Do You Have the Right Answers for Your Agency’s Client Discovery Meeting?

Use this Client’s Guide for Your Digital Marketing Agency’s Discovery Meeting

You need help generating business from your website and decide on using outside digital marketing support. Whether you go with a freelancer with specific expertise, a consultant with a broader marketing background or a full-service agency, you want to make sure they learn your business strengths and weaknesses as quickly as possible.  Be honest with them right from the start and it will pay off in better quality end results. Let them know what keeps you up at night and what’s your biggest challenge in the foreseeable future. The best way to do this is to do prep work prior to their client discovery meeting with you.  You can do this by having some of the answers ready when they start asking probing questions.  Some of the top items to review before your agency’s first discovery meeting include:

• Defining Your Sales Goals
• Knowing Your Competitors 
• Recognizing Your Weaknesses and Strengths
• Focusing on Your Online Visibility 

Define Your Sales Goals 
First off, they are going to ask you to define your sales goals.  Tell them how much revenue you need to generate to support your marketing investment.  Let them know what’s the average sales for your product/service and what percentage of leads turn into sales. Give them a list of the most profitable products or services and  show which ones are on the upswing and which are slowing down? If you have existing customers, let them know how much revenue you need to generate from them.

Know Your Competitors 
Next step is to put a list together of your competitors and their websites. If you know any of the marketing and sales tactics successfully used by them, add that you your list. Once the competitor data is developed, ask yourself the following questions:

• Why would a customer buy from you over your competition?
• What objections do prospects say to you during a typical sales process? 
• How is your pricing compared to the competition?
• What are the top pieces of content created by your competitors?
• What social media channels do your competitors use on a regular basis?

Know Your Weaknesses and Strengths
Your digital marketing partner will also want to know your businesses marketing weaknesses and strengths. So, give them access to your marketing material, website and Social Media channels. They will review all and let you know the good and the bad. If you have tried email marketing, give them access to what you have been doing and any campaign reports. 

Good or bad, you will want them to know your brand’s digital performance, including website visits, top sources of leads, conversion rates, click through rates, keyword rankings, backlinks, and overall site performance.  If you do not know, give them access to Google Search Console and Google Analytics. If your audience is local, give them admin rights to Google My Business too.

Do your best to help your new partner understand your buyer’s journey and any gaps or lost opportunities you have experienced when driving potential clients further down your sales funnel. 

Focus on Your Online Visibility 
A great way to understand your online visibility and target audience is to have your digital marketing professional perform an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) analysis.  Help them out by identifying five or 10 keywords that are considered high value to you and your competitors. They will take those keyword phrases and determine how you and your competition are ranking for these terms. Using SEO spider tools, they can also tell  you the difficulty level of trying to rank for each keyword and find out what keywords your competitors are targeting and create a list of keyword opportunities for your business.

Power Your Business Partner and Succeed Together
The Discovery session is an important stage in developing they right digital marketing strategy and tactics for your business. A misplaced understanding of your business, brand, or customers will lead to a failed campaign and may lead to long term damage to the reputation of your brand. The digital marketing information accumulated are living documents that change and evolve right along with your business.

Remember, the key to a successful relationship is clear, honest communication and your client discovery meetings are a great way to get started. Remember, knowledge is power. So, do your homework and have your answers ready to help your new digital marketing partner help you. Good luck!