Here’s What to Know When Changing Online Marketing Companies

In today’s digital world, your business needs to be found online. So build a website, optimize it for the web, and life is sweet—right? Wrong…if you don’t have a good online marketing partner.

Not been happy with your results? There is good news—you can change partners! Although the process can be stressful and frustrating, it’s better than staying with a company that isn’t the right fit and watching your marketing dollars go to waste. Plus, a good company will make the transition as smooth and hassle-free as possible.

What to Ask & What Information to Know Before Transitioning

To make things simpler, we recommend gathering some crucial information as you start the process of switching vendors. Here are some things to ask yourself and think about (including questions many companies ask when making the transition):

• What’s in my current contract? Re-read the contract. What does it include? When does it end?
• Do I own my website? If you don’t, that’s okay—we can certainly still help; it will just create a different framework for our plan and recommendations.
• Do I have full access to my site? It’s helpful to know who has FTP access, CMS access, Analytics access, and AdWords access.
• When I start with you, will I own my website? You should absolutely build digital assets and have a good online portfolio—a good company, in our humble opinion, allows you to own your website and the content. Unfortunately, not every vendor says “yes” to this question.
• Do you provide guarantees? A good company doesn’t. You cannot guarantee results, period. If you talk to a company that does…run in the other direction! Sure, case studies are fine (and the best companies will have them), but no crazy promises of getting you on the first page of Google.
• Have you done work like this for companies similar to mine? A fair question. Case studies should be provided—and assuming it’s a good match between you and the vendor, there should be references for you to contact.
• What contracts and options are available? How do I determine the right budget? It depends on your starting point, goals, competitive landscape, and internal capabilities. No one size fits all—there are no cookie cutter solutions, at least not from the best companies.

As mentioned, the transition to a new online marketing partner can be stressful, especially if you don’t know a lot of the information about your website and access. But a good company will be transparent, providing visibility about how they go about tracking and gathering data, setting goals, and coming up with a custom tailored plan. A good partner can also make the transition easier for you by providing an email template you can use to send to your current vendor to break the news and provide a list of access items needed. This can potentially help minimize downtime for your company and make the process as hassle-free as possible.

What can you do better than my current vendor?

Let me end with this question, which we hear a lot. It’s a fair question, one that you should ask if you are transitioning. Blue Corona provides a free analysis of your website and an overview of the approach we’d take—including site structure, content, and authority—to start optimizing your web presence and maximizing your online real estate. Get started below!