Choosing the best digital marketing agency for small businesses ultimately comes down to your specific needs and objectives because digital marketing encompasses so many digital channels, such as email, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and pay-per-click (PPC).
Some excel at specific digital strategies, but the best agencies for small businesses should help grow your online presence and build growth through solutions like email marketing and branding while maximizing your marketing dollars.
To help you select the best small business marketing agency, we narrowed down the 11 best services based on cost, offerings, and customer reviews.
- Straight North: Best all-around digital marketing agency for small businesses
- WebFX: Best for artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven insights
- LYFE Marketing: Best for social media marketing
- SEO Discovery: Best for SEO services
- Fiverr Pro: Best for affordable project-based digital marketing services
- Ignite Visibility: Best for website design and optimization
- Thrive: Best for ecommerce marketing
- Hibu: Best for brand reputation management
- Avalaunch Media: Best for digital & traditional advertising
- KlientBoost: Best for content marketing
- Promodo: Best for branding and creative strategy
Grow Your Business with WebFX’s Full-Service Digital Marketing: Proven Expertise in SEO, PPC, Conversion Optimization, & More |
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Top Digital Marketing Agencies at a Glance
Starting Cost of Services | Website SEO | Website Building | Social Media Marketing | Digital Advertising | |
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$300 | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ | |
$300 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
$300 | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | |
$150 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
$45* | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Around $1,000* | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Around $10,000* | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Around $10,000* | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Around $50,000* | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Around $10,000* | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | |
Around $10,000* | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | |
*Estimated starting cost. Pricing is custom and varies for each business.
Straight North: Best Digital Marketing Agency Overall
Whether you’re looking for a full-service digital marketing agency to build your brand presence from scratch or just continue to grow your business, Straight North is our top pick. It offers all the essential digital marketing strategies, including search engine optimization (SEO), digital advertising, and website building. Plus, the team provides branding and graphic design services, making it a good choice if you need end-to-end digital marketing services.
Straight North’s core competencies are its comprehensive PPC and SEO services, offering a free audit for both to potential clients. On the SEO side, it offers services tailored specifically for reaching national or local audiences or for boosting your ecommerce, depending on your needs. It also offers advertising services for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Instagram starting at $1,000 monthly, or 15% of your monthly marketing budget.
Straight North offers all the essentials you need from a small business marketing agency, from finalizing your branding to building PPC and SEO strategies to fit your needs.
- PPC search & display ad management: Straight North has some of the most comprehensive PPC management services. Starting at $1,000 monthly (which is the standard price for most digital marketing agencies) or 15% of your monthly media budget (whichever is greater), Straight North can set up PPC advertising for search (Google and Bing), ecommerce, display ads, and social media.
- SEO: These cover search-optimized content writing or rewriting, website optimization (including mobile optimization and site speed), and link building. The agency can also target your SEO campaigns to local or national audiences or tailor them for ecommerce if you have an online store.
- Website design: Straight North can also build a website for your small business, complete with a sitemap, content, and Google Analytics. It also offers higher-priced plans for larger, more comprehensive websites or a plan with combined website-building and SEO services.
- Branding and graphic design: Straight North’s creative team can design assets for your business, from brand logos to brochures and more. You’ll only need to discuss your vision and requirements, and the team will present designs for you to approve.
- Social media advertising: While Straight North doesn’t offer any organic social media marketing, it can do social media advertising. The team can analyze your business’ social media profiles and then set up ad campaigns based on data with audience targeting. It can also optimize your campaigns once they’re live and provide monthly reports on their performance.
When partnering with Straight North, you’ll be appointed a dedicated project manager to handle your business. The team will also send you monthly reports to track your performance. Straight North also emphasizes a collaborative relationship with clients, so you can call or email from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays for any input about your projects.
WebFX: Best for Data & AI-driven Marketing Insights
WebFX has long been an established digital marketing agency for startups and small businesses. Its most defining feature is that it uses AI and data insights to target your marketing campaigns, from SEO to social media, email marketing, and even PPC advertising. You can choose individual services to fill your digital marketing gaps or get a bundled solution of their features.
WebFX also has its own return on investment (ROI) dashboard, MarketingCloudFX, that shows the revenue you’ve earned for every $1 you invest. This also makes WebFX a good fit for businesses that need regular ROI reporting like accounting firms, grocery stores, or manufacturers.
WebFX has some of the most comprehensive services of any digital marketing agency. Its services include UX-focused website design, redesign, and everything needed to maintain a site, like SEO content marketing, technical optimization, and copywriting. It also offers ecommerce marketing, social media management, online advertising (including geofencing advertising), and business listing management.
- Website design: WebFX offers website design, redesign, and maintenance if it’s time for a brand refresh or your website simply isn’t performing well. Each site includes options like SEO, responsive web design, database integration, an ecommerce platform, and page design. After the design, the team will do all the copywriting for your site to ensure it’s search-friendly.
- Social media marketing: These include both organic and paid solutions. The team can set up your social media profile, analyze your competitors, and then set up a strategy and create your social content. They can also set up paid ads on Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and TikTok.
- SEO: WebFX offers services for custom keyword research, optimization, and content strategy and creation to rank your site higher. Plus, you also get an in-depth on-site and technical SEO audit to identify and solve SEO issues like slow site speeds, site map errors, and link profile errors. If you have an online store, you can also get ecommerce SEO.
- Email marketing: Starting at $300 per month, WebFX will help you create an email campaign and targeting strategy and do A/B testing on your email campaigns. The team can also create personalized content and landing pages to improve conversions.
- Content marketing: WebFX offers full-service content marketing services, from content strategy to reporting. This includes everything from blogs to whitepapers to videos, all of which are optimized for search engines.
- Advertising: WebFX also offers geofencing ads starting at $550 per month. These are PPC mobile ads sent to apps and mobile pages that people view after entering a defined area, for instance, near a competitor’s business. You can also get regular digital ads for Google, Bing, and social media platforms. It also leverages AI to target your ads where audiences will likely see them.
- Analytics reporting: WebFX uses an in-house ROI dashboard, which measures the return for every $1 you invest in your marketing plan. This will include the revenue you receive based on the number of leads you earn, the cost-per-click for all leads, and the number of lead-generating calls to your business.
All WebFX clients have a dedicated account manager who is the primary point of contact, manages the marketing services, and brings in other team members as needed. Account managers send regular emails and hold monthly calls to update their clients on their progress. Clients can call and email with questions or concerns.
LYFE Marketing: Best Small Business Marketing Agency for Social Media Marketing
LYFE Marketing has long been a well-regarded small business marketing agency for social media—it’s our overall best small business social media marketing agency. This is because while it doesn’t offer as diverse digital marketing services as other agencies, its social media services make up for it. You can get both organic and paid strategies for all the major social platforms including TikTok and Pinterest, all at affordable prices.
In addition to social media marketing services, LYFE Marketing offers PPC, SEO, email marketing, and content marketing. However, it’s best known as a full-service social media management agency. Here are a few of LYFE Marketing’s digital marketing offerings:
- Social media management: LYFE Marketing’s expert marketers strategize, create, and manage your social profiles on Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest. This includes monitoring pages and responding to comments and queries, building brand awareness, and increasing followers. It also directs traffic to your website for conversions.
- Social media advertising: LYFE Marketing’s paid social media advertising services include on-brand ads for Facebook and Instagram. However, you can also pay an extra $100 monthly for additional platforms, like X or LinkedIn. It can also track and manage campaigns, launch retargeting strategies, and work with location-based advertising.
- PPC management: This includes PPC advertising on Google (including geofencing ads), with added fees for advertising on Bing. The ads the team creates are all fully optimized for their respective platforms, including highly targeted visuals, videos, and copy.
- SEO: LYFE Marketing’s SEO services start with a site audit and include keyword research, optimization, and content strategy to drive traffic to your website from prominent search engines, excluding Amazon. It also offers off-page tactics like link building.
- Content marketing: Although not clearly stated on its website, content marketing is one of LYFE Marketing’s services. The team can create unique and high-quality blogs, videos, and infographics designed to drive traffic to your website by inserting relevant keywords. The team will also distribute your content on social media platforms through this service.
- Email marketing: À la carte email marketing services with LYFE start at $300. This includes one monthly email with content creation, email setup, list-building, and email tracking. There are also custom email plans for more frequent emails, list cleanup, and conversion tracking.
LYFE Marketing’s clients report that they work with a dedicated account manager reachable daily via email. Account managers set up weekly, biweekly, or monthly reporting sessions with clients and produce monthly reports detailing the state of campaigns. Depending on the services purchased, clients also have 24/7 access to a dashboard to monitor progress in real time.
What Are Geofencing Ads?
Geofencing ads are ads or push notifications designed to reach mobile device users passing through a specific physical location. The location(s) can be specified as a zip code, radius around a point on the map, or even within the premises of a retail location. To receive these ads, users must have location services turned on and opted into notifications of this type.
They are extremely powerful for local advertising for businesses such as restaurants, retail stores, and coffee shops but can be used for various business types. Understanding customer personas and behavioral targeting parameters can make these ads even more effective.
SEO Discovery: Best for SEO Services
SEO is one of the cornerstones of any marketing strategy. And for all things search engine marketing, a comprehensive yet affordable digital marketing agency for small businesses is SEO Discovery. Basic SEO packages start at $199 monthly—some of the lowest on this list—but they also cover local SEO, backlinking, and ecommerce SEO.
With SEO Discovery, you also have the choice between custom packages tailored to your business’s needs or à la carte services. Overall, it’s one of the most affordable digital marketing companies for small businesses. Have a look at its services below:
The core of SEO Discovery’s digital marketing services is rooted in SEO. You get content and website optimization, ecommerce, and CMS (content management system) services, as well as link-building.
But its expert team can also help you with social media, paid digital ads, and even influencer marketing, so it’s overall one of the best small business digital marketing agencies if your strategy focuses on inbound marketing and offers exceptional pricing.
Review SEO Discovery’s digital marketing services.
- SEO: SEO Discovery offers local, global, and ecommerce SEO, including keyword and content optimization, plus extras like voice search and zero click (snippet) optimization. It also offers SEO for Shopify and Drupal, link-building campaigns, and SEO consultancy.
- Social media marketing: SEO Discovery can build a social media campaign on Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Pinterest, or LinkedIn. This includes analyzing your market, creating your brand story, and building and executing a content strategy. You can also run campaigns on two, three, or all four channels (at a higher price).
- PPC and display advertising: SEO Discovery can also set up your digital ads on those same platforms, plus Google, Bing, Amazon, and Yahoo. These include search, display, video, local, and (in Google’s case) Google Shopping. It also covers multiple industries, from finance and healthcare to lifestyle and real estate.
- Content writing and marketing: Beyond the usual website content and blog posts, the team can also write social media content, press releases, and product descriptions for any topic and industry, with prices starting as low as $60 per article.
- Website design: SEO Discovery can build a completely custom website with responsive design and ecommerce features. Services include website wire-framing, logo design, user interface (UI) design, user experience (UX) design, and user testing to ensure your site’s quality. As add-ons, you can also include live chat, site maintenance, and social integrations.
- Reputation management: SEO Discovery’s reputation management services involve managing your online reviews, improving your on-page SEO, creating and managing your social profiles, building reputable links to your site, and monitoring your overall performance.
- Link-building: You can also avail of backlinking as a separate service. SEO Discovery offers packages ranging from $200 to $500, depending on the number of backlinks you need, as well as custom plans. Higher packages also include guest posts and video and podcast links.
- Web analytics: SEO Discovery also offers website analytics via Google. It’ll set you up with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Search Console. Then, analytics experts will evaluate your site’s performance on each and give recommendations to grow your website.
- Influencer marketing: Experts will source influencers based on your niche (i.e., fashion and fitness), then handle content creation and campaign management.
Whether you choose a custom plan with combined services or services à la carte, you’ll be assigned a designated manager to handle your requests and answer your questions. You can also contact anyone on SEO Discovery’s team via email, phone, or chat via WhatsApp.
Fiverr Pro: Best for Affordable Project-based Digital Marketing Services
Fiverr Pro is a freelance platform with hundreds of for-hire digital marketing services at affordable prices, some even starting as low as $20. If there’s a digital marketing service you’re looking for, you’ll likely find it on Fiverr, from web design to digital ads management. Since it’s Fiverr Pro, you can also guarantee that all the freelancers you find are vetted and trustworthy. It’s also far more affordable than most digital marketing agencies.
However, Fiverr Pro is a freelancer hiring platform—not a marketing agency per se. You’ll likely spend more time sourcing for the right freelancer for your specific needs. Also, you won’t have a dedicated account manager like with other full-scale marketing agencies, so you’ll need to manage and communicate everything independently.
However, if your top priority is affordability and you are comfortable managing your own projects, Fiverr Pro could be a valuable resource. It’s also helpful if you only need one specific marketing project at a time instead of end-to-end solutions.
Fiverr Pro contractors offer every type of digital marketing service available. These include web design, SEO, off-page marketing, and digital advertising. However, while prices start relatively low, you’ll need to sift through dozens (sometimes even hundreds) of professionals to find the specific services you are looking for.
Here are some marketing services you can hire professionals for on Fiverr Pro:
- Website design: Fiverr Pro’s website designers usually specialize in designing with the best website builders like Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, and Shopify. Some specialize in designing certain types, like ecommerce sites, community forums, or blogs. Many have tiered plans with different features, including websites with one or multiple pages, extension installment, branding, ecommerce functionality, or responsive design.
- SEO: Fiverr Pro’s SEO services include writing optimized blog content, product descriptions, or local SEO citations. Others can help fix technical website errors like website speed and responsive design errors. They also perform tasks specific to a content management system or CMS (e.g., WordPress or Wix).
- Off-page Marketing: Fiverr contractors cover a range of services like social media, email, and Amazon marketing, as well as local SEO citation building and review management. To find the providers that offer a specific type of off-page marketing, use the search bar to input the platform you wish to market on and “marketing” (i.e., “social media marketing”).
- Advertising: Fiverr Pro’s advertising services include PPC ads, animated video ads, hand-drawn advertisements for digital assets, banner ad design, advertising on Facebook, and display ads.
- Analytics: Fiverr freelancers offer general website analytics and analytics specific to each platform (i.e., Google AdWords analytics). If you need someone to install analytics on your website or help you track analytics around your existing campaign, search the platform you’d like to track, then “analytics.” (i.e., “Facebook analytics”).
- Graphic design: Dozens of experienced graphic designers are available for hire on Fiverr Pro. They can create everything from social media content to brand logos and email headers to print ad designs, with a diverse range of styles.
- Content writing: You’ll also find many content writers on Fiverr Pro for various content types, from long-form content like whitepapers and blogs to short websites or social media copy. As with any other service, narrow your search to your specific content needs to find the right writers for your project.
The customer support and communication channels available will depend on the Fiverr freelancer you choose. For example, some will provide regular analytical reports and discuss your campaign performance via video conferencing, while others offer a more hands-off approach to their projects. Be sure to discuss with your chosen provider how they can be contacted and if they provide regular campaign reporting, reviews, and updates.
Thinking of outsourcing your digital marketing to freelancers? Knowing your requirements is critical to ensuring you get what you need—and what you paid for.
Read our list of 31 digital marketing tips to ensure you have all your essential bases covered.
Ignite Visibility: Best for Website Design & Optimization
In marketing, having a good website is vital. This is because your website is your business’ primary representation in the online world, its marketing hub, and the landing point of most of your digital ad campaigns. It’s where you’ll capture most of your visitors and convert them into customers. That’s also why it needs to be well-designed and fully functional.
If you need expert help building your business’ website, Ignite Visibility is one of the best digital marketing companies for this purpose. Its website design services range from creating wireframes to optimizing your landing pages and even designing your brand logo. Its experts can also help if you simply need a website design refresh to bring in more traffic or to fit mobile screens. Have a look at some of its website designs below:
Aside from website design, Ignite Visibility is also an all-around digital marketing agency for small businesses. It also offers SEO, social media, paid ads, email marketing, content marketing, and public relations.
- Website design: Ignite Visibility can build your website from scratch, redesign your website from a rebrand, or simply optimize your site pages to drive conversions. This can be especially helpful if you want a truly custom, branded, and expertly built site you won’t get from a website builder platform.
- SEO: Ignite Visibility’s SEO process begins with keyword analysis based on your business and industry. Then, the team will incorporate those high-ranking keywords throughout your site with on-site optimization. They can also help you get backlinks from high-authority sites and influencers and target your keywords by location.
- Content marketing: The team can audit your existing site content, then prepare a content plan and create content for your blogs, emails, and social media. They can also create location-specific content, which is helpful if you have franchises in multiple locations.
- Email marketing: Ignite Visibility offers services for email marketing, text messaging, and push notifications. Email marketing services include strategy development, triggered and data-driven messaging, contact list growth, and advanced analytics and optimization.
- Social media marketing: Ignite Visibility’s experts can develop a full social media strategy, create content like infographics and short-form videos, handle influencers, and manage your social media accounts. They can also develop social media ads.
- Franchise marketing: Another service that sets Ignite Visibility apart is its franchise marketing services. These also make it a good digital marketing company for small businesses with multiple locations or franchises. This strategy involves locally optimized SEO, social media, email marketing, landing pages, and ads.
- Digital advertising: Ignite Visibility offers paid search management and Google Display, Facebook, Amazon, and Bing advertising. It can also do targeted and retargeted ads and international PPC campaigns and can even build landing pages to capture leads.
An expert team will be assigned to your business. They will create a plan based on industry research and your business goals, deploy strategies, and provide monthly progress reports. Clients say their dedicated project manager also brings other team members to consult (like content strategists and social media experts) as needed.
Thrive: Best for Ecommerce Marketing
Thrive shows a high level of sophistication and quality in its work. It offers extensive digital marketing services including ecommerce. It can market your business on Shopify, Walmart, Target, and Amazon, as well as on social media and your website, making it the best agency to partner with if you want to grow your online merchandising. Plus, you can get just about any other digital marketing service you might need, from SEO and PPC to email and text marketing.
Thrive offers virtually everything you need from a digital marketing agency. However, like many other marketing agencies, you’ll have to reach out directly to Thrive so that it can build a strategy to address your business needs. Explore Thrive’s digital marketing capabilities.
- Ecommerce marketing: Thrive’s ecommerce marketing services are some of the most extensive. The team can set up ecommerce SEO and content marketing on your website to help your products get found. It can also optimize your profiles on Shopify, Amazon, and Walmart, market on social media, and set up PPC ads to capture end-of-funnel customers.
- Website design: Thrive works with you to build a custom website that reflects your business and ensures a seamless experience for your customers. It offers content and video production, conversion rate optimization (CRO), and ADA-compliant web design. If you need a website you can maintain yourself, Thrive also offers WordPress and Shopify design services.
- SEO: Thrive can help optimize your website to garner more site traffic. This includes local SEO (aside from ecommerce SEO), off-page optimization, and even franchise SEO to capture location-specific customers.
- Social media marketing: After learning your business’ social media goals, Thrive’s experts will craft a social media plan and create content and ads for your social platforms. It also ensures your branding stays consistent across all platforms and your website; it manages your profiles, so you don’t have to worry about responding to queries or fostering conversations.
- Online reputation management (ORM): Thrive can help you build and maintain a positive reputation for your brand with reputation management software to monitor and respond to online reviews across various platforms. The team can also do reputation repair services to erase any fake or malicious reviews.
- Email and SMS marketing: Thrive’s experts can set up a full-scale email marketing strategy for your small business. It will also audit your business’ email needs, then create email templates and lists, and even set up automations. The same applies to SMS campaigns—it will set you up on an SMS platform, craft and optimize your messages, and then track your campaigns.
Thrive assigns you a dedicated point of contact (case manager), but you can easily reach out, interact, and collaborate with all the professionals working on your project. You can communicate with the team through various channels, like phone, email, and Zoom, during its business hours from Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. CST.
Hibu: Best for Brand Reputation Management
A good online reputation is another key aspect of building your online brand presence. This involves getting your business listed on online business directories like Yelp or the Yellow Pages, getting positive online reviews to increase your credibility, and even optimizing your site for voice search (aka for the likes of Siri and Alexa).
A small business digital marketing agency that can help with this is Hibu, as listing and review management are its main expertise and are included in every plan. Aside from setting up your listings and reviews, the Hibu team will also track your online reputation in the long term, and they can even automate your review requests.
Hibu offers an integrated suite of digital marketing services for small businesses. Aside from reputation management, you also get the basics. All the services are offered in custom bundled plans, so you get a targeted solution for your business.
- Listing management: Hibu’s team will do a comprehensive audit of your business’ information across your online listings and then update any outdated or inaccurate info and create new relevant listings if necessary. Its listing management platform also shows real-time data about your listings, like their clicks and engagement.
- Online reviews: Hibu can also manage your online ratings and reviews. Through its in-house review platform, you can request ratings from customers, and if they give you a high rating, you can go further and ask them to leave a review on your Google, Facebook, or Yelp pages.
- Website design: Hibu’s “Smart Sites” web design services ensure your site is highly optimized for Google Search while offering an excellent user experience. The team will also sync your site to dozens of online directories to ensure all online info about your business is uniform and updated to build a solid brand presence.
- SEO: Hibu’s SEO services mainly involve optimizing local search, managing meta tags, detecting duplicate content, adding relevant keywords, and auditing websites for search bots and voice search.
- Display advertising: Hibu offers display advertising for Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram. Hibu carefully creates and targets each ad to appear before potential leads and continues to retarget them to increase brand familiarity and conversions.
- Social media marketing: Hibu also offers social media marketing, primarily Facebook, as Hibu is a Facebook Marketing Partner. The team will set up your Facebook page and create, run, and monitor ads to keep visitors returning to your profile. However, if you need a more robust or standalone solution for multiple social platforms, we recommend LYFE Marketing or Fiverr Pro.
Each Hibu client is connected with a dedicated account manager. You also have access to your own Hibu dashboard to monitor your campaigns, and Hibu’s support team is available to call from Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST, and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.
Avalaunch Media: Best for Digital & Traditional Advertising Services
Digital advertising is a guaranteed way to gain clicks, impressions, or conversions quickly from specific target audiences. It’s particularly helpful for campaigns like limited-time sales or new product launches. Digital marketing can also be linked to traditional marketing channels such as billboards, TV, and radio.
On that front, one of the best digital marketing agencies for small businesses is Avalaunch Media. Based in Utah, Avalaunch Media specializes in advertising, whether on Google or on social media platforms (even on Snapchat and Pinterest). It also does advertising services for television, radio, and billboards, which are more comprehensive than most other marketing agencies reviewed here.
Avalaunch Media’s standout service is its advertising, which encompasses both online and offline platforms. But it also offers other essential digital marketing services, including SEO, website and landing page design, reputation management (i.e., press releases and brand monitoring), email marketing, and even creative branding design and video production.
- Advertising: Avalaunch Media offers both online and offline advertising services. For digital ads, it has creative services to design your ad, along with ad setup and optimization services for Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Snapchat. The team will research and set up a strategy based on your needs, then create, manage, and optimize your ads and report results.
- SEO: Avalaunch Media offers on-page content optimization, keyword research and strategy, link-building, technical optimization, and SEO for ecommerce businesses or local audiences. It can also create SEO content for blogs, website copy, product description pages, or other long-form content like e-books and content hubs (i.e., pillar pages).
- Website design: Experts at Avalaunch Media can also design and maintain your business website or even a specific landing page. They can set up your WordPress CMS, run A/B tests on your landing pages, and optimize their conversion rates.
- Creative design: Avalaunch Media’s creative design services include design services for logos and style guides, graphic design for marketing collaterals like presentations, project proposals, and infographics, video production for websites and social media (i.e., explainer videos and customer testimonials), and copywriting services.
- Reputation management: This includes press release writing and distribution, link-building with other reputable websites (i.e., blogs and media outlets), press mention monitoring, and community engagement.
- Email marketing: Avalaunch Media also has top-to-bottom email marketing solutions. The team can set your business up on an email platform, build your email list, design and send your email, and nurture your leads.
- Social media management: Aside from social media advertising, the Avalaunch Media team can also manage your business’s social media profiles for you. This includes setting up a social media strategy and creating and publishing content.
- Marketing analytics: Like WebFX, Avalaunch also has tools to measure your marketing campaigns’ insights. The team can audit your Google Analytics, translate your data, and then provide consultations on the best next steps.
Avalaunch Media assigns a dedicated team to work on your brand. It holds regular meetings to discuss strategies and updates depending on your preferred frequency—weekly, monthly, quarterly, and so on. You’ll also have access to your campaign’s analytics dashboard. For communication, it uses email, phone, Google Workspace, and Ravetree, a project management platform.
Find out more about digital advertising on social media—read our guide to the best social media platforms on which to advertise your business.
KlientBoost: Best for Content Marketing Services
Content marketing is a key strategy for developing your online presence. But it also takes a lot of work, from regularly publishing high-quality content to designing infographics to building backlinks. A digital marketing agency that can cover all aspects of content marketing is KlientBoost. It’s one of our top content marketing agencies overall, and it offers extensive content services for small businesses.
For instance, you can get everything from basic keyword research to advanced on- and off-page optimization for your website and even creative copywriting and design. Plus, KlientBoost tailors its plans to each client, so you’ll get services that fit your specific needs and goals.
KlientBoost is an all-around digital marketing agency for small businesses, but its core competence is content marketing. It has the most comprehensive content marketing services from other small business marketing companies, including content creation and CRO.
- SEO: KlientBoost’s SEO services can be provided independently or as part of its overall content marketing plan. It includes keyword research, content writing (for blog posts, whitepapers, and so on), and link-building. It also offers technical SEO services, including CRO and improving your site’s domain rating.
- Content marketing: KlientBoost’s content marketing services include all its SEO solutions, plus content creation (including for gated content), topic ideation, content editing, link adjustments, content distribution, creative copywriting, and even video production. The team takes a holistic approach with their content services, so you get solutions that target your business needs.
- B2B marketing: KlientBoost also has services for B2B marketing, from building your brand to generating interest to converting leads. These include brand advertising, community building, LinkedIn and Facebook ads, landing page design, email marketing, and retargeting.
- Digital advertising: KlientBoost can also set up and manage your digital ads on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Quora, and other social media platforms. It can design your ads, optimize your ad bidding to get the highest return on ad spend (ROAS), do A/B testing, and refine your ad keywords and other details once they’re live.
- Email marketing: KlientBoost also takes a comprehensive approach to email marketing. Its email services include targeting your email contacts, writing email copy, SPAM and block compliance, email A/B testing, list segmentation, and conversion and bounce rate improvements.
- CRO: KlientBoost also offers CRO as a standalone service, which is useful if you want your website to generate more leads. This includes product, category, or checkout page improvements, split testing for your pages, page redesigns, and more.
Like many other small business marketing agencies, KlientBoost assigns you a dedicated account manager. You’ll communicate with the team via virtual meetings and messaging, but they’re also available for contact via phone call and email contact form.
Promodo: Best for Branding and Creative Strategy
An essential part of marketing is building your brand strategy (i.e., your logo, colors, the mission and vision that define you). Building and executing a solid brand strategy is important because it’s how your audiences and the general public will perceive your business. And if you need help building your brand—or even if you need a brand refresh with a new creative direction—Promodo is a small business marketing agency that can help.
Branding strategy and creative design is one of Promodo’s core services, but its experts can also deliver hands-on services such as graphic design, video editing, animation, and UX or UI design for your website or app.
While Promodo stands out most for its branding and creative services, it also covers nearly all the essentials for small business marketing. This includes SEO services (from local SEO strategies to doing technical SEO audits for your site), marketing research, and paid ads. Explore Promodo’s digital marketing services.
- Branding strategy and creative design: Design experts can build a full visual brand identity for your business, from developing your strategy to creating your brand assets. They can also carry out video editing, animation, and branded photography as standalone services.
- UX and UI design: Promodo also has UX and UI designers, which is helpful if you have a website or app that needs to have a solidly user-centric design. It also offers CRO for your web pages.
- Marketing strategy and analytics: If you need help planning your business’ positioning in the market, Promodo can also help with market research and brand strategy. Whether for a go-to-market (GTM) strategy or continued growth, Promodo brings a higher level of strategic thinking to your core business.
- Social media marketing: Promodo’s experts can craft a social media strategy targeting your business objectives. This includes competitive analysis, building a content plan, and executing image creation, copywriting, and video editing. However, it doesn’t offer management of your social media accounts, so you’ll need to handle this part yourself.
- Digital ads: Promodo can also strategize and set up digital ads for your business on YouTube, TikTok, and Google (both Search and Display Ads). Another unique service is Promodo’s PPC automation services, which can automatically optimize all your PPC ads to maximize their cost-effectiveness.
- SEO: This involves doing a comprehensive SEO audit on your website, local SEO strategies, link-building, technical SEO, and reputation management. They’re available as standalone services or bundled in a custom plan for your business.
Rather than assigning one sole account manager to your business, Promodo works as a team to manage your account according to your marketing priorities. For instance, if your focus is branding, Promodo will provide a branding team to work on your needs. There are regular meetings to discuss strategy and progress updates, and you can communicate with them via online messaging apps like Slack, email, or calls.
How We Evaluated the Best Digital Marketing Agencies
Unless you have extensive digital marketing experience (and team members), the best course of action is to partner with an outside agency to get professional help growing your brand’s online presence. There are hundreds available, so to help narrow down your options, we selected the 11 best digital marketing agencies based on specific criteria.
- Pricing: We gave preference to agencies offering comprehensive digital marketing services at small business-friendly prices. While it is hard to offer one-size-fits-all pricing for marketing services, we considered how transparent or upfront the pricing is, rating agencies offering this a slightly higher ranking.
- Digital marketing services: Both digital and traditional marketing services were taken into consideration. At a minimum, we only considered agencies offering the digital marketing essentials: website, social media, SEO, digital ads, and PPC. However, we also gave extra credit for advanced strategies like reputation management, video or analytics, or traditional media offerings such as television, radio, and billboards.
- SEO-specific services: Most of the small business marketing firms above offer SEO services to grow your business’s online presence. Some of the agencies offer more nuanced services, including local and internal SEO, SEO tailored to ecommerce, such as Amazon or Shopify, and technical SEO.
- Customer support: Small businesses often hire digital marketing agencies as an extension of, or replacement for, the marketing department. Knowing this, we looked for agencies that assign a dedicated account manager to each client who is available during regular business hours to answer questions, consult, and manage change requests.
- Customer reviews: We also prioritized the small business marketing companies reputed for high-quality service and support according to ratings on key industry review sites like Clutch and Trustpilot.
Key Considerations When Choosing a Digital Marketing Agency
Outsourcing all or part of your company’s digital marketing is a big investment but often critical for small businesses. To get the best return, it’s important to know what to look for in an agency as well as how to choose the right fit for your business. Review some key considerations when choosing the best digital marketing agency for your business.
- Agency reputation: Does the agency have a good reputation based on online client reviews? Check places like Clutch, Google Business listings, Facebook, and other third-party sites to see whether customers seem satisfied with results, pricing, and the interaction style of the agency. You can also ask the agency itself for references and speak directly to existing clients.
- Services: Also consider if the digital marketing services the agency offers to match your needs. For example, if you want to focus on social media marketing, you might opt for an agency like LYFE Marketing, which specializes in it, while an agency like Promodo specializes in branding.
- Measurable results: An agency should give you case study-type examples of the return on investment clients have seen with their services.
- Budget: Digital marketing agencies often put pricing behind the curtain to build a quote customized to your business needs. While this can be helpful, there’s no harm in communicating your budget or a range of what you have budgeted to spend to see if they can put a package together for you that will work.
- Expectations: A company promising to “put you on the 1st page of Google!” is potentially offering something they can’t deliver. It’s important to get an idea of what type of results you can realistically expect based on your budget and the service or service bundle you sign up for.
- Clearly defined goals: Likewise, it’s important that you convey your expectations and desires to the agency being considered. Do they have a clear understanding of your goals, and can they outline a specific plan to get you there?
- Timeline: Some digital marketing strategies (like SEO content marketing) take time, while others (such as PPC ads) can produce virtually immediate results. Ideally, you will work with an agency that offers services that can produce some short-term wins for your business alongside longer-play strategies.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Hiring a digital marketing agency for your business can be worth it to get expert help to meet your marketing objectives, whether it’s growing your brand awareness or driving more conversions. Agencies have professionals in several marketing strategies, and many are experienced with growing small businesses. They can handle all the marketing for you, so you can focus on running your business.
To choose the best digital marketing agency for your business, consider the agency’s reputation, the services it covers, and how it measures results. Also, consider your budget, expectations, goals, and project timelines. Also, be sure to communicate these factors clearly with your chosen agency to establish a clear understanding and productive partnership.
Yes. Digital marketing can grow your brand awareness, engagement, and even sales, as many consumers are now online—even for local services. For instance, 87% of consumers rely on online searches to find local businesses, according to WebFX.1 Online reviews are also key to consumer behavior, with consumers reporting spending 49% more on brands with positive reviews, according to business coach and consultant Lisa Zhou.2
The costs for digital marketing services can vary widely between agencies and are naturally driven by your marketing budget, services required, and business objectives. Most of the agencies reviewed in this article offer a wide range of pricing and usually start with a custom proposal tailored to your needs.
In reviewing these agencies, we strongly considered the cost and value in relation to the variety and quality of services to determine their rankings. Typically expect to spend anywhere from $500 to $5,000 a month to start if you engage with an agency. Depending on the campaign and objectives, one to six months is a good test period in which to see meaningful results.
Bottom Line
Digital marketing encompasses so many strategies, from websites to online advertising. Tackling this all by yourself as a small business can be daunting. Finding the best digital marketing agency for small businesses comes down to your specific needs and priorities.
It may feel like a big financial commitment, but the right partner can grow your brand exponentially, gain new leads and customers, and increase your revenue. For the best overall, our top pick is Straight North—it has all the marketing services and expertise your business needs to flourish and does so with excellent and attentive customer service.
References:
[1]Local SEO Statistics, WebFX
[2]Online Review Statistics, Luisa Zhou