Frequently Asked Questions

All your Trekk questions. Answered.

 

How do I choose the right agency?

Culture fit is key.

It is important that the agency you choose is a good cultural fit for your organization. If you work in a fast-paced industry where you require quick turnaround times, you need an agency who is equally nimble and prepared to meet the demands of your business environment. If your organization is highly data-driven, you need an agency partner who can provide detailed analytics and help you evaluate those analytics on an ongoing basis to optimize performance. If you work in a creative field, you need an agency whose creativity is at the center of everything they do, who can come up with new and exciting ideas that help you stand out.

At Trekk, we value long-term client relationships. We want to understand your business, your sales goals, your marketing objectives and operations. We want to understand what we can do to create meaningful success for you and your organization. We believe that problems are identified by the curious and solved by the courageous, so expect us to ask a lot of questions. Expect us to explore new possibilities. And expect us all to have some fun along the way!

 

How do you price? 

We price on both a project and/or retainer basis. Which model is right for you depends on the type of work we’re going to be doing with you and your team. If you are looking for a website redesign and rebuild, we can define the specific requirements for that and scope the amount of time and cost that will go into it from start to finish. If you are looking for a trade show traffic-driving campaign with a set number of print and digital deliverables, we can easily scope and price out each of those deliverables. These types of engagements lend themselves well to pricing and billing on a project basis, where you can expect to pay 50% upon approval of the estimate and 50% upon completion. 

Other types of work are ongoing and inherently more organic — we embark upon them together, then test and tweak along the way to achieve your desired results. Think social media, SEO and SEM, and content marketing. For these types of work, a retainer can make a lot of sense. We work with you to define and agree upon a monthly retainer fee and manage our time to that every month. Under the retainer model, you can expect to be invoiced once a month for the agreed upon amount. If ever an instance arises where the time and cost associated with an element of your marketing program may put us over our monthly allotted budget, we’ll notify you in advance of any costs above and beyond the agreement so that you can approve the work. 

 

How much does an AR campaign cost?

There are two primary cost drivers when it comes to building augmented reality (AR) campaigns. The first is the app — the AR browser app your users will require and, therefore, download in order to engage with your AR content. The second cost driver is the AR experience itself. 

The First Cost Driver: The AR App

Some clients use existing third-party apps to deploy their AR content to the market. These work well for those who want to pilot a small campaign and see how it performs before investing more in AR as a channel. These are also well suited for those clients who want to focus their AR experiences around video. 

Some third-party apps allow you to deploy your content to their platform at no cost. Others may charge a licensing fee that gives you access to their software development kit (SDK) to be able to develop and deploy experiences beyond just video. Depending on which app is best to deploy your experience, the cost can range from zero to a few thousand dollars per year. 

For clients who are focused on a long-term strategy for AR, and for those who are interested in developing more robust, immersive, and interactive experiences, we typically recommend a custom AR browser app. Branded to your organization, a custom app not only offers you flexibility for enhancement over time, it also affords you the opportunity to make repeat brand impressions each time a user opens your app to engage with your content. 

Developing a custom AR browser app can be as simple as branding a white label app. Other times, you want the app to do more than just provide an AR browser. So, how much time and expense will go into a custom app really depends on how much functionality the app is going to have. It also depends on whether your AR experiences will be strictly marker based or will include markerless content. 

The Second Cost Driver: The AR Experience

A simple scan-to-video-display AR experience can take as little as a day or two to get up and running and will typically run you between $1,500 and $2,500. A more complex experience is going to go up from there. Say you want to display a 3D model, object, or character and animate that to present content or tell a story in a unique way. There is time and cost involved in building the 3D asset itself and then the time to develop the content and animate the asset with the desired level of interactivity you want the user to have with the asset. Or let’s say you want to push the boundaries of AR even further to make an immersive 360-degree virtual experience. That’s going to require additional time and expense. 

Because costs and timelines for building and deploying AR experiences can range so significantly, one of the first things we do is offer you a set of written proofs of concept on what your AR app and experience(s) can do to meet your objectives. We will typically offer you “light, “medium,” and “heavy” lift concepts that you can take back to your internal team and discuss. From there, we can work together to refine the concept that best fits your budget and timeline expectations. 

We want all our clients to find great success with their AR strategies and campaigns. In order to ensure that, we ask a lot of questions up front as part of our initial discovery. Expect us to ask you about your short-term and long-term goals for AR, about the story and experience you want your viewers to have, what value you can deliver to them through this channel, and what other ways you could possibly use it beyond a single campaign. All of this information helps us guide you in choosing the right type of app and tailor the AR experience to your business and your buyer personas. From there, we can scope out the amount of time it will take us to develop your app and AR experiences and, based on that time, outline the costs you can expect. 

 

How do I know my content marketing is working?

In order to know whether your content marketing is working and if so, how well it’s working, you need to start with a baseline. To start, take a look at your current website analytics. Document how much traffic you have gotten over the last 3, 6, or 12 months. Document which content has received the most views and longest engagements. Document how many leads you have generated from your website and what has happened to those leads since they came in. From there, you can start to set your goals for the next 3, 6, and 12 months accordingly.

After you launch your content marketing program, track your performance each month. Key metrics to examine include the following: 

  • Number of visitors
  • Number of contacts 
  • Number of leads 
  • Value of leads
  • Lead qualification scores 
  • Lead activity
  • Lead-to-customer conversions

The number of leads you generate is an important metric, but not the only metric to monitor. It’s important to track lead activity through the buying journey and to start scoring your leads based on repeat engagement. That way, you can evaluate not only the number of leads you’re getting but also the quality of the leads you’re getting. Using content marketing and lead nurturing campaigns helps you qualify your leads over time so that by the time they are ready to talk to sales, they are primed for conversion. 

Content marketing is a long game. Clients often experience incremental growth at the beginning and then see the results grow exponentially as more valuable content is added each month. Tracking the number, quality, and value of leads will help you evaluate how well your content marketing efforts are working, and if you aren’t getting the results you want, you’ll have useful insights that help you quickly and efficiently course correct. 

 

How much does a website cost?

“I need a new website. Can you tell me how much it will cost?” 

This is a question we get a lot, and the answer is: it depends. Website design and development costs vary greatly based on the platform upon which you build, the amount of content your site contains, and the types of functionality you need to offer visitors. So when someone comes to us for a new website or a website redesign, we start with discovery. 

Through our discovery process, we work with you and the key stakeholders in your organization to define your website objectives and technical requirements. Once we have fully  aligned on requirements, we sit down and put together a project plan that outlines the tasks required by our creative, technical, and content teams to complete the website design and implementation to your specifications. From that project plan, we can scope out the amount of time each task will take and, based on that time, the costs associated with each phase of the project, including wireframing, concept development, design and layout, programming, content entry, testing, and deployment. We will then present those costs and timelines to you, and if they don’t meet your expectations, we’ll work together to identify where there may be opportunities to reduce time and/or costs or phase the project out so that we can align with your budgetary goals long term.

That said, there are often “quick wins” we can implement right away if your current website is not meeting your needs. From adding a simple live chat feature to help you easily capture interested leads to performing an SEO audit to see how you can increase your organic traffic from search engines, there are short-term changes we can help you implement during the discovery process to help you get results from the start. 

 

Is all your work done in house or do you outsource? 

The Trekk team is divided into three main departments: Client Strategy & Service, Creative, and Technical. Our Client Services team is led by our CEO and Executive Vice President and is made up of a group of experienced account managers, content strategists, project managers, marketing administrators, and digital specialists. Our creative team is led by our creative director who supervises art directors and graphic designers on everything from concept development through design execution and production. Our technical team is led by our technical director who oversees a lead developer, three web and app developers, and an SEO expert, each of whom has a unique area of specialization. All of these folks are full-time, in-house resources who will be dedicated to your project. 

On occasion, we may work with outside contractors in cases where a specific area of expertise can add value to your program. These contractors are well vetted and work as an extension of the Trekk team. Any contractors we do engage are directly supervised by your account manager, along with the content, creative, and technical leads who are driving your program to ensure they have all of the background they need to deliver on your objectives. All communication will be managed by your account manager, who will always be your primary point of contact.