Seattle Online Marketing Agencies are abundant. Since Seattle is such a tech savvy area it’s home to some of the nations largest online marketing firms.
If your going to choose to work with one of the larger agencies just be careful that your not being plugged into some kind of cookie cutter template and hooked into a monthly fee. The longer I do online marketing consulting the more monthly fees I see. Reason being it is very lucrative for the marketing firm. Some will charge you a set-up fee and then a fairly high (several hundred dollars per month) fee to really do nothing. Once the client is set-up most of the work is finished and for the marketing agencies its all profit. If the agency continued to offer value as in content, regular updates, and social media management; this would be a different story. But many don’t, they just host the website and hold it hostage.
I recently had a client who used one of these local Seattle marketing agencies to help him get his website, social, email, and Pay per click marketing campaign started. The agency (who will go unnamed) failed to take the time to get the logins for his existing social accounts and google account. Instead they opted to start completely new ones for his google account and every social site along with it (this is the cookie cutter approach).
What this ended up doing is create a confusing web of social and google pages that pointed in all different directions. Thereby confusing customers, searchers, and decreasing the power of links to his main site and social pages. It is lazy, and yes it is very profitable and very scalable for online marketing companies to do this.
If the firm had continued to publish great content on the channels, combine the social pages, google accounts, and continued to offer value this would be a different story. But in this case and others I have seen, there is nothing being done except a website being hosted and held hostage by the marketing firm for several hundred dollars a month.
This is why I would recommend hiring an online marketing consultant over an agency. Somebody who is going to look at you and your business as an individual, on a case by case basis. Not try to push you into some cookie cutter mold “so we can move onto the next client” kind of thinking. You must find an online marketer who cares about your business more than how much he is going to get paid.
If a consultant was like a doctor, then a marketing agency would be like a clinic where you go and find yourself asking “Will I even get to see the doctor and which one?”. We all like to go see “our” doctor. How do you feel when your doctor is out of town and you must see somebody else? With a marketing agency your not always going to get the same person, and do they really care about you as an individual?
When choosing an online marketing consultant look for somebody who has worked with or knows your type of business. If you own a brick and mortar store in the Seattle area then look for Seattle online marketing consultants. If your an online merchant or ecommerce business then look for a consultant that knows ecommerce. I would always suggest having a long phone call or meeting with your consultant, at least in the beginning so you can establish a relationship with the person who you are hiring. Hiring an online marketer requires a lot of trust. You are going to give your consultant access to your online accounts, they are going to have to post stuff on your behalf, represent your business, and hand over the keys once they are finished.
If you are looking for internet marketing. Please feel free to use me as a resource and contact me with questions.Let me help you use the internet to make money for your business.
Call (206) 235-4131 or email me today
John
