Choosing a Digital Marketing Agency in Sherman, TX

Sometime this year a salesperson probably called you about "getting you to the top of Google." Maybe three of them did. If you own a business in Sherman, you're a target for every agency in the country now, because Sherman is growing and they know it.

So how do you pick one? We're an agency in Sherman ourselves, so take this with the grain of salt it deserves. But these are the questions we'd want answered if we were on your side of the table.

Start with what you actually need

"Digital marketing" covers a lot of ground. Websites, local SEO, Google Business Profile, social media, video, email, paid ads. Very few local businesses need all of it on day one.

Before you talk to anyone, write down the one problem that costs you the most. Some examples we hear a lot:

• The phone doesn't ring from people who found you online.
• You show up on the Google map in one town but not the next one over.
• Your website is old, slow on a phone or embarrassing to send people to.
• Past customers forget about you between jobs.

A good agency will ask about that problem before it pitches a package. If the first call is a slide deck and a price, they're selling what they have, not what you need.

Ask how they'll measure it

This is the question that sorts agencies fastest. Rankings and "impressions" are nice, but you don't pay your crew with impressions. Ask what they'll report every month and whether calls and form requests are part of it.

A fair answer sounds like: here's who visited, how they found you, and how many of them called or asked for a quote. If an agency can't track calls from the website and the Google profile, you'll never know if the money is working.

Also ask who reads the report with you. A PDF in your inbox that nobody explains isn't reporting. It's homework.

Be wary of guarantees

Nobody can honestly guarantee first place on Google. Google doesn't sell that spot, and it changes its results constantly. When someone promises "page one in 30 days," they're either guessing, counting a search nobody types, or planning to rank you for your own business name, which you probably already own.

What an honest agency can promise is the work: which pages they'll build or fix, what they'll do to your Google profile, how often they'll post, and how they'll show you what moved.

Check that they're actually local

Plenty of agencies put "Sherman" on a landing page and run everything from three states away. That isn't automatically bad. But local SEO depends on knowing the market: which towns people drive from, how Denison searches differ from Sherman searches, which competitors already own the map.

A few simple tests:

• Is there a real office address you could visit?
• Will they meet you in person if you want?
• Do they show up on the Google map for their own services here?

That last one is fair to ask of anyone, including us. Search "web design Sherman TX" and see who's on the map. An agency that can't rank itself in its own town will have a hard time ranking you.

Read the contract before you love the pitch

A few things to look for in the fine print:

• How long you're locked in, and what it costs to leave.
• Who owns the website, the domain and the content if you part ways.
• Who owns your Google Business Profile. It should always be you, with the agency added as a manager.
• Whether ad spend is separate from the agency fee, and whether you can see the ad account.

If any of those answers is vague, ask again. If it's still vague, that's your answer.

What a good first month looks like

The first month should be mostly listening and fixing. Expect a look at your site, your Google profile and what people in your area actually search for your kind of work. Expect a short list of fixes in priority order, and some of them done. Big creative campaigns can wait until the basics are right.

You should also know, by the end of that month, exactly how you'll judge them in month three. If you can't say that, the relationship is already drifting.

Budget honestly

The cheapest option usually costs the most once you count months of nothing happening. The most expensive one isn't automatically better either. Decide what a new customer is worth to you, then decide how many extra customers a month would make the spend obvious. We wrote a longer piece on how to set a small business marketing budget in Texoma if you want to work through the math.

For reference, here's how we price ours: a custom website lease is $500 a month with nothing upfront, a one-time build starts at $4,000, and ongoing marketing starts at $1,000 a month. You don't have to hire us to use those numbers as a yardstick.

One team or several?

Many owners end up with a web person, a social media person and an ad person who never talk to each other. When the phone goes quiet, everyone points at someone else. There's a real case for one team handling the site, the local SEO and the Google profile together, because those three pieces feed each other.

There's also a case for a specialist if you only need one thing done well. Either can work. Just make sure someone owns the result.

Talk to us, or at least ask these questions

If you're a Sherman business weighing your options, we're happy to look at your site and Google profile on a free call, even if you end up hiring someone else. Call (469) 790-0543 or send us a note. We reply within 24 hours on weekdays, and you're welcome at our office on Teague Drive.