High performing businesses know that they can no longer ignore the importance of their web and digital initiatives as marketing and communication platforms to connect with their customers and target markets. The challenge for these businesses when looking for a service Digital Agency Cambridge provider for web design, development and online marketing services, is how to isolate the 'right' service provider from the thousands in the market. An eight year old can build a website these days (yes, I've seen it), so what do businesses serious about succeeding online need to look for?

According to Wikipedia, a digital agency is a business that delivers services for the creative and technical development of Internet based products. These services range from the more generalist such as web design, e-mail marketing, logo design and micro sites, to the more specialist such as custom built content management systems, ecommerce, web application development, social media marketing, mobile compatible web development, search engine optimisation, and systems integration services.

Digital agencies tend to differ from their more traditional advertising agencies and their marketing agency counterparts in that they tend to deliver only certain types of web complimentary off-line services such as logo design, icon design and graphic design. Some advertising and marketing agencies do however attempt to deliver digital work but there are a number of shortfalls for businesses that are serious about online solutions utilising their services.

During these last few years much has changed in the marketing landscape. Now I might be wrong by saying this, but my feeling is that in recent years, traditional marketing agencies that have moved toward the online landscape still have a flimsy grasp of it. The majority outsource online services to other experts and are struggling to survive the growing demand for businesses to include more complex web based marketing solutions. Alternatively they may be able to offer basic web related services but struggle when their client's requirements are more complex or custom.

Digital marketing agencies have also been evolving to define themselves in the ever changing online world. Digital agency services cross so many of the traditional service lines including advertising, graphic design, web design and development, online marketing and search engine optimisation that before the digital agency was coined, there wasn't really a way to describe them without merging service streams.

The full service digital agency is certainly one of the Internet's best kept secrets. Businesses serious about succeeding online will benefit exponentially from a successful partnership with a high end digital agency. This is well demonstrated in the Google trends graph below. The term digital agency has been on the rise since the start of 2005 and it growing every day, whilst the term "advertising agency" has been in steady decline.

So how does a business choose when looking for a marketing solution that incorporates digital online media?

I personally view digital agencies as the perfect catalyst to help businesses consolidate these outsourced web, design and online marketing services? Take for example a business that is looking to commission a new website to be designed and developed and need to ensure that the new website will rank high in the search engines. Some people would consider separating the Digital Agency Cambridge from the SEO and end up commissioning two different service providers to carry out the work.

This might work, however a digital agency is capable to service both of these requirements and ensure that the two services are properly integrated throughout the project life cycle.