Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Higher Education Digital Marketing Firm
If you’re looking for a digital marketing partner for your institution and are wondering how to vet potential agencies, you’re not alone. We receive regular requests from colleges, universities, and independent schools who are seeking a better fit for their school’s unique business model and target audience.
To make the best decision on a new parter, you’ll need all the right information. In this post we highlight the 5 top questions you should ask in order to get the answers you need. At the end of the post, you’ll find the full list of 12 questions you should consider asking.
The Top 5 Questions to Ask a Potential Digital Marketing Partner
“What is your experience with education clients?”
This is a top reason why schools come to us seeking a switch. Education marketing is a deep niche, full of nuance. Working with a vendor who doesn’t intuitively understand your business model, target audience, sales cycle, terminology, governance, resource limitations, etc., will be a continual point of tension for you and your team and could lead to unnecessary frustration.
Non-specialized firms are often less expensive. But as we’ve seen with dozens of our clients, even if you save money up front, you may find yourself paying for it later.
“What’s included in your services?“
It’s important to have your potential agency clarify up front what is included—and just as importantly, what’s NOT included—so that there are no disappointing surprises down the road. Here are some topics you’ll want your agency to address:
Creative: Who is responsible for generating advertising creative? Are there ever any fees associated with creative? Who owns the creative once it’s complete?
Reporting: What metrics are important to you? What type of reporting is included (live dashboard, written reporting, etc)? How often will we receive reporting? Do we have the ability to adjust what is included with the reporting as new needs are identified?
Meeting time and cadence: How often will we meet, and with whom? How much time do we get each month?
Channels and campaigns: What marketing channels can we advertise in? How many campaigns are we afforded?
Partnership: who’s involved in the work of our account? Will we have a main point of contact?
“What’s NOT included in your services?”
As mentioned above, it’s just as important to know what is not included. The agency will know what this means. We recently heard from a frustrated Director of Marketing at a large private university who assumed that his agency would handle creative for their digital campaigns, but instead he was spending all of his time designing his own ads.
“How will performance be tracked?”
The assumption is that all digital marketing is trackable, but the reality is that it is dependent on your internal systems, not your agency. This is fairly unique to education, as the tech that most institutions are built on have inherent limitations that prevent marketing attribution. It’s important to have the conversation up front, because you will eventually get internal questions about how many students you generated from the advertising spend. You’ll want to know exactly what can and can’t be tracked, where and why there are limitations, and how to articulate what you’re getting from your digital investment.
“What is your pricing model?”
Agencies are notorious for having mysterious price structures. At Little Foxes, we use a transparent pricing model, which separates out our management fee (what you pay us each month) from the ad spend (the money that goes directly to Google, for example, for serving the ads). Without this transparency, it will be hard for you to know exactly where your money is going, making it difficult for you to evaluate ROI.
Other Vetting Considerations
Here are a few things for you to consider as you make your final decisions on a new higher ed marketing agency:
Know your goals, limitations, and what’s important to you. Why are you seeking an agency? What internal resource and bandwidth limitations do you have that could impact this work? What’s really important to you in an external partner?
Be aware, partnership is a two-way street and some agencies will be vetting you during this process. When considering taking on a new school, a firm will be sensitive to: unclear or unrealistic goals, how you talk about your current/former partners, and internal conflict/drama.
The biggest question you need to answer before you commit to a new partner is, do you trust them? If you don’t, keep looking. Check out this list of higher education marketing agencies to help you in your search.
Full list of questions to ask a digital marketing agency:
What are your costs and pricing model?
What is (and isn’t) included in your services?
What is your experience with education clients?
How do you track results?
What metrics do you report on?
If we started today, when would our campaigns launch?
What information do you need from us to get started?
How much of the content will we need to create?
Do you manage campaigns in our ad accounts or yours?
How do you handle situations where the strategy needs to adjust or pivot?
Do you provide references?
How soon can we get started?
Looking for more questions to ask a potential higher ed marketing partner? We’ve got additional questions (with our answers) on our FAQ.