Is your Internet Marketing Campaign Working?

It is very easy to be dazzled by sales people and confused by lengthy reports that your marketing company send you, but how do you know if what you are paying for every month is working?
What your internet marketing company should be doing
Research
By identifying your target keywords and tapping into your customer’s persona, a good marketing company will be able to find out who your potential customers are and tell you how to be in front of them.
Knowledge
Knowledge is everything and your marketing company should feel at ease sharing their knowledge with you at any time.
It is vital that you gain a little understanding about internet marketing and more importantly have confidence that the person or company you get to run your internet marketing campaign knows what they are doing.
Let’s take for example SEO.  Google in particular release algorithm changes all the time, take a look at this article a leading SEO software company published  it emphasises the amount of changes to ranking factors Google makes http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change.  It is often not your marketing companies fault if you suffer a ranking loss but failure to keep up to date with googles policies can be disastrous.
Straight forward advice
A marketing company should never feel pressured to get you quick high rankings, they should be honest with you about the consequences of such actions, even if it means they lose a sale from being upfront.  You should ensure you receive honest advice about what return your marketing budget will give you.
Monitoring results
Success can be measured in many different ways, going back to the ‘lengthy reports’, data can look amazing in print but what about your bank balance?  You should never expect success over night but it is important you develop a way of monitoring your sites progress.  A marketing campaign that works is one that sees gradual success and steady growth. Your marketing company should explain to you in lamens terms how your campaign is progressing, what they are doing and what their goals are for the future.