One of the key characteristics of a successful Digital Marketing Agency is the way they become part of your own business, part of the team.

It’s often a slow but considered evolution that has a fantastic positive impact on the way the agency works, the outcomes of the inbound marketing strategy and the confidence you as a business owner have in the agency.

I have a lovely friend who worked at an inbound marketing agency for a number of years and managed some key hospitality clients. She was that good and built the relationship so well that she recently ended up being offered the Director of Marketing role for the Asia Pacific region for that client. She ended up taking the job and literally became part of the team!

Now we’re not saying use this as a recruitment exercise! Far from it.

What we are saying is the benefits of having an agency/client relationship that blurs the lines between client and supplier is actually a good thing if done well.

Here are two ways a digital marketing agency can help become part of your team. Be sure to ask them about this when you are at consideration stage. A good agency will have these in their project plan ready to go!

1. Internal Training

Think about how many people you have in your business. If it’s a medium to large business, you probably have people working in admin, sales, distribution, operations, finance, IT among others. Even if you run a smaller style business, if you’ve got some staff or contractors that you work with consider how they could become part of the inbound marketing strategy with the way the communicate digitally.

A proactive agency will offer internal training in these areas. The what not to do of Tweeting. How about Facebook etiquette training? Or getting your team familiar with Instagram so they can capture visuals of a day in the life of your business. With, of course, a nice side of social media policy and procedure to go with it!

2. Employee Knowledge / Partners for Content

A successful inbound marketing strategy is using digital platforms to tell the story of a business and the people behind the business. An agency that understands the impact of this strategy will jump in and get to know your team, find the unique stories that exist and get them involved in sharing so the business is not just about a product or service…..it becomes about the people who create the product or service.

At one of our local stores there is the sweetest elderly gentleman who works on the front door. He greets everyone happily and with a smile and chats away to customers who all know his name. He’s had an interesting life and is a colourful character. Guess what? He now has his own Facebook page, set up by the department store who recognised that he was a bigger story and drawcard than the items they were selling.

An agency worth its weight will understand how to leverage your team’s industry expertise. It will become part of their strategy. And a fantastic agency will jump into your team and become part of that strategy with you and your business.

If you are interested to find out how to hire the right Digital Marketing Agency for your business, download our free eBook.