What Your Digital Marketing Agency Should Know Before Building Your Strategy

Before your digital marketing agency creates any strategy, they need to deeply understand your business model and unique value proposition, analyze what your competitors are doing right and wrong to find differentiation opportunities, know your customers’ pain points and behaviors, establish clear goals and KPIs (brand awareness vs. sales vs. leads), and create a detailed roadmap showing exactly how they’ll achieve your objectives.

Hiring a digital marketing agency is a big investment. You’re trusting them with your brand’s online presence, your budget, and ultimately, your business growth. But here’s the thing most businesses don’t realize until it’s too late: not all agencies approach strategy the same way.

You know what’s that one main difference between an average agency and a great one? It’s what they know before they start building your strategy. If your agency jumps straight into tactics without asking the right questions, you’re setting yourself up for wasted budget and disappointing results.

So what should your digital marketing agency actually know before they create your strategy? Let’s break it down.

They Need to Understand Your Business Inside Out

This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many agencies treat every client like they’re selling the same product. 

A good agency digs deep into understanding what you actually do. They need to know your business model, how you make money, what makes your product or service valuable, and what problems you’re solving for customers. They should understand your pricing structure, your sales cycle, and how decisions get made in your industry.

If your agency is pitching you social media campaigns without understanding whether your customers even use social media to make purchasing decisions, that’s a red flag. If they’re suggesting SEO without knowing how people search for businesses like yours, that’s another problem.

The foundation of any successful digital marketing strategy is business knowledge. Everything else builds from there.

Pro Tip: While evaluating, one question you can ask your agency is that how do they plan to generate the ROI for your business using the campaigns they propose.

They Must Know What Your Competitors Are Doing

Your competitors are fighting for the same customers, the same attention, and the same dollars. Your agency needs to know exactly what they’re up against.

But competitor research isn’t just about copying what works. It’s about understanding the competitive landscape so you can stand out. What are your competitors doing right? Are they dominating certain keywords? Do they have strong social media engagement? Are their ads converting well?

More importantly, what are they doing wrong? Where are the gaps you can exploit? Maybe they’re ignoring a specific platform where your audience hangs out. Maybe their messaging is generic and doesn’t speak to real customer pain points. Maybe they’re focused on one demographic and completely missing another.

Your agency should identify these opportunities and show you exactly how to differentiate in the market. If everyone in your industry is using the same approach, that’s your chance to zig while they zag. But you can only do that if your agency has done their homework.

Pro Tip: Once your digital marketing agency study your competitors, they should be able to draft a SWOT analysis for your business. What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as compared to your competitors.

They Should Know Your Customers Better Than You Do

Marketing without understanding your customers is like shooting arrows in the dark. You might hit something eventually, but you’ll waste a lot of ammunition getting there.

Your agency needs to know who your customers are, where they spend time online, what problems keep them up at night, and what motivates them to buy. Are they price-sensitive or value-driven? Do they research extensively before buying, or do they make impulse decisions? What objections do they typically have?

This goes beyond basic demographics. Anyone can target “women aged 25-45.” Your agency should understand psychographics: the attitudes, behaviors, and preferences that actually drive purchasing decisions.

They should know what channels your customers use to discover new products. Are they scrolling Instagram? Searching Google? Reading industry blogs? Asking for recommendations in Facebook groups? Each channel requires a different approach, and your strategy should reflect where your customers actually are.

Pro Tip: One way to test your agency is that you can ask them to draft the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) for your product or service. This will give you a clear indication weather this agency is a hit or a miss.

They Must Establish Clear Goals and KPIs

Here’s where most agencies drop the ball. They’ll talk about “increasing engagement” or “building brand awareness” without defining what success actually looks like. Vague goals lead to vague results.

Before building any strategy, your agency should ask you directly: what do you want to achieve from digital marketing? 

Are you looking for brand awareness because you’re new to the market? Then metrics like reach, impressions, and brand recall matter. Are you focused on generating sales? Then you need to track conversion rates, cost per acquisition, and return on ad spend. Are you trying to generate qualified leads for your sales team? Then lead quality and lead-to-customer conversion rates are what count.

Pro Tip: Your agency should help you define specific, measurable KPIs tied to real business outcomes. They should be able to share a transparent reporting system that tracks key metrics, and is easy to understand for you.

They Need a Clear Roadmap to Achieve Your Goals

Strategy without execution is just wishful thinking. Your agency should show you how exactly they’ll get you from where you are to where you want to be.

If your goal is to increase sales by 30% in six months, what’s the roadmap? Are they focusing on paid ads to drive immediate conversions? Building SEO for long-term organic traffic? Creating content that nurtures leads through the sales funnel? All of the above?

The strategy should directly align with your objectives. If you’re a B2B company with a six-month sales cycle, running aggressive direct-response ads probably isn’t the answer. If you’re an e-commerce brand trying to move inventory, a slow-burn content strategy won’t cut it.

Your agency should lay out clear phases, timelines, and expected outcomes. They should explain what success looks like at each stage and how they’ll adjust if something isn’t working.

Pro Tip: Your agency should be able to explain you the strategy in layman terms with clear objectives. If the strategy is too complex to be explained,  it’s too complicated to be implemented as well. It should be clear, executable and outcome-oriented. As a business, you must ask them questions until you are not clear about the strategy. 

Whoosh Media: Your Trusted Digital Marketing Agency

At Whoosh Media, we don’t believe in cookie-cutter strategies. Before we build anything for our clients, we take the time to understand their business, analyze their competition, know their customers, establish clear goals, and create detailed roadmaps for success.

We’ve helped hundreds of brands achieve their digital marketing goals. We are research experts, who create custom strategies that actually align with what you want to accomplish.

Because at the end of the day, your success is our success. And success starts with knowing the right questions to ask before we ever start building your strategy.