Digital Marketing Agency and Tips for Choosing a Quality Agency

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

The Digital Marketing Agency market reached 28,000 billion VND in 2023, growing 23% compared with 2022, even though 2023 was an extremely difficult year both in Vietnam and internationally. Contrary to the overall market downturn, Digital Marketing remained the choice holding a large share of up to 35% (up 5% compared with 2022).

Search marketing services alone — including both SEO services and SEA services — reached 2,500 billion VND, up 22% compared with the same period the previous year. This is strong evidence that search marketing remains the dominant trend compared with other Digital Marketing fields such as Display Advertising (up 20%), Video Advertising (up 25%), multi-channel social media advertising (up 28%), and email marketing (up 18%).

That was the business-to-consumer side viewed through the Digital Marketing lens; here are some figures showing the market's growth:

• Total queries reached 120 billion (up 25%)

• Google holds a 92% share of search in Vietnam

• 70 million Vietnamese use the Internet, accounting for 70% of the population

• The total e-commerce market value in Vietnam reached 230,000 billion VND, up 14% compared with 2022, ranking Vietnam 2nd in Southeast Asia after Indonesia.

• 42% of Vietnamese shop online at least once a week

It's no longer about getting ahead of the Digital Marketing trend — businesses need to quickly integrate with the rapid development of marketing technology. To do this, managers and business owners need to clearly understand the different types of Digital Marketing Agencies and the roles in this field so they can assess scale and quality and find the best fit. This article is written for managers and people new to learning about Digital Marketing Agencies.

Defining the Digital Marketing Agency

A Digital Marketing Agency is an organization that uses digital channels on the Internet — such as websites, mobile apps, social networks, search engines, messaging, and email — to promote physical and non-physical products, services, and corporate brands. The main goal of Digital Marketing is to attract potential customers, increase brand awareness to build customer relationships, and ultimately increase sales directly or indirectly.

Digital Marketing Agencies first appeared in the 1990s, with the development of websites and the Internet during that period, and have continuously expanded to meet the demand for new services related to the digital field. Below is a list of the Digital Marketing channels that have become popular to date:

• Display Advertising: using banners and videos on sites with high traffic.

• Social Media Advertising: Facebook Ads, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok to proactively reach new content published by businesses.

• Search Marketing: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services help a website reach the top pages organically, while Search Engine Marketing means paying for priority results on search engines.

• Content Marketing: Blog, Email Marketing, Infographics, Video.

• Affiliate Marketing: a newer service that exploded when TikTok launched, enabling many people to sell on behalf of businesses. This service is better known to many people as Affiliate Marketing.

• PR (Public Relations): This is a Traditional Marketing method; however, as readership of online newspapers and followings of influencers have gradually shifted online, Influencer Marketing and Digital PR are steadily replacing the traditional approach.

• Website & Mobile App Development: to capture users and drive conversions and introduce the company's content, every business needs website design for its company.

Job Roles in a Digital Marketing Agency

Now that you have a rough idea of what a Digital Marketing Agency is, let's explore what job roles exist within an Agency. The 5 indispensable roles are: Content Writer, Designer, Photographer, Social Media Planner, and Account Executive.

Content writer: this person specializes in content, from planning to ideation and writing copy for advertising campaigns. Beyond writing, a Content Writer must also ensure their articles are SEO-compliant so they can easily be optimized by search engines — especially for SEO services, since Google is the most powerful search engine today. One thing Content Writers should keep in mind is that they must always create their content themselves, because if they lift ideas from elsewhere, their website can easily be penalized by Google's algorithms.

Designer: alongside content, imagery is one of the key factors for attracting Internet users. Therefore, the Designers' job in a Digital Marketing Agency is to create visuals based on the content produced by Content Writers. On the other hand, for agencies offering web design services like Markdao, our Designers commit to not using pre-made templates and focus on coding websites by hand, in order to deliver a website that matches your wishes and suits your company's identity.

Photographer: this person handles photography-related work, such as shooting product/service photos; occasionally, the Photographer's images are used by Designers to add illustrations to article content.

Social Media Planner: today, given the ever-stronger growth of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, it would be a real missed opportunity not to leverage this enormous benefit. That's why no Agency can do without a Social Media Planner. This person takes charge of communication planning, analyzing metrics such as potential customers, engagement, and leads, as well as researching market trends.

Account Executive: this is in fact an intermediary role connecting the client with the Agency — in other words, customer care. The main tasks of Account Executives are arranging appointments between the Agency and clients, receiving information from clients, sending clients the materials they need such as proposals, and checking deliverables before they are sent to the client.

As you can see, there is a tight connection between the job roles within a Digital Marketing Agency. There are in fact other roles too, such as Media Booking and Film Director, but the roles Markdao has just introduced are the ones an Agency cannot function without — especially newly founded Agencies.

Digital Marketing Agencies and the Skills You Need

Every job requires many skills to do well, and the jobs within a Digital Marketing Agency are no exception. The 5 skills needed to work at an Agency are: teamwork, observation, analysis, logical thinking, and expression.

First is teamwork: as you could see from the previous section, the roles within a Digital Marketing Agency are tightly interconnected, so teamwork is extremely important. Only when members are aligned can an Agency deliver a quality product.

Second is observation and market awareness: to come up with creative ideas that fit trends and meet customer expectations, designers and marketers must have an eye for the smallest problems and details, because everyday life is the "raw material" for marketers' creativity.

From what has been observed, we need to connect the dots — hence the need for analytical skills. With strong analytical ability and a good grasp of trends, you can then produce ideas that truly deliver.

Understanding the issues and generating ideas is one thing, but organizing those ideas into the final product is a fairly long stage — and it demands logical thinking to find the main thread running through the idea and link the parts together to produce a product that is consistent in every respect and well-reasoned.

With the idea in place and being executed, the final stage is expressing that idea through words and images, so expression skills are absolutely essential. However, it's not just about words or visuals — marketers must also communicate well with clients, partners, and colleagues, because that is the key to smooth cooperation and to the success of a Digital Marketing Agency.

Tips for Choosing a Quality Digital Marketing Agency

It's fair to say that every business has its own strategy for executing its Marketing plan, and that strategy doesn't succeed easily — it demands high expertise, and specific, detailed planning to minimize mistakes during execution. Given the growth of the online market today, many businesses choose to hire a Digital Marketing Agency. However, choosing a suitable Agency takes quite a lot of time, so today Markdao would like to offer the following criteria to make it easier for your business to choose a quality Digital Marketing Agency.

• Look for similarities

Carefully review and assess whether the Digital Marketing Agency's strengths truly fit your business. If your company sells cosmetics, make sure the Agency also loves this product category — that passion will drive the Marketing process to run smoothly and deliver better results.

• Learn about the differences

Every Digital Marketing Agency has its own strengths, which demonstrate its capability to your business and help satisfy you. A Digital Marketing Agency is an organization full of creative elements; a company's opinions can be taken on board, but the probability of them matching exactly is very low. Don't shy away from debate — be forthright about your views and discuss them together to arrive at the optimal marketing approach. That's the only way to truly get good results.

• Don't be uncooperative or unprofessional

Be yourself — this will help your business choose a quality Digital Marketing Agency. Many businesses, after deciding to work with an Agency, tend to lead and dictate, which creates a framework and template the business then forces on the work, leaving the Agency unable to be creative. This is the cardinal sin of the partnership. Remember: once you have come to an Agency, the relationship between client and Agency is a peer relationship — both sides need each other to grow, rather than positioning one as "above" the other.

• Optimal and suitable cost

A quality Digital Marketing Agency will offer optimal pricing for SEO services, web design, and more for businesses. Cost strongly influences a business's choice of Agency; businesses with abundant budgets should immediately think of the industry's famous Agencies. However, not every business has the resources and capital to hire such an Agency. So choose reasonable price levels that still get your business a quality Digital Marketing Agency.

And that concludes the tips for choosing an Agency and the article "Digital Marketing Agency and Tips for Choosing a Quality Agency" from Markdao. We hope you find this article useful, whether you are a business looking for a quality Agency or a person looking for a job at an Agency. Once again, thank you for taking the time to read this article, and stay tuned for Markdao Vietnam's next posts.

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