Tips on choosing digital partners

Choosing a digital partner can be difficult if you don't know what to look out for. These tips should help you to succeed:

Track record

Look at your potential partner's client base to get a feel for the kind of industries and level of clientele it takes on board. Good questions you might want to ask are:

• What industries (if any) does it specialise in?
  
• How long has it retained its client base for?
  
• Is it leaking clients to a better player?

A great partner is often judged by the company it keeps, which could include global as well as domestic clients - by having global clients, your digital partner partakes in a global competition for those clients, competition drives innovation and this will ensure your partner is at the forefront of that innovation.

Focus

Some above-the-line agencies have now manifested a below-the-line offering for their clients, which might include website generation, social networking strategies, search engine marketing or running an account for you on Twitter.

However, clients should be aware that many of these companies masquerading as ‘online specialists' are perhaps more correctly termed ‘jacks of all trades and masters of none'. Being a true ‘specialist provider' in the online marketing industry means that the business is a leader and well-respected name in the field.

Quantitative skills and technology

In the online game a company cannot just rely on its agency's creative skills or relationship with circles of journalists. Search engine marketing (SEM), especially, requires technology and quantitative skill in order to run at an efficiency that outdoes the ROI (return on investment) of traditional marketing.

A good digital partner will either licence or create proprietary technology that gives it the technological edge. In the search industry, bid optimisation, new keyword discovery and stock monitoring systems are mandatory to producing the best results in a results-driven analytical industry.

Similarly, your digital partner should have campaign managers who have experience in your focus industry; they need to be proficient with the systems they use, as well as the data that is available to them. The SEM industry is driven by data and analytics surrounding how users interact with keywords, the ads they see and the websites they convert (buy products or services) on - your campaign manager should be on top of this changing landscape, doing daily research, optimisation and refinement.

Remuneration

Typically an agency will charge a percentage of the amount of media you are buying, or how much you are willing to spend. Agency fees differ across the board but in the case of a management fee you can expect to pay anything between 5-12%. What a management fee leads to is your agency metering out time to be spent on the campaign; if the fee is low then the time and effort spent on the campaign will reflect as such.

An opportunity exists for digital agencies to structure remuneration differently by basing it on performance. Agencies can place more faith in their staff and technologies and assume the major risks in starting with a new client, in some cases taking responsibility for all costs, getting paid on the basis of how much business they generate the client.

By working on a cost per acquisition (CPA) basis, SEM can strictly be seen as an acquisition channel, providing the client with as much business as it wants, at a price it can afford. Partner remuneration, therefore, depends on delivering the client's objectives; the more efficiently this is done, the higher the profits. This business model ensures that time spent on campaigns is related to a performance incentive, hence driving a more focused and efficient campaign for the client.

And last, but not least…

The love

Many agencies are all smiles and warm-handshakes when you are about to sign the contract, but how many continue to give great service once the ink has dried? Offline media campaigns are originated, created, disseminated and viewed. SEM campaigns require constant attention as they are dynamic and changing. As the campaign matures with time, people's search patterns change and products or services offered by the business change.

Campaign managers should therefore constantly tweak, optimise and refine campaigns in order to squeeze out greater efficiency and return on investment. In order for the partner to increase efficiencies, contact with the client and understanding its business needs is essential to the point where, the more contact they receive, the better the campaign will be.