As more people use the internet in Saudi Arabia, about 32 million of them in 2020, the region is overflowing with digital marketing & advertising opportunities.
With a high GDP per capita of $20,912, low tax rates, and a unique demographic (50% of the population being aged under 25), the demand for online goods and services is exploding, which is increasing the demand for competent advertising agencies.
In the meantime, we’ll show you how an advertising agency can help you grow your business. And even if you’re not in Saudi Arabia, we’ll show you how to choose a digital marketing agency to work with and important questions to ask during your discovery call.
Why work with an Advertising agency in the first place?
One of the biggest advantages of outsourcing to a digital marketing agency is that you’ll have more time for the core focus of your business.
Rather than taking on campaign strategy, analysis, and management, outsource to an agency and you’ll have more time to close deals, find new investors, and provide the vision and direction your company needs.
Although many companies start out by hiring fresh faces and training them to handle the complexities of marketing, sometimes you need experts for the immediate impact they provide, or simply to avoid the long-term costs involved in funding an entire in-house team.
When you hire an agency, you get access to a team chock full of qualified individuals who are all specialists in their fields, right out the box. And since the agency’s reputation is dependent on how well they are able to deliver results, you can be sure that every aspect of your marketing campaign will be paid attention to.
If you’re willing to relinquish some control, outsourcing is an excellent option. At Creative Blend, we have a lot of experienced marketers and content creators who are passionate about results… so whether you’re based locally in Jeddah or Riyadh, or targeting the Saudi market from overseas, we’ll be happy to work with you!
Types and examples of digital marketing agencies
Digital marketing agencies offer a wide range of services, from Twitter management to full-on international PR. Some specialize in only one service, while others offer a complete array.
In general, you can categorize digital marketing agencies into three types. We’ll explore them in detail to reveal which one may be the right fit for your business, depending on your goals, budget, resources, and existing systems.
Full-service marketing agency
A full-service agency can handle all the marketing and advertising needs of a client business. Typically, they offer both digital and traditional marketing services, although when people say ‘full-service’ agency, they’re usually referring to digital marketing across multiple online platforms, including search and social media.
These agencies typically engage in all facets of the advertising process, including account management, marketing research, creative design, administrative tasks, planning, production, and media buying (including taking care of Facebook advertising).
— Neil Kokemuller comments in his article Advantages and Disadvantages of Full-Service Advertising Agencies (Houston Chronicle) that:
“The premise of a full-service ad agency is that it is a one-stop approach to hiring professional advertisers. This means the client only has to worry about managing a relationship with one main agency versus trying to coordinate relationships with multiple agencies. One account executive usually manages the relationship, and a team of advertisers collaborates with each client’s campaigns from beginning to end.”
And this is the biggest pro to working with a full-service agency: there’s simply much less legwork involved.
Since you get all the services you need under one umbrella, there is also a higher chance of consistent brand messaging across all channels. In contrast, when one agency is handling your social media, another is handling your email marketing, and a third is handling your blog content, you’ll have to provide some oversight even though you’re working with specialists in each area.
Working with a full-service agency doesn’t come without drawbacks, though.
There is the valid concern that while full service agencies may offer all you need, they may truly only be experts in one or two fields. If, for instance, they are a graphic design agency who also happens to have a web designer on their team, they could claim to offer web design despite only being true experts at graphic design.
One famous example of a full-service agency is Neil Patel Digital. With services like programmatic advertising, paid search, content marketing, and social media marketing, and a trophy case of satisfied clients including Facebook, Google, and NBC, this agency is an excellent example of what is possible when a team full of dedicated professionals are all under one roof.
Specialist digital marketing agencies
Unlike full-service agencies, specialists are those agencies that focus all their energies and talent on a single service.
Design Pickle is one such company. They offer only design services and they’re darned good at it!
Another example is Case Study Buddy. Owned by Joel Klettke, the company focuses exclusively on creating case studies. Guess what? They’re exceptional at it!
If you already have a team in place or already work with another agency and only need extra help in one area of your marketing, outsourcing to a specialist is a viable option.
But there are drawbacks as well. When working with specialist agencies, a myopic view is a very real threat. Visibility for every brand involves being active on more than one platform. And unless you’re working with more than one agency, there’s the danger that your business will only grow in one direction, ignoring other very important areas.
There is also much more legwork involved with specialist agencies. There are more account managers to liaise with (if you’re working with more than one agency) and more paperwork to be done.
A dedicated client manager, however, can reduce the downsides and leave you with the many benefits of working with specialists.
Specialist: Content marketing agency
Content marketing agencies are dedicated to creating content and, like other specialist agencies, they usually excel at it. There are many things involved in content marketing. It isn’t just a simple matter of writing a pretty blog post or a clever caption.
There are serious issues to consider like competitive research, planning SEO, backlinking, and social media analytics. And it always helps to have a specialist as they will most likely have a wide network of existing vendor relationships on top of a team of writers, editors, and outreach guys.
Building this professional pool of talent and connections requires trial, effort, and a whole lot of time. If you’re serious about content marketing and you want it done well, you’re often better off spending the extra bucks and hiring a dedicated agency.
Specialist: Social media agency
A social media strategy is more than posting pretty pictures and hoping for shares. You have to navigate the swamp of GIFs, posters, likes, retweets, and analytics. You can quickly become overwhelmed if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Social media agencies will usually sit with you and talk about your goals and then create a bespoke strategy to help you reach those goals, whether you want increased brand awareness, conversions, or something else.
Specialist: Digital Advertising agency
Paid search is quickly becoming a vital element in business visibility. And digital advertising is fraught with landmines.
From figuring out how to lower customer acquisition costs to the right CPC (Cost per Click) and ad budgets, digital advertising is best left to the true experts.
An example of one such company is Wordstream.
Remember, digital advertising channels aren’t limited to Google. You can also advertise on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and virtually any social media platform. There are lots of statistics, demographics, graphs, and charts to navigate.
If digital advertising is a direction you’re considering moving in, outsourcing to a digital ads agency is a viable option.
Hybrid agencies
Not much to see here.
Hybrids are agencies that have two or more specialties in which they excel. Unlike some faux full-service agencies that claim to offer expertise they don’t really have, hybrid agencies offer more than one service and boast the talent to stand out in them all.
For instance, SEO agencies (or Adwords/PPC agencies) frequently combine search engine marketing (SEM) as the same governing principles are germane to advertising performance.
Similarly, web design agencies often add services like SEO, since both facets are related and require similar technical know-how.
In whatever direction you decide to go, whether full-service, specialist, or hybrid, make sure that you review the agency’s portfolio and case studies so you can guesstimate their abilities and see if you’re a fit.
Digital marketing consultant
Digital marketing consultants aren’t a fourth type of agency. They’re an entirely different species.
They are different in the respect that they are not involved in the execution of strategies. Rather, they are deeply involved in the planning stages.
They will either discuss a new strategy with you or evaluate your existing strategy.
Fees can get crazy if you decide to go the consulting route. The more success and reputation a consultant has, the more they charge. No cap.
Jon Morrow, founder of Smartblogger, veteran writer, and content marketer has charged $5,000 for an hour’s worth of consulting. Not everyone has $5k lying around, so if you do decide to go this route, be prepared to spend a lot. And be prepared for the impact on your supply chain when their advice creates massive ROI.
Questions to ask when choosing a Advertising agency
When you’re choosing a digital marketing agency you need to ask the right questions.
The most important question: What do you need?
The first question is for yourself, before you even contact that fancy agency.
What do you need?
Understanding your needs is critical to finding the right agency to outsource to. Do you need web design, SEO services, or graphics design? All of those? More?
If you have an in-house marketing team, what gaps do they have in their skillset? And what other marketing activities have been neglected or pushed into the background?
What do you need?
Once you figure that out, you can evaluate the portfolio of agencies that look good and see if they have done work for clients that closely matches your needs.
Offer the Earth, deliver dirt: What do they promise?
Apart from the prices they charge, this is one way to weed out the fakers from the crème de la crème.
Marketing has a low barrier to entry and many will promise to deliver everything you want just to close the deal, when they lack the skill and expertise to produce even decent results.
During the call, ask how they will help you. What can they help you achieve?
Remember to ask ultra-specific questions, so you can tell if the agency really knows their stuff.
For instance, Social Media Explorer says a good question to ask at this stage is: “How are you going to help with content creation?” A good answer might go something like this:
“First, we’ll start by creating a publishing schedule. This is a list of keyword-rich headlines which gives us a framework for the types of content we want to produce. Ideally, the content comes from within your organization, but if you don’t have the resources, we can help procure a professional writer who has experience with your industry.
Either way, we will have our SEO experts review and optimize the content before it’s posted to your website.
Additionally, we can leverage the content you’re already producing (white papers, case studies, webinars, emails, sales presentations, etc.). These assets can be transcribed, organized, and optimized to draw relevant traffic from the search engines.”
By their pricing you shall know them: What do they charge?
Once you ask for a quote and they offer unreasonably low rates, rest assured that you will get fantastically low-quality work.
While you don’t need to pay through the nose to get what you need, rates shouldn’t sound too good to be true. If they do, run!
In a Huffpost, Neil Patel says while you may be on a budget, you won’t get top quality services unless you pay top dollar. He says a common red flag to watch out for is low rates.
“You get what you pay for” is a truism. But it is doubly true in this scenario. Rock-bottom rates equate to rock-bottom-quality work.
They’ll say it’s working: How will you measure results?
It’s important to establish KPIs from the get-go.
But don’t fall for the trap of only tracking vanity metrics. Likes, for instance, look good but they don’t necessarily translate into sales. The last thing you want is to pay thousands of dollars in retainers and only get thousands of likes.
Track metrics that actually show ROI. Make sure to establish a report schedule indicating traffic source numbers, bounce rate, click-through rate, order frequencies, and other key indicators.
Although choosing an agency to work with is much more complicated than this, especially if you’re in Saudi Arabia, at least you now know the bases you should cover.
Choosing who to give control to can be unnerving. We know. We’ll guide you through the process to make it as easy as possible.
If you’re a business owner looking to profit from this unique market, Creativeblend is a full-scale agency offering services like branding and advertising, digital marketing, and social media marketing. We’ve helped companies like IELTS and SPAAR navigate the universe of likes, retweets, and analytics – and we can do the same for you.
