When it comes to representing your brand, you always want to put your best foot forward. From your marketing initiatives to your sales plan, everything needs to work for one common goal: The best visibility of your company. For this reason, some companies choose to keep their marketing needs in-house, relying on a small team to get the job done. Others find it much easier and more efficient to hire an agency to handle their marketing needs for them.

Taking the proper steps to choose the right agency for your company is crucial. The right marketing agency fits more like a partnership, a team coming together to help one another. Essentially, you’re choosing someone to help you run your business from a different perspective. The right agency needs to be able to easily execute the vision you have for your company. With a highly saturated industry of marketing agencies, finding the perfect fit can prove to be difficult. Good news! It’s not impossible. Keeping that in mind, we share a few things you should keep in mind when finding your perfect agency match.

Talented Team
A portfolio of work speaks volume. It shows ideas, breadth of work, capabilities, and gives an idea of what you can expect from the agency. A good portfolio shows a wide variety of work and case studies that cover every aspect of what the agency does. In addition to a solid portfolio, you need to also consider the team. A diverse team leads to more forward-thinking ideas and creative expression. Diversity in cultures, backgrounds, education, and specialties can really help determine the difference between a subpar team and a team that’s excelling.

Understands the Brand
One of the most important components to finding the right marketing agency is choosing a company that understands your brand and goals. An agency that can truly live and breathe your brand complementary to the way you do is crucial to the overall success of any campaign. In this case, it may be in your best interest to choose a local marketing agency. Marketing companies in Philadelphia certainly understand the importance of the perfect cheesesteak more than an agency in Chicago or Los Angeles. The same is true for most industries or products are that niche to their location. An agency that understands your brand and business goals is an agency that you can trust to deliver every time.

Budget-Friendly
Unless you’re a major company that has tens of thousands of dollars to spend on marketing alone every month, you need campaigns that won’t break the bank. The right agency isn’t about taking you for all you have. Most marketing agencies scale their services accordingly, but few choose not to. The ones that are worth your time are willing to work with you and help you find solutions that are comfortable enough for your pockets and your results. Transparency in financial allocation is important as well. The right agency is upfront about their billing practices, provides accurate quotes, and explains what costs are associated with which service. You don’t want to waste your money or your time, and neither do they.

It’s important to understand that when you’re choosing an agency, you’re doing more than just choosing someone to throw together campaigns because you don’t have time. You’re relying on an outside partner to represent the voice and vision of your brand. Be mindful in your selection. Do the hard work and research now so you and the marketing agency can focus on the future.