Let me be clear: the Internet is littered with website marketing company that boast of producing huge amounts of traffic in a short period of time. Good luck trying to find a good online marketing agency that can actually back-up these claims. I have spent many years watching many different businesses literally just wasted money on cookie cutter strategies that create incredible looking reports, but have absolutely no impact on their ability to generate real income. A true marketing partner will not only help generate short-term spikes in web traffic, but should be able to take the time to really understand your unique business, the pain points of your target customers, and your actual conversion rates. True digital growth can only be achieved when web design, custom content development, paid advertising and conversion rate improvement efforts are all aligned along one cohesive plan. If you are in the process of choosing a company outside your own to help you achieve your digital growth, do not let the flashy presentation material be the only information you use in making this decision, and ask some tough questions about how they will determine success; if they will be able to provide you with long-term retention metrics; and how they will adapt to any implicit or explicit changes that may be made in the algorithms used by Google and other search engines in the future. Whether you’ve had positive or adverse experiences with organisations which assist you in developing your business digitally, this is the forum to present honest agency red flags, success stories, and the specific metrics that you would always require to see before entering into contract on a monthly basis.