So, you run a business and it’s time you took the marketing up a notch. You know you need a professional agency, BUT, you are not sure which kind of agency you need. A digital agency? A creative agency? Or wait…do you need an advertising agency?
Now, you might think they are all the same fantastic beast with different names. Or you might they are different Pokémons with their own superpowers? (proud millennial here).
Traditionally, businesses have relied on advertising agencies to promote and market their brand. An advertising agency typically designs and writes copy for advertisements run in print such as newspapers, hoardings & magazines, design collaterals for events, conceptualize & create television commercials, create radio jingles….you get the idea.
But times have changed, the platforms for promoting your business are no longer restricted to print and television. Digital is now a more pervasive and cost-effective medium, to market and advertise businesses to customers right where they are : On Their Phone! As you consider digitally marketing your business, it’s time to understand the differences between a digital and creative agency, and how they fit under the umbrella of an advertising agency.
WHAT IS A CREATIVE AGENCY?
A creative agency’s role is to make your brand stand out. This can be done through weaving captivating stories created through stunning visuals and words, creating concepts that inject life into your business offerings and creating a very unique brand voice for your business.
The output of this can be a single unique graphic design, an animated video, a memorable website, a social media campaign, newsletters, packaging.
This usually requires the creative brains of a visualizer or graphic designer, video animator, illustrator, content writer, all of who work together for your business to stand out through creative storytelling across any medium – offline or digital.
So if you want to create mind-blowing brand campaigns, whether audio, video or pictorial and someone to craft your brand’s personality in a memorable way, then a creative agency is the way to go.
WHAT IS A DIGITAL AGENCY?
One the creativity is put on paper or in bytes, a digital agency’s work come into the picture. Digital agencies work on creating a strategy to market a business and then executing this on various digital platforms like websites, social media, search engines, mobile applications and more.
Digital agencies help businesses amplify their brand on digital platforms. This, is usually done through digital marketing practices like search engine optimization, social media marketing, paid promotions on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and other such mass platforms, developing websites and e-commerce management for the brand.
The services offered by digital agencies include
- Search Engine Optimization or SEO
- Pay Per Click or PPC advertisements on search engines and social media
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing and Management
- Influencer Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Collaborations with other digital entities and influencers
- Web design & development
Apart from executing these services, strategy is one of the core services offered by digital agencies to businesses, where the agency collects data and analyzes the brand, their competition, their users’ needs, desires, expectations and engagement with the brand across all digital platforms. This kind of data-drive research helps digital agencies create and target a brand’s ideal audience with curated content, both organically and via paid ads. This creating more data to analyze and use as feedback for the next round of strategic digital campaigns.