10 Questions to Ask a Mobile App Marketing Services Agency
Finding the right mobile app marketing services agency to help you market your app can make or break your business. Beyond helping you accomplish your goals, partnering with a mobile app marketing agency offers numerous advantages, from user growth to specialized expertise that enables faster execution and lower risk.
Yet, hiring a new mobile marketing agency can be a challenge, particularly if you’ve never worked with one before. Plenty of agencies out there make a lot of big promises, but how can you tell which one will actually deliver results?
The answer, of course, is to conduct a thorough search when hunting for the right marketing partner. To that end, here are some important questions you should ask any agency that you’re considering hiring. You might ask these through a formal RFP process or in a meeting. Either way, it’s important to ask these questions and get to know the agency before you commit to a contract.
- What clients have you worked with in the past?
This question hones in on whether the agency has experience in your industry.
This is particularly important, as industry-specific knowledge can be crucial for creating effective mobile marketing strategies tailored to your target audiences. What’s more, the agency should be able to demonstrate that they understand both your unique industry challenges and your customers’ unique pain points.
A good agency can provide relevant case studies, testimonials, and references to give you a sense of what they’ve been able to accomplish with clients who are similar to you.
- How do you develop your marketing strategies?
Asking a mobile marketing agency about how they develop their strategies is a crucial question because it provides insights into their approach, methodology, and the depth of their understanding of your business and industry. Their response can tip you off as to whether they can actually achieve the goals you need them to.
For instance, the agency should have a proven process for strategy development, one that includes (but is not limited to) goal and objective setting, competitive research, market analysis, and audience identification and definition. Their strategy needs to address current market conditions, your business’ place in and approach to the market, and what paths they will take to achieve success. Perhaps most importantly, their strategy needs to address how they’ll measure success and what metrics they’ll track that will indicate their progress towards your company’s objectives.
While they may not be able to provide all this information upfront, it’s essential to know that they will be including them in some form when developing your strategy.
- What mobile app marketing services do you offer, and which are your areas of strength?
While there are a number of generalist marketing agencies out there, you’ll likely be better served by an agency that specializes in mobile marketing.
It’s important to remember that not every agency offers the same types of services, nor do they excel at everything they offer. This is another area where case studies can be helpful in gauging if an agency is a good fit for your business. Can they prove that they’ve had a significant amount of success providing the services you need?
For example, many companies claim to be good at social media. But what does that mean, and how can they demonstrate it? Are they good at growing followings? Or are they particularly skilled at getting social media conversions? Or perhaps they’re amazing at managing paid social media budgets?
Either way, it’s good to get a sense of what the agency actually can do and not just what they say they can do.
- What is the right length for engaging you?
Some agencies require a full-year engagement, while others are comfortable with shorter contract periods.
What’s most important here is whether the agency can accomplish what it says it will within the given timeframe of its standard contract. Of course, it’s unrealistic to expect huge growth in just a few months, but they still should be able to deliver some results with an engagement that is less than one year.
- What will be our responsibilities in this relationship?
This is a key question to ask, as not all mobile app marketing agencies are full-service. And even for those that are, your business likely needs to be available to provide input and collaborate with the agency.
At a minimum, your agency should expect you to meet with them on a regular basis to provide feedback on the strategy and execution and to generally participate in agency-led marketing initiatives.
Some agencies may require your team to provide certain assets, such as content. Others may produce the assets and expect the client to manage the day-to-day marketing activities.
Either way, it’s important for your business to have a clear understanding of who will be doing what should you engage the agency.
- What is your client onboarding process like?
Most agencies will have a client onboarding process they go through when they sign a new client.
Typical onboarding includes gathering key information, such as a primary contact in your business, setting up the client in any agency-side software they will need to access, etc. It can also include a discovery process where the agency develops a more detailed understanding of your business.
- What is your company culture like?
It’s not enough that an agency can perform at a high level; they also need to be a cultural fit for your business.
Getting a handle on an agency’s company culture can help you determine if they align with your own business’ values, what the work environment is like, and if their employees really enjoy working there. This last point is important because unhappy employees tend to underperform, which could translate to less than impressive results.
- What technologies do you use?
So much of marketing is technology-driven these days, and agencies need to be experts in the technologies they use.
Not only do you need to get a sense of their technical prowess, but there are also often considerations of compatibility/integration with software suites your business might need to run, as well as data privacy and compliance (particularly for businesses in regulated industries). By asking about their technology stack, you’ll get a better feel for their technical capabilities.
- How often and in what format will we receive updates?
Some mobile app marketing services will provide you with a dashboard that shows the status of your marketing campaigns in real-time. Others will only provide a monthly report. Still, others will want you to meet with them on a weekly basis.
Ideally, you’ll want to work with an agency that provides updates on a regular basis based on a timeframe that works for you.
- How do you measure success?
This is the single most important question to ask. It’s important to have an upfront understanding of what metrics they track, how they will track them, and how they will use that data to make adjustments to the marketing strategy. More importantly, though, they need to align their measurement with your business goals.
For example, if your goal is to increase downloads by 25 percent, it’s not necessarily helpful for them to measure success by website visitors. This will also tell you whether they’re going to take a data-driven approach or just “wing it.”
Success With the Right Marketing Partner
Finding the right mobile marketing partner is crucial, but asking the right questions upfront will help ensure you find a good fit. A qualified marketing agency should have relevant experience, a solid strategy development process, a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities, and transparency around tracking success toward your goals.
While the questions provided above can help guide your search, the most important thing is that any potential agency partner demonstrates a commitment to driving real results for your business within the agreed-upon timeframe.
With an aligned agency that understands your industry and customers, you’ll be well on your way to mobile marketing success.
If you’re looking to take the next step in marketing your mobile app, Aragon Premium may be the marketing partner you are looking for. We are a trusted partner for many brands and have mobile marketing expertise to expand your user base.
We’d be happy to collaborate with you and help your app succeed with our mobile app marketing services.
