The Complete Advertising Agency Selection Guide

Product Promotion is an essential process to increase your products’ awareness, popularity, and sales volume through effective advertising campaigns that require successful advertising agency selection of an agency that is able to drive the desired results within the limits of your business marketing and advertising budget.

The process of advertising agency selection is mandatory to avoid wasting your business advertising budget by an incompetent advertising agency which requires detailed searching and rational selection to pick a proper suitable choice of the best advertising agency.

Before discussing how to perform the process of advertising agency selection efficiently, we will discuss the common advertising agency services and solutions and if suits your business needs or it’s more suitable to depend on your in-house marketing team.

The common assumption among many business owners is that the only mission performed by advertising agencies is creating and placing your business ads on chosen channels which make the issue of advertising agency selection is not that important as all advertising agencies assumed to do the same trivial mission.

The scope of an advertising agency services and solutions go beyond just creating and managing advertising campaigns as a full-service advertising agency will provide an integrated portfolio of services and solutions to guarantee better results and return on investment “ROI” of your business advertising campaigns.

The range of professional cost-effective advertising agency services and solutions include:

• Performing detailed market, target audience and competitors’ research to develop a tailored advertising strategy for your business ( choosing suitable advertising channels “digital advertising or offline advertising platforms or both – developing a detailed advertising plan)
• Generating many creative ideas based on each campaign brief
• Copywriting and scriptwriting solutions for your advertising campaigns
• Producing the media content “high-quality engaging videos – designs & illustrations – professional photographic content” for your business advertisements
• Choosing and hiring external talents “ex: artists & performs” and influencers to participate in your business advertising campaign
• Media planning and buying services to search, choose and negotiate for the best placements for your business ads within your budget limits
• Launching targeted objective-oriented integrated advertisements on selected channels according to the predefined agreed schedule
• Managing the advertising campaign through daily performance monitoring and performing required changes and updates on your campaigns
• Reporting the advertising campaigns performance in details to define the achieved return on investment “ROI”
• Planning and improving the future advertising campaigns based on the detailed insights and reports available mainly for digital advertising campaigns     

The variety of integrated advertising services makes the advertising agency selection process more critical with many advertising and marketing agencies on the market providing mainly the same services but they differentiate based on their skills, expertise, fees and the ability to achieve desired results.

Before digging more deeply into how to complete the advertising agency selection process successfully, there’s a critical choosing factor to put into consideration which is the importance of the advertising agency strategy of planning, creating, launching and managing advertising campaigns customized for each client “business” needs, goals and allocated budget.

A professional advertising agency will be equipped with a customized advertising agency strategy that guides its mission to drive the best results and returns for all advertising campaigns launched and managed by the agency.

The advertising agency strategy will be developed based on a comprehensive understanding of each client’s “business” goals, the competition level in targeted markets, the targeted customers’ needs, interests & purchasing behavior and the limits of allocated advertising budget.

The choice of suitable advertising platforms to target your potential ads will be more efficient with a planned customized advertising agency strategy to run successful advertising campaigns on suitable platforms including:

• Offline advertising platforms (TV & Radio channels – Newspapers & Magazines – Outdoor advertising billboards)
• Digital advertising platforms (Search engine ads – Display ads on websites & mobile apps – YouTube ads – Social media advertising solutions)

The tailored advertising strategy for your business will define also the suitable schedule to display your business ads in addition to defining the suitable metrics to evaluate performance related to the advertising campaign goals which can be one or more of the following metrics:

• The engagement rate (calls – comments – messages)
• Number of qualified leads generated & cost per lead
• Number of conversions completed (online purchase – store visits)
• The return of ad spend “ROAS” = revenues / advertising costs

A common advertising agency selection mistake is to choose an agency that is used to start the promotion campaigns without developing a tailored strategy for your business nature and goals.

The next step of the advertising agency selection process after defining your business goals and the allocated budget is to prepare a list of professional advertising agencies for evaluation and shortlisting the most suitable ones.

There are multiple options to prepare a proper list for a successful advertising agency selection process either through referrals of clients who had previous experience with advertising agencies or online using search engines with detailed search queries like “best advertising agency in Egypt” or visiting agencies directories including Sortlist, Clutch, and GoodFirms.

Once you have prepared a list of potential advertising agencies to hire, there’re main factors to consider to guarantee the success of your advertising agency selection mission which are:

• The agency experience level in planning and managing successful advertising campaigns in targeted markets and on chosen advertising platforms “media planning & buying expertise level”
• The advertising agency portfolio of successful marketing & advertising campaigns for clients in related fields to your business field
• The range of advertising services and solutions provided by each agency and how it’s suitable to cover your business needs
• The cost of provided advertising services & solutions “the agency proposal” compared to the allocated budget and the expected return on investment
• The agency payment requirements compared to your preferences and your business financial position
• The experience, creativity, innovation, skills set and capacity of the assigned professional agency team
• The advertising agency reputation and reviews of previous and current clients on business or agencies directories or other digital platforms like social media channels
• The advertising agency strategy and approach of planning and managing advertising campaigns with offering alternative and backup solutions
• The agency stability “longer operating period = more reliable agencies”
• The agency size compared to your business size “small agencies provided dedicated support to all types of clients”
• The agency location proximity if you prefer conducting several face-to-face meetings
• The overall impression about how professional each shortlisted agency is after the initial communication through calls, emails or a meeting
• The agency transparency with performance results for previous advertising campaigns

All mentioned advertising agency selection factors and aspects will lead to a proper efficient choice of a professional trustworthy advertising agency.

You were aware of how critical the advertising agency selection mission is to deliver the desired results of your business advertising campaigns and now you’re fully prepared to search, evaluate and to choose the most suitable experienced advertising agency without any worries about choice.

Contact us today to plan your business upcoming advertising campaigns