon as you practice writing and as you revise. The subjective parts needs to be known before you even start writing, as they can make a huge difference in what needs to be written and how. An article that's meant to inform will need to be written differently from one that's meant to persuade.

I bring this up because one of the most common complaints I get from potential clients about my writing is that "it's not the style we wanted" or "prefer a different style."

I don't know what that means.

If you do, please explain it to me. "Style" can mean a whole range of things while meaning nothing at all. Style includes diction, sentence structure, organizational structure, and writing goal (to inform, persuade, or entertain). It could also be a euphemism for, "I didn't like it." The latter is at least somewhat constructive criticism that I could work with and think about with my current clients and with my next new client. I can't do anything with, "prefer a different style." On the one hand, style is relatively easy to fix. I just need to know the style that's preferred. On the other hand, I also suspect that those clients don't really know what style they want, and because they don't know what they want, they can't take the time and to work with me to improve or to do better.

You Don't Need Hemingway to Do Your Blog

Even if Hemingway was alive and available, I'm really not sure how many people would jump at the opportunity to have him write the blog. He probably doesn't have the right style, or wouldn't end every blog post with a call-to-action to call the company, and certainly wouldn't care enough about keyword density. Somehow, I think that some would argue it's too much quality or not the right kind of quality.