Expanding into a new market.
Meeting a client’s broad-based needs.
Saving costs and resources.
Handling excessive work volume.
Letting experts do what you cannot.
It is likely to be one of the above reasons that drove you towards white label digital marketing companies. No matter what the reason is, finding the right agency is important.
The repercussions of failing to do that?
It could be something as minor as a little inconvenience to your internal team. Or something as major as angry clients who now hate you because of your white label partner’s mistakes.
To help you avoid both of those situations and everything in between, here is a checklist of 10 things you should look for in a white label marketing agency.
Let’s get started.
1. Experience And Expertise
This is a must. If you are hiring a team of digital marketers to serve your clients, they need to have proven work experience and deep domain expertise. Why?
When you avail of white label digital marketing services to cater to your clients, your reputation depends on the service that your white label partner delivers.
If they aren’t as experienced as they claim or don’t have the relevant expertise, you are risking your brand name. Thus, it is important to evaluate their work portfolio. Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to their former clients or references.
2. Use Of White Hat Practices
There are many ways to get desired results when it comes to digital marketing. But you don’t want your white label partners to be using ‘any’ way. You need them to use it the right way.
Black hat practices like paid link building, irrelevant blog commenting, keyword stuffing, copied content, etc. do yield results. But only in the short run.
Over the course of time, the negative effects will be seen. Your client’s website can be penalized by Google. Or their spam score could increase drastically.
That’s when you will be held liable by your clients. Don’t want to be in that situation? Make sure that your white label agency uses only white hat practices.
3. Bandwidth Flexibility
One of the key reasons why organizations choose to get white label digital marketing services is that their internal team doesn’t have the bandwidth.
What if your digital marketing partner also cites bandwidth issues? What if they refuse to serve your clients? Let’s take an example.
You have 5 active digital marketing projects that your white label partner handles for you. Say, you onboard 2 more clients in a month. Imagine if your white label partner fails to service these clients due to a lack of personnel.
That’s a loss of business for you. And it sends out the message into the market that you aren’t able to deliver the services you promise. Variable bandwidth can help you expand your client base and serve everyone without losing face.
4. Confidentiality
Confidentiality is important in any business arrangement. But especially so when it involves white labeling.
The white label digital marketing company that you choose should ensure complete confidentiality. It could mean one or more of the following:
- The agency is not allowed to disclose that they are white labeling for you.
- The agency should not claim the results as their own in the open market.
- The agency is not supposed to contact the end clients or in any way try to poach them from you.
- The agency cannot disclose or misuse any business information that you share with them.
Clarifying such things before you shake hands with a white label partner keeps you legally protected in case of any information misuse or leaks.
5. Consistent Execution Capabilities
You: Why are my clients not seeing an improvement in their rankings?
Your white-label digital marketing agency: Our SEO expert is sick/out of town/on leave and cannot work on the project at the moment. Our subscription to the paid digital marketing tool expired and we can only do this much with free tools.
Don’t want to have a conversation like this? Then you need to ensure that your white label marketing partner has consistent execution capabilities.
All aspects of digital marketing — SEO, SMO, PPC, Content, etc. — need consistent efforts. If your white label agency backs off at any given moment, it will spell inconsistent or no results for your clients. That means a shameful situation for you.
6. Support Services
- What if your client has a question about the SEO strategy being used on their website?
- What if your client has suggestions about their company’s social media?
- What if something goes wrong with the client’s paid ad campaign and urgently needs fixing?
In all such situations, accessible support from the white label agency is important. In fact, it can be the difference between a situation handled well and a client turning sour.
7. Reporting Capabilities
- We created 500 backlinks for your client. Trust us.
- We optimized the keywords on the client’s website, so their ranking must have improved.
- We submitted a lot of guest posts, believe us.
That’s not how the digital marketing business is done. If there are ranking improvements, there needs to be a report that shows the old and new rankings before and after keyword optimization.
If backlinks have been created, there are traceable records for that. Same for guest post submissions.
If your white label agency doesn’t offer monthly and quarterly reports, they simply aren’t the right choice. Your clients will ask you for the reports. And you need your white label partner to be able to offer you white-label reports.
8. Access To Cutting-Edge Tools And Technologies
The digital marketing scene is fast-evolving. Search engine algorithms, industry best practices, and market benchmarks change often.
To keep up with these updates and changes and still yield desirable results, you need the latest tools and technologies.
Whether it is an AI-based keyword research tool or a backlink profile monitor or a plagiarism checker, your white label digital marketing agency needs to have continued access to premium tools to deliver the right results.
9. Transparency In Operations
- Does your digital marketing agency refrain from letting you know what tools they use?
- Do they hide the techniques they practice from you?
- Are they unwilling to divulge any details about their processes?
These are major red flags and should be avoided at all costs.
Keeping business secrets intact is one thing. But your white label digital marketing team should display some level of transparency in operation to be considered trustworthy.
10. Scope For Long-Term Engagement
You cannot set out every month to find a new white label digital marketing company. Thus, once you have found the agency that ticks the above 9 boxes, you need to make sure that they also commit to long-term engagements.
This is important because of two reasons:
- It takes time and effort to find a white label digital marketing company. If you have to make that investment, again and again, you might be losing and your ROI would be on the decline.
- Digital marketing strategies don’t show results in a day or a week. It requires dedicated efforts over a long period of time to yield solid results. If your white label partners change every month, there would be a lack of consistency. And the results will be nothing more than patchwork. Your clients would certainly not be happy with that. And upset clients are always bad for business.
Now that you know what to look for, it is time to actually start looking. Set out on the hunt for a white label digital marketing company and achieve your business goals soon.
