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Expertise and experience are the bedrock of a top-tier D2C ecommerce agency. When an agency has years under its belt, it’s not just a sign they’ve been around the block; it signals a deep understanding of the industry’s ebbs and flows.
The experience usually translates into invaluable insights that newer agencies simply can’t offer. Brands should prioritize agencies with a proven track record because this often means they’ve honed their strategies, faced different sets of challenges, and refined their services/skills over time.
Expertise isn’t just about longevity—it’s about the depth of knowledge and the ability to apply it creatively to drive results. Brands should think of experienced agencies as seasoned partners who can navigate the complexities of the e-commerce landscape with confidence and finesse, ultimately helping them avoid pitfalls and seize opportunities.
Service offerings are a critical factor in choosing the right D2C ecommerce agency. Agencies with a broad range of services can be a one-stop shop, handling everything from website development to digital marketing, which simplifies coordination and ensures a cohesive strategy.
An all-in-one approach signals that the agency has diverse expertise and can manage various aspects of your business needs. On the other hand, specialized agencies focus on excelling in a specific area, like SEO or branding, offering deep, niche expertise that can be incredibly valuable for targeted goals.
As a brand, you should first evaluate your needs—whether you need a comprehensive agency or a highly specialized agency—and choose one that aligns with your strategic objectives. Ultimately, a good agency's service offerings should not just meet your current needs but also adapt and grow with your business.
Testimonials from existing brands are crucial when choosing an agency. They offer real-world evidence of the agency’s success and reliability. Positive feedback from other brands builds trust and shows that the agency delivers results.
It’s also important that existing clients and past clients are open to discussing the agency’s performance and the relationship - it makes all the difference if you can get a few reference checks from current brands that leverage the agency to make sure what the agency says they can do is actually true.
Case studies are also a powerful way to showcase an agency’s capabilities. You get to see some of the projects an agency worked on, their processes and the results behind the work. Agencies will typically have a wide range of case studies that you can browse from different categories, different projects and different growth stories. Read them!
You should understand, though, that agencies never highlight projects or customers that didn’t go as well as planned. So rarely will you ever see a case study where things didn’t work out. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows - sometimes, things don’t work. It’s important to know that not every single brand that works with an agency is a success story!
Recognizing when to hire an agency is crucial for continued growth and stable operations. Stagnant sales growth can be a red flag that it’s time to bring in expert help. Challenges with scaling operations, such as handling increased demand or expanding into new markets, could also highlight your needs to hire an agency or full-time team members.
When you find the right team to onboard, it can be a huge relief and catalyst to growth. Fresh eyes, new perspectives and more bandwidth to take on growth and all of the work that comes with it is a good thing for your brand.
As an internal operator, bringing on an agency can help you take tasks and workflows off of your plate and onto another team’s plate – hopefully, a more specialized team too. While it’s an awesome time to consider taking on other aspects of the business now that you have support, it’s important that you get the external team up, running and humming first!
Ultimately, an agency can help streamline operations for their specific channel/arm to the business and implement new strategies that lead to sustainable (and more) growth.
Full-service agencies offer a comprehensive range of services, from website development and digital marketing to branding and logistics. They are ideal for businesses looking for an all-in-one solution, ensuring that all aspects of their e-commerce operations are seamlessly integrated and managed under one roof.
These agencies typically have much larger teams than more specialized agencies. You’ll want to make sure that you actually get to talk to the people who are doing the work on your business - not just the people that you communicate with on a daily basis.
Sometimes that ability isn’t so available in such huge teams and it can get passed down to entry level employees. One-stop-shop agencies typically have separate business units inside their agency. You might find that they have a website development team, a Google advertising team, a Meta advertising team, an ad creative team, and so forth. These can essentially be considered “specialized” agencies all under one roof.
For example, one full-service ecommerce agency that we partner closely with is Absolute Web. While they are certainly experts in Shopify Plus development, management and strategy, they offer a full suite of services to their ecommerce clients. Services like digital marketing (PPC, SEO, organic social, etc), UI/UX design, ADA compliance, CRO and email marketing are all included in their service catalog.
Specialized agencies focus on specific areas of expertise, providing deep, targeted support where it’s needed most. SEO and content marketing agencies excel in driving organic traffic and creating compelling content.
Design and branding agencies are perfect for businesses needing a strong visual identity and cohesive brand strategy. Performance marketing agencies specialize in paid advertising and data-driven strategies to maximize ROI.
You can find really incredible talent in specialized agencies because these teams are typically the best at what they do and only work on their specialized talent for a reason. They’re not worried about offering a full suite of services to their clients because they are incredibly confident in their one skill and are able to offer such a robust service of it that they don’t need to upsell clients on other aspects of their business.
You might find specialized agencies that are incredibly good at conversion rate optimization, email marketing or even Meta ad account management. These agencies are typically smaller in size but more hands on – and you’ll typically always get to talk to one of their founders or the people doing the work on a daily basis.
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