Find the Best Digital Marketing Agency in London Share: TDA Date Published 27 February 2020 Categories Blog Reading Time 9-Minute Read Everything you need to know to get the best digital marketing services and online marketing. From a digital marketing strategy to increase traffic to web design and development to content marketing to social media marketing, get it all from agencies based in London. If you’re marketing in the UK, chances are, you’re going to want to work with one of the hundreds of great digital marketing agencies in the UK’s economic and political center, London. And of course, it’s the 2020s, so you’ll want a digital marketing agency. But how do you find a market-leading digital marketing agency in London? Below you’ll find the answer to the following questions: How does London attract the top digital marketing agency talent? What is a digital marketing agency? What’s an agency? What makes a digital agency “digital”? Do I need a digital agency? How do I identify a good digital marketing agency? How do I find the best digital marketing agency for my needs? How does London attract the top digital marketing agency talent? Is there something in the water? No…well, yes, the Thames is filthy but that’s not what makes London a market-leading city for digital marketing agencies. Nor is it because of London’s great weather or because it’s such a popular tourist destination… Business statistics gathered by the UK House of Commons, London and the surrounding South East region are home to one-third of all UK businesses. London alone houses over a million businesses. Perhaps the most significant statistic, though, is that London is tops in businesses per resident with 1,544 businesses for every 10,000 residents. And where businesses go, agencies follow. It may look like agencies follow the money, but you could also argue that the money follows the agencies. Agencies build brands and, if the agencies do a good job, brands make money. So businesses and agencies form a symbiotic relationship in places like London. The more successful the businesses, the more businesses come to London. The more businesses there are, the more agencies come to London. And that’s how you end up with a large group of quality agencies in one concentrated area, like London. So, now that we know why there are so many agencies in London, we can move on to the best one for you. There are plenty of factors that should go into your choice of agencies, but first, you need to understand exactly what an agency is. What is a digital marketing agency? Say the word agency and the average person starts thinking of advertising agencies and picturing Don Draper and the Sterling Cooper crowd. But there are many different types of agencies. Below we’ll explore what makes digital agencies unique. What’s an agency? In our case, starting at the beginning means defining what exactly an agency is in the first place. Webster’s defines an agency as “a person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved” and “an establishment engaged in doing business for another.” Rather than offering advice, agencies take action on behalf of a client. That said, agencies can, and often do, offer strategic counsel to their clients. Still, the main differentiator between agencies and consultancies or firms is that while all three may assist with strategies, only agencies execute those strategies. What makes a digital agency “digital”? So now that we’re clear on agencies, the addition of “digital” should be clearer. After all, if an agency takes action, then a digital agency must take digital action. But what is digital action? We live in a digital world, after all. Checking the time on your phone is a digital action when compared to looking at an analog wall clock to see what time it is. But that’s not exactly the kind of digital action we’re talking about here. Generally speaking, digital, in business, refers to digital communications, not all things digital. Your IT department’s tasks are almost all in the digital realm, but they aren’t involved in digital communications. Your company’s digital communications include any manifestation of your brand that is expressed in a digital format including things like your social media content, your website, your videos, your emails, your app, etc. In today’s digital world, to effectively reach your market requires communicators to think digital-first. Often companies don’t have all the skills in-house to handle all their digital communications. Most companies don’t need to have their digital communications teams in-house. And so, digital agencies step in to handle digital communications projects on behalf of their clients. Do I need a digital agency? Knowing what you now know, you may be wondering if you need to hire a digital marketing agency. If you need to reach a market through digital formats, your website, email, etc., chances are, you’ll have a need for a digital agency. But where do you start in your search for a digital agency? How do you determine which agency can serve your needs, which agency can deliver on your schedule and which agency can deliver on your budget? These were the questions TDA was built to answer. We recognized that finding the right agency isn’t easy. So we created TDA to help companies find and hire the world’s top digital agencies. Using TDA companies post their projects and agencies apply to win the project and execute the work. How do I identify a good digital marketing agency? There are many sources of information about agencies, but many of them can produce poor quality results. For instance, you can use search engines to search for phrases like “digital marketing agency in London” or “digital marketing company in London” or “digital marketing service in London” and other variations on these search terms. The problem is, these searches yield hundreds of thousands of results all featuring claims of being market-leading agencies. How could they all be market-leading, though? How could anyone possibly determine which of these agencies is the best? You could rely on your personal network to give you a referral to a digital agency. This method is fine for some. If your LinkedIn connection list includes names like Branson (or pretty much anyone who’s been knighted) you can probably count on your contacts to help you find you the best agency. But for the rest of us, advice from friends, family, and colleagues can end in disaster. To start, your list of people you can reach out to for help will be limited to people who are familiar with London agencies. That limit, alone, cuts out a lot of people. But even if you do happen to know a large group of people with knowledge of the London agency scene, they’ve still got to have knowledge of one key thing. They have to know what you’re trying to get done. Let’s say you know a content marketing guru with tons of experience in London who can tell you all the agencies that can help you get a killer conversion rate for your marketing campaigns. That person is a great asset for your overall online marketing, but if you need website design and development, your guru is just as clueless as you are about whether you should find an agency to, say, build scroll-triggered animations into your site or whether you should choose React Native or Flutter for your app. The point is, your network may be knowledgeable about the local market, insightful about your business and generally intelligent, but still they might not be able to help you find the right digital agency in London. The best way to find an agency that can serve your needs is to take three important steps: Clearly define what you’d like to get done in a project brief Distribute that brief to agencies in London that can do the work and request pitches/applications for the work Review pitches/applications and select a London-based agency to do the work None of these steps are difficult, but they require having a strong knowledge of agencies in the UK in general and London in particular. What if you are bringing a new product to the UK and need an agency to help you establish yourself in the market? Or you’re from another part of the UK but looking for a London agency? Or perhaps you’re already based in London, but aren’t familiar with the agency scene there. In all of these cases and more, you can use resources like TDA to find agencies in London. How do I find the best digital marketing agency for my needs? Using TDA is quick and easy. Companies fill in information about what they need and then wait for digital agencies to apply to them. Our system notifies digital agencies about the project and they apply directly to the company on TDA in a standardized format. After reviewing agency applies, companies can choose an agency to work with. TDA by the numbers TDA was founded in 2018. In less than 12 months, over $43 million of projects had been placed on the platform. We have a network of over 7,000 digital agencies in 115 countries. We have won startup competitions, were the fastest ever financing round on a global equity crowdfunding platform and the very first investment of a leading venture capital fund. In February 2019 and again the following year, Startup Grind Silicon Valley named TDA a Top 50 Global Startup. In February 2020, TDA was selected to become part of the UK arm of the world-renowned accelerator scheme, CMS equIP. Find out more about hiring an agency on TDA here.