The digital marketing ecosystem is an ever evolving jungle. With new technologies and a growing number of privacy laws, it can be difficult to keep up with the pace of change. A digital marketing agency can offer comprehensive solutions for powerful campaigns but also for better adaptability.
In today’s world of unreliable cookies and a changing economy, this flexibility in digital marketing solutions is even more important. Working with a good digital marketing agency will offer the latest technology, data insights, and industry trends of 2023 to help you stay competitive.
Learn more about digital marketing below – or jump to a section:
- What is digital marketing?
- What are the three types of digital marketing agencies?
- What companies need digital marketing agencies?
- What should you get out of a digital marketing agency?
- Why Upptic is a good digital marketing agency for game developers of all sizes
- Other digital marketing companies
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing is a term used to describe the online tactics used to promote products or services. These activities roll up to corporate strategies like user acquisition and customer retention. Digital marketing efforts can be categorized into three main buckets: channel marketing, marketing strategy, and marketing operations.
Channel Marketing
Channel marketing is when a third-party is leveraged to approach a bigger audience. In 2023, there’s a wide range of digital channels for businesses to use. These include paid ads, a social media presence, influencers, and email campaigns. Each channel offers its own advantages and disadvantages, so it is important to carefully allocate resources.
Paid marketing
Paid ad campaigns are a great way to reach potential customers and acquire new users. Most ad platforms offer two major billing models, cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM). CPC charges an advertiser when an ad is clicked, while CPM charges when the advertisement is viewed by 1,000 people. Paid ads are powerful because of its ability to display ads to a specific audience. This allows companies to target specific demographics and segment marketing campaigns. When done right, paid ads can also encourage organic uplift by motivating engagement.
Today’s technology-driven world gave birth to several digital ad platforms. Popular and more traditional digital advertising platforms include Google Ads, Apple Search Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Meta’s Facebook Ads. More recently, TikTok and Meta’s Instagram Ads have been very powerful as well. Each platform offers its own unique set of benefits so it’s important to choose the right one. The most important question to answer is where your audience resides the most. Paid ads can be expensive, so making sure you select the right ad platform can maximize your ROI.
Social media marketing
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow companies to easily interact with users. Companies can engage with users by commenting on posts, responding to messages, and genuinely building relationships. Moreover, social media marketing also allows customers to reshare content from the company’s profile. This further increases the company’s reach and visibility.
Influencer marketing
2023 is full of influencers. By leveraging their popularity, companies today reach new customers through word-of-mouth recommendations. As the name suggests, this involves partnering with an influencer to promote a brand’s product or service. Afterwards, influencers use their wide reach to influence the decisions of their followers.
Perhaps the most critical advantage and benefit of influencer marketing is that it targets a committed demographic. For example, a gaming streamer will have a following of gamers. Choosing such influencers can greatly benefit a mobile game company. Moreover, influencers are trusted by their followers. This means their testimonials can build credibility among potential customers.
Yet, there are drawbacks. Among them, influencer marketing has traditionally been difficult for companies to accurately measure success. Sales can come in, but the effect that an influencer had may not be attributable, making ROI tough to calculate. This means that there is an inherent risk in over-investing in influencers due to lack of transparency in ROI calculations.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is when companies reward third-parties for driving sales or leads. Companies incentivize individuals, or affiliates, by offering a commission for every sale. This structure encourages affiliates to be active to maximize their own income potential. For this reason, affiliate marketing is also an effective way to increase brand awareness as affiliates share on channels like social media and blog posts. The incentivized aspect of affiliate marketing makes this a powerful tactic for businesses. ROI calculation is also very transparent, as affiliates are only paid on the sales or conversions they generate.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses email to build relationships. It involves sending out personalized mass emails to subscribers about offers, announcements, and newsletters. Email marketing is often best used for retention rather than acquisition. This is because spam laws require companies to obtain permission from users before sending any promotional emails.
Additionally, many people are reluctant to sign up for cold emails as they can be intrusive and lack personalization. Meanwhile, customers who are familiar with the company tend to be more open to receiving communication. In fact, many of them appreciate the regular updates or special promotions. This allows companies to create specialized offers that cater towards existing customers and improve loyalty.
App store optimization (ASO)
App store optimization (ASO) is all about increasing the visibility and ranking of mobile applications in app stores like the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. It is a combination of techniques that help to optimize an app so that it performs well in the app store rankings. This tactic is primarily composed of app discoverability and conversion testing.
App discoverability refers to making sure people can easily find an app when searching for relevant terms in an app store. It requires identifying the target audience and understanding which keywords they typically search. These words can be a part of the title, description, or even reviews.
Aside from keywords, ASO also includes the icons, images, and videos that appeal to customers. Conversion testing refers to figuring out the best combination of assets to get users to download the app. It’s a series of A/B testing to optimize the conversion rate.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is about increasing organic traffic. It involves optimizing a website through content, meta information, and internal and external linking to help search engine crawlers better understand what the website is about. A better understanding of the site’s content and purpose by the search engine will help the website rank higher in search results. Ultimately, the goal is to make sure that when someone searches for something relevant to the company’s business, they will find the company’s website at the top of the results list.
When done correctly, SEO is a great lever for driving high quality leads to a company’s website as it allows them to reach potential customers who are already interested in their product or service. Additionally, SEO does not require any budget and can be cost effective compared to other forms of marketing.
Marketing Strategy
Agencies can provide a variety of marketing strategies for companies to reach their goals. Organizations commonly look for help with branding, content marketing, PR, and partnership outreach and management. Good agencies can offer high-quality advice, direction, execution, and even leadership for a client looking to build and execute one of these strategies.
Branding
Branding is about effectively communicating a company’s message, goals, and values to their target audience. It involves using visuals, taglines, messaging and content, along with other elements, in order to create a memorable identity. Agencies help companies with their branding processes by providing ideas that best reflect the business.
Additionally, agencies may help with design, website layout, and product messaging. They can help ensure that all elements of the brand are consistent across all mediums from content and marketing campaigns to disruptive advertising.
Content marketing
Great content drives organic traffic. A content marketing strategy is about creating blogs, videos, webinars, and social media posts to engage with the audience. It is a valuable marketing technique because it allows companies to create evergreen content that can be reused.
Content marketing can also help reach a wider audience due to its highly shareable nature. However, great content is difficult to produce. This makes agencies specialized in content marketing an appealing option for businesses. Agencies can leverage expert content creators to make creative assets that attract customers.
Public relations (PR)
Public relations (PR) is the practice of maintaining relationships between a company and the public. This could include customers, employees, partners, and media. Communicating a positive message helps establish a good reputation for the business.
Agencies provide PR services that help clients stand out from their competitors. These might include using press releases to spread news to target communities or working with analysts to build credibility.
Marketing Operations
Marketing operations can be tough to manage due to the lack of expertise and resources. Agencies can help relieve this pain by providing web development and maintenance, CRM services, and creative production. By leveraging experts and tools, businesses are offered a cost-effective solution to outsource marketing operations.
Web development
Web development is the process of creating and maintaining websites. Common tasks include managing web pages, ensuring quick load times, creating a smooth user experience (UX) across browsers and devices, and performing regular security updates. Agencies can take many of these tasks off a client’s plate. Additionally, they might also be involved with more complex add-ons like integrations, website performance optimization, and hosting.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM) is a system for organizing and automating customer interactions. Popular CRM tools like Salesforce and HubSpot need considerable expertise to manage, which is where marketing agencies come in.
Agencies can offer various CRM-related services such as initial setup or administration. There’s also more complex services like lead management, analytics, and automating processes. By leveraging data from a CRM, agencies can help companies manage the customer lifecycle from start to finish.
Creative production
Creative production is the process of creating marketing materials such as ads, graphics, and videos. Many agencies offer these services, each with their own creative touch.
Projects that often require the expertise of top digital marketing agencies are commercials, promotional videos, and graphics for websites and ads. Furthermore, agencies can also provide copywriting services that optimize on SEO. Agencies will not only have the creative experts, but the tools to make all of this happen.
What are the 3 types of digital marketing agencies?
Digital marketing agencies can be filtered into one of three categories based on the services they provide. These include full-service, multi-channel, and single-channel agencies.
Full service agency
As the name suggests, a full-service agency handles all or most marketing activities. This can include branding, paid campaigns, and marketing operations. By working with a full-service agency, companies can benefit from the collective expertise of all departments in a single package.
A full service agency means marketing initiatives are fully managed. It also means that accountability for the success or failure of a campaign is attributable to one partner, not many. In addition, this avoids the need to look for other agencies. Having everything managed by one team ensures coherence and easy communication.
Multi-channel agency
A multi-channel agency is one that provides digital marketing services across multiple channels such as email, search, display, and social media. Such agencies use various strategies to reach the target audience to maximize the reach.
Utilizing multiple channels also increases the chance of finding the sweet spot. Additionally, they can use data gathered from each channel in order to gain insights into their audiences and optimize future campaigns accordingly. Multi-channel agencies are ideal for companies that have a need for digital growth and want to stay abreast of industry trends while gaining maximum visibility across various platforms.
Single-channel agency
A single-channel agency is an expert in one particular area of digital marketing. This type of agency is best suited for companies that are looking to focus on a specific tactic. Furthermore, a single-channel agency would likely have a depth of experience in their chosen niche that you might not find with a full-service or multi-channel agency.
Such agencies can make the appropriate recommendations for your business to stay competitive in the market. Overall, partnering with a competent single-channel agency can help you maximize ROI on the channel that you are focusing on.
What companies need digital marketing agencies?
For startups, digital marketing agencies can be a game-changer. Many of these companies lack the expertise to maximize their visibility online. Furthermore, they often do not have the resources to build a creative team or develop an effective marketing strategy. By hiring a digital marketing agency, startups can access the necessary tools, personnel, and expertise to drive results.
Companies lacking full data or creative teams can also benefit from working with an agency. Agencies are able to provide data-driven insights to tailor campaigns for greater effectiveness. They are also experienced in creating engaging content that resonates with audiences on different channels. This combination of strategic planning and creative execution makes them ideal partners for companies looking for better results.
Finally, many companies who need better digital marketing strategies or operations can benefit greatly from working with a digital marketing agency.
What should you get out of a digital marketing agency?
Setting milestones and regular status reports will help you get the most out of the agency. Agencies should be able to provide proof of their work, preferably in the industry that you are in. Ideally they are able to show how they are making an impact on ROI/ROAS.
Companies should also expect clear communication whenever they hire a digital marketing agency. Good agencies understand that campaigns require close collaboration between the client and agency to deliver the best results. Before making a decision, look for an agency that listens and provides actionable advice on how to improve.
An ideal partner will be willing to answer questions quickly and honestly from the start. Overall, companies deserve good value for money with any digital marketing project they undertake. A reliable digital agency also will strive to consistently deliver top-notch results while following budgets and deadlines set by the client — an approach that ensures mutual benefit and continuity.
Why Upptic is a good digital marketing agency for game developers of all sizes
Upptic has been around for a while, and one thing we’ve noticed in that time: The agency business model is broken. While many agencies will charge clients based on a percentage of ad spend, we charge a flat rate. That way, you can be sure you’re not paying for advertising you don’t need.
We also emesh ourselves with a client’s team, align our business goals with theirs, and provide our proprietary games growth technology for free to all our clients.
Services
Upptic provides services focused around all things games growth. Our main pillars of expertise include user acquisition, data and analytics, and creative production. However, we also provide app store optimization, strategic growth consulting, ad network and app store relationship management, and more.
As a new client, we’ll audit your tech stack, identify areas for improvement, and work with your team to build an optimal toolset and workflow. You’ll also get access to our best-in-class in-house growth tool chain, complete with reporting, automation, ASO, and anything else we need to build for you.
Best of all, anything we do build for you during our partnership is yours to keep – should you ever decide to part ways with us.
Clients
Upptic has built partnerships with numerous gaming companies over the years – including Atari, CandyWriter, Axie Infinity, Exploding Kittens, Kabam, GSN Games, BattleFly, Arrivant, A Thinking Ape, Wizards of the Coast, Mino Games, and more.
Many of our clients have been with us for years and continue to turn to us because they love the way we operate, the results we provide, and the return they get on their investment.
Reach out to us about becoming a client of ours today.
Other digital marketing companies
Here are some other great digital marketing companies we’ve worked with and recommend as well!
Services and focus: Website development and web design, content strategy, brand identity
Clients: Adjuvant Capital, NiftyLit, CalSeed, National Screen Institute
Services and focus: User acquisition, mobile marketing, digital strategy, creatives, data science
Clients: Atari, Disruptor Beam, Leaftail Labs, Highlights, US Cellular
Services and focus: User acquisition, creatives, growth strategies
Clients: Zynga, FitMind, LingoKids, Ada Health, Bash Gaming, GSN Games
Services and focus: User acquisition, app store optimization, creatives, ad monetization, game launches
Clients: PixelFederation, Rovio, Wooga, BoomBit, Superscale, Traplight Games
Services and focus: App store optimization, performance marketing, CRM, retention, growth consulting, subscription optimization
Clients: Kayak, Adobe, Wargaming, Spotify, Fishbrain, InfoJobs, Skyscanner, Vevo, Opera
Services and focus: Campaign strategy and management, SKAN optimization, creatives, modeling