Five reasons to sound off at your search agency

Managed in the right way, search marketing is the kind of tool that can put smaller brands on a par with the biggest, most well-funded brands. It feeds off qualities all the best small companies tend to have in abundance: enthusiasm, passion, imagination, expertise, agility. It doesn’t require the kind of vast corporate budget you’d need to make an impact above the line. And the money you do spend ought to more than come back in results.

Almost 25% of Australian SMEs believe they don’t see any return on investment for their digital marketing.

But still, more than a quarter (27.8%) of Australian SMEs believe digital marketing and online advertising are among the most inefficient areas of their business [source: OKI Australia SME Business Efficiency Survey, Oct 2016]. Nearly as many (24.1%) have difficulty identifying any return on their digital marketing investment at all.

Search underpins every other bit of digital activity, so if, as an SME, your search isn’t positioning you in the heart of the action, your business is in peril. It is your search agency’s job to get you there. Here are the telling signs they’re not doing their job: