8 Best Digital Marketing Agencies for Small Businesses in 2023
A good digital marketing agency for small businesses will help generate leads and sales and build your brand presence with effective online marketing services. We reviewed dozens of agencies offering various affordable digital marketing and advertising solutions. Based on cost, specialties, quality of service, and customer reviews, here are our top picks for the best digital marketing agencies for small businesses.
- Best digital marketing agency for small businesses overall: Straight North
- Best for artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven insights: WebFX
- Lowest starting cost of a la carte options: SEO Discovery
- Top choice for social media marketing: Lyfe Marketing
- Great for multi-location businesses: Ignite Visibility
- Most affordable all-in-one solution: Hibu
- Best option for ecommerce: Thrive
- Most affordable project-based services: Fiverr Pro
Top Digital Marketing Agencies at a Glance
Best Agencies | Services Starting From* | Digital Marketing Services | Learn More |
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Custom, from $300/month |
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Custom, from $300/month |
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Custom, from $250/month |
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Custom, from $650/month |
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Custom |
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Custom website bundles from $1,000-$2,000+ per month |
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Custom |
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From $50 |
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*Some services also require a setup fee or initial investment
Take our quiz to find out which digital marketing agency works best for you.
Which digital marketing agency is best for you?
Straight North: Best Digital Marketing Agency Overall
Pros
- Free SEO & PPC audit
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising services for search, shopping, display, and social
- Creative branding and digital marketing services all in one plan
- A la carte services available
- National, local, ecommerce, or enterprise SEO services
- Web design, copy, and creatives
- One-time or monthly plans
Cons
- No transparent pricing, only custom quotes
- Cost can add up if you need a comprehensive suite of services
- No performance dashboard, unlike WebFX
Like most other digital marketing companies for small businesses, Straight North offers custom pricing based on your business’ specific needs—you’ll need to request a quote to get a specific price. However, below are some of the starting prices for services as published on the website or shared with our team in a discovery call:
- PPC services from $500 monthly or 15% of your marketing budget
- Local SEO services from about $500 per month
- Website design from $3,000
- Brochure design from $1,000 per page
- Logo design from $5,000
- Photography services from $300
Straight North has an average rating of 4.7 on Clutch.co. Overall, customers praise its prompt delivery turnarounds and responsiveness and say the agency effectively helps generate more leads and website traffic. However, some negative reviews stated that not all generated leads matched their target customer profiles, while others were dissatisfied with the content quality.
Straight North is our top pick for the best digital marketing agency for small businesses. It offers the most essential digital marketing strategies, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising, and website building. But it also stands out for offering creative and branding services. This makes it a good choice for any small business completely starting out on its digital marketing journey.
Straight North’s bread and butter are its comprehensive PPC and SEO services, including a free audit for both. On the SEO side, they offer services tailored specifically for reaching national or local audiences or for boosting your ecommerce, depending on your needs. For PPC, they offer advertising services for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Instagram starting at $500 monthly or 15% of your monthly marketing budget.
Straight North Features
As a small business marketing agency, Straight North offers all the essentials you need for building your brand presence, from finalizing your brand identity to getting you started on the right pay-per-click (PPC) and SEO strategies. Below are the services Straight North can do for your business.
Straight North has some of the best PPC management services out of any small business digital marketing agency on this list, thanks mainly to how comprehensive it is for the price. Starting at $500 monthly (which is the standard price for most digital marketing agencies) or 15% of your monthly marketing budget, Straight North can set up PPC advertising for search (Google and Bing), ecommerce, display ads, and social media.
Straight North’s SEO services cover search-optimized content writing or rewriting, website optimization (including mobile optimization, site speed, and more), and link building. They can also target your SEO campaigns to local or national audiences or tailor them for ecommerce if you have an online store—the latter can help increase your store’s credibility, search engine ranking, and more. They also offer enterprise SEO services for larger companies.
Straight North can also build a business website for you, complete with a sitemap, content, Google Analytics, and more. They also offer higher plans for larger, more comprehensive websites, or a plan with combined website-building and SEO services.
Once your site is built, you can increase traffic to your website with content written and published to your site by Straight North. The team can also create assets like infographics and downloads to increase backlinks to your site and help build your email contact list.
Straight North also has an in-house creative team to design assets for your business, from presentations to logos, brochures, and more. Pricing is on a project-by-project basis, meaning you can avail of their creative services anytime you need a project designed, without committing to a larger plan. For any project, you’ll only need to discuss your vision and brand requirements, and the team will present designs for you to approve.
Branding is a service that sets this provider apart from others on this list. As such, it’s our top pick for the best startup marketing agency. Your initial consultation will cover the digital marketing strategies needed to get your brand on the map with your audience and in your industry.
Straight North Customer Support
When partnering with Straight North, you’ll be appointed a dedicated project manager to handle your business’ needs. 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 them from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays for any input about your projects.
WebFX: Best Data & AI-driven Insights
Pros
- Transparent pricing on the website
- Dedicated account manager
- In-depth insights and dashboards
- A la carte or all-in-one solution
- Location-based SEO
- Dashboard shows revenue vs every $1 spent with WebFX
Cons
- Some plans require an upfront investment
- Fiverr Pro is cheaper for a la carte services
- Pricier than Lyfe Marketing for social media services
The cost of WebFX services vary based on the services you choose, and some do require an initial investment. However, pricing is transparent, and plans are packed with value. You’ll always see your return on investment, and the agency’s online marketing services for small businesses are all powered by data, artificial intelligence (AI), and in some cases, machine learning.
Every plan can scale as your business’ digital marketing needs increase, and you can save money by bundling the services you need with a custom proposal:
- SEO services from $1,500 a month
- PPC advertising from $9,000 a month or 5% of your marketing budget
- Email marketing from $300 a month
- Social media marketing from $900 a month
- Website design from $2,500 per website
- Content marketing from $2,000 a month
- Website copywriting from $25 a page
- YouTube advertising from $975 or 15% of ad spend (plus cost of ads)
- WordPress security from $300
- SEO audits: $8,600
- ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) web compliance from $1,250
- Web maintenance, security, and support from $300 a month
In addition, WebFX offers specialized services with custom pricing for:
- Website design, development, and maintenance
- Digital recruitment marketing services
- Augmented and virtual reality solutions
- Shopify optimization
- Facebook Marketplace
- Walmart advertising
- Target Plus digital marketing and optimization
- Voice search optimization (voice assistant skills development)
WebFX has earned a 4.9 overall star rating on Clutch. Clients are satisfied with how thoroughly WebFX researched their business and audiences before putting together a custom marketing plan. Other clients say that WebFX offers excellent customer service and helps them grow their businesses significantly. Though negative WebFX reviews are rare, one user wanted a more focused strategy instead of frequent tweaks.
WebFX offers comprehensive digital services and is our top artificial intelligence (AI)-driven digital marketing agency for small businesses with their AI solutions for content marketing, SEO, social media, email marketing, and even PPC advertising. You can choose your own adventure with its a la carte options to fill your digital marketing gaps or get a bundled solution of their features.
In addition, it has an ROI (return on investment) Dashboard that shows the revenue you’ve earned for every $1 you invest in WebFX. WebFX is best for small businesses as this dashboard ensures every dollar counts. Businesses that need frequent ROI reporting, like accounting firms, grocery stores, or manufacturers, also benefit from WebFX.
WebFX Features
WebFX is one of the most comprehensive and well-regarded digital marketing firms for small businesses. Their services include user experience (UX)-focused website design, redesign, and everything needed to maintain a site, like SEO content marketing, technical optimization, and copywriting.
For wider online visibility, they also offer ecommerce, local SEO, social media management, online advertising, search engine marketing (SEM), geofencing advertising, and business listing management.
But what also sets WebFX apart is how their prices and services are geared specifically for small and medium-sized businesses. They list starting costs for most services on the website, so you can get a ballpark figure of how much you can get for your budget or what you should plan to spend.
Open the drop-downs below for a complete picture of WebFX’s top features for digital marketing for small businesses:
WebFX offers services for 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, page design, and various styles to match your brand needs. After the design, they do all the copywriting for your site to ensure it’s search-friendly.
WebFX offers services for custom keyword research, optimization, and content strategy and creation to meet your goals. They also offer link building, an in-depth SEO audit based on your industry, and competitor analysis. Plus, you’ll also receive a technical audit identifying performance issues, such as slow site speeds, site map errors, and link profile errors. The SEO plans offer different numbers of key phrases for optimization, ranging from 150 to 300.
WebFX also offers off-page SEO strategies like Google Business Profile optimization and local search optimization across business listing sites. They provide SEO strategies by U.S. location or global region. Finally, they offer SEO for ecommerce and for Amazon stores. This includes keyword research for 25 to 50 optimized keywords per product, product listing, product description copywriting, category, and subcategory optimization.
In plans as low as $300 per month, WebFX will help you create an email campaign, targeting strategy, and A/B testing to use email marketing for lead generation. The service includes content creation and personalization to ensure high-performing emails. You can even have a landing page created to improve conversions from email marketing as an add-on.
WebFX offers review management services, email, and social as part of its off-page marketing services. Social media services include profile setup and optimization, as well as post and content creation. Meanwhile, email marketing services include content creation and personalization, A/B testing, campaign design and coding, email distribution, landing page development and publishing, and targeted list building.
Regarding local SEO, WebFX’s review management services and software include an initial brand reputation analysis. The team will then set up, claim, and optimize review listings across Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, and Facebook. WebFX also offers daily software monitoring of review sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp. You can monitor your positive and negative reviews via separate dashboard streams and respond to each type accordingly.
WebFX uniquely offers geofencing ads starting at $550 per month. These are pay-per-click (PPC) mobile ads sent to apps and mobile pages people view after entering a defined area, like near a competitor’s business. Its starter plan offers up to 15 conversion zones and traffic data for a webform, ecommerce, and foot traffic.
They also provide advertising services for Google Ads Network, Bing, and across YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Lastly, with programmatic ads, WebFX leverages AI to place online ads when and where target audiences will likely see them.
WebFX’s reporting stands out for offering a proprietary return on investment (ROI) dashboard, which measures the return for every $1 you invest in your marketing plan with WebFX. Metrics represented in this dashboard 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. You can also filter your results by a start and end date.
WebFX Customer Support
All WebFX clients have a dedicated account manager who serves as the primary point of contact, manages the marketing services, and brings in other team members as needed. Account managers send regular emails to update their clients on their progress. Clients can call and email with questions or concerns, and users say they complete a monthly call with their account manager.
SEO Discovery: Lowest Starting Cost of a la Carte Services
Pros
- Bundled or a la carte services
- Cheaper starting costs than most
- Free website audit
- Comprehensive SEO services, including local, global, and ecommerce SEO, voice search optimization, zero-click search, and more
- Affordable SEO plans tailored for small businesses
- Offers many digital marketing services, including website design, influencer marketing, and more
Cons
- Ecommerce SEO is limited to Shopify
- Not all pricing is transparent
- Creative design services offered are minimal
- No email marketing services
On the whole, SEO Discovery is an affordable digital marketing agency for small businesses. You can avail of their services as a bundled plan with custom pricing, or choose services a la carte depending on your needs. While most services have custom pricing, here are some of the prices you can expect from SEO Discovery.
- Small business SEO packages from $199 monthly
- Shopify SEO services from $350
- Drupal SEO services from $350
- Web content writing from $60
- Content marketing from $150
- Website building with ecommerce from $120
SEO Discovery currently holds a 4.6 rating on Clutch.co. According to user reviews, the agency’s best points are the team’s expertise and responsiveness, and their ability to bring in new leads and help websites rank on search engine results. Meanwhile, the few negative reviews stated that their low-quality backlinks generated considerable spam.
As a small business marketing agency, SEO Discovery is one of the most affordable and comprehensive for individual services—in fact, they have the lowest starting prices on this list. Plus, you can get a custom plan with the services you need at a custom price, or avail each service independently.
For example, their small business SEO services start at $199 per month, and they also offer custom pricing based on your needs and budget. They offer a myriad of SEO services, including content and website optimization, backlinking, and more. Beyond SEO, they also offer services for social media marketing, PPC advertising, content writing, website design, reputation management, and influencer marketing.
SEO Discovery Features
SEO Discovery stands out as a small business marketing agency for its comprehensive services. On the SEO side alone, you get content and website optimization, ecommerce and content management system (CMS) services, link building, and more. They also have wide-ranging digital marketing services, from web design to influencer marketing, at prices that won’t break the bank. Below are the services you can avail of with SEO Discovery.
SEO is the cornerstone of SEO Discovery, and this shows in its comprehensive list of SEO services. They offer local, global, and ecommerce search engine optimization, which include keyword and content optimization, plus extras like voice search and zero click (snippet) optimization, and more. They also offer SEO for Shopify and Drupal, link-building campaigns, and SEO consultancy services.
SEO Discovery can also run PPC ad campaigns for your brand on Google, Bing, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and Yahoo. These include search, display, video, local, and in Google’s case, Google Shopping. They also cover multiple industries, from finance and healthcare to lifestyle, real estate, and more. For more ecommerce-focused businesses, they also offer PPC ad services tailored specifically for Amazon.
SEO Discovery also stands out for its comprehensive content writing and content marketing services. Beyond the usual website content and blog post, they can write content for social media, press releases, and product descriptions for any topic and industry, with prices starting as low as $60 per article.
For website design, SEO Discovery can build a completely custom website with responsive design and ecommerce features. Their services also include website wire-framing, logo, user interface (UI), user experience (UX) design, and user testing to ensure your sites quality. As add-ons, you can also include live chat, site maintenance, social integrations, and more.
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 then monitoring your overall performance.
You can also avail of backlinking as a separate service from SEO Discovery. What’s more, SEO Discovery offers these services whether you’re a business owner looking to build your credibility or a blogger looking to expose your content to more audiences. For business owners, they also have a team of writers to write your guest post, which they’ll send out to their network of over 1,000 bloggers. Once your post is published, you’ll also receive a full report of your campaign.
SEO Discovery also offers website analytics via Google. They’ll set you up with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Search Console. Then, their analytics experts will evaluate your site’s performance on each and give recommendations for your business’ growth.
Finally, another area that makes SEO Discovery unique is their influencer marketing services—out of this list, it’s the only small business marketing agency that offers it as a standalone service. Their experts will source influencers based on your niche (e.g., fashion, fitness, etc.), then manage the content creation and campaign management processes.
SEO Discovery Customer Support
Whether you choose a custom plan with combined services or choose services a la carte, you’ll be assigned a designated manager to handle your requests and answer your questions. You can also contact anyone on their team via email—they aim to reply within 30 minutes—or via a quick phone call.
Lyfe Marketing: Best for Multichannel Social Media Marketing
Pros
- Social media plans from $650
- Video marketing to reach younger buyers via Instagram and TikTok
- Dedicated account manager and in-depth reports
- Transparent pricing and plans
- Locale-based targeting
- PPC management and email marketing services
Cons
- Add-on fees for channels besides Facebook and Instagram
- No ecommerce SEO management, unlike Hibu and WebFX
- No web design or creative services
Lyfe Marketing is very transparent as to pricing. Each service has three different plans and an initial three-month contract that converts to month-to-month after the first three months. The services are relatively affordable for small businesses. For example, pricing for social media ranges from $750 to $1,150 per month. For more information, you can call them and request a free quote.
While there are three plan tiers for each service Lyfe Marketing offers, you can also contact them for custom quotes according to your business needs. Below are the starting prices for each service:
- Content marketing from $500 a month
- Social media marketing from $470 a month
- Social media advertising from $650 a month
- PPC ad management from $650 a month
- Email marketing from $500 a month
- Digital video production and management from $1,350 a month
- Digital video advertising from $1,250 a month
Lyfe Marketing reviews have earned the digital marketing agency a 4.4 average review on Clutch. Clients love that the agency keeps an open communication line, is transparent about the campaign progress, and delivers positive results. However, a few negative reviews were dissatisfied with the quality of their content and missed deliverables.
Lyfe Marketing is a top digital marketing agency for small businesses, especially for social media. In fact, it’s our top social media marketing agency for small businesses. While it doesn’t offer quite as many digital marketing services as some other agencies, this won’t be a problem if your digital marketing needs fit within their areas of expertise.
Lyfe Marketing’s services are relatively affordable for what they offer compared to their competitors, starting at $650 per month for social media advertising and $750 for social marketing. They’re one of the best marketing companies for small businesses looking to grow a presence on social channels.
Lyfe Marketing Features
In addition to social media marketing services, Lyfe Marketing offers PPC, SEO, email marketing, and content marketing. However, they’re best known as a full-service social media management agency, and other digital marketing services aren’t featured as prominently as social. Here are a few of Lyfe Marketing’s digital marketing offerings ideal for growing a small business:
Lyfe Marketing’s PPC services include pay-per-click advertising on Google, with added fees for advertising on Bing. They don’t provide PPC management for other search engines like Amazon (although social media PPC is included in their advertising service). The ads they create are all fully optimized for their respective platforms, including highly targeted visuals, videos, and copy.
You’ll be assigned a dedicated advertising manager to oversee your account. This manager will develop a PPC strategy, identify your business’ keyword opportunities, and perform competitor analysis. From the research, a team of experts will design and create ads and perform A/B testing to further optimize your campaign. They will also perform daily monitoring and campaign tweaking on your behalf.
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. Like WebFX’s SEO services, they include Google Business Profile setup and optimization.
Aside from on-page optimization, Lyfe Marketing also performs off-page tactics like link building. However, unlike Ignite Visibility, it doesn’t offer internal link building and optimization. However, there is location-based and ecommerce SEO to help you target niche audiences.
Although not clearly stated on their website, content marketing is part of the digital marketing agency’s services. They create unique, high-quality blogs, viral videos, and infographics designed to drive traffic to your website by inserting relevant keywords. Lyfe Marketing includes automatic distribution of the content on social media platforms to this service.
A la carte email marketing services with Lyfe start at $500 monthly. This is more expensive than with WebFX; however, it includes two emails per month—one more than WebFX’s base tier. Email marketing includes email design and copy creation, list maintenance, and monthly reporting. There’s also an option to add on a four-email drip campaign series for $500.
There’s a $300 setup fee for this service, but as with other Lyfe Marketing services, they will likely waive it if you ask.
Lyfe Marketing Customer Support
Lyfe Marketing’s clients report 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.
Ignite Visibility: Best for Businesses With Multiple Locations
Pros
- No long contracts
- Dedicated account manager and in-depth reports
- Packages tailored to your business
- Franchise marketing—build brand presence across multiple locations
- Multiregional and multilingual SEO
Cons
- Hard to get an idea of pricing without a consultation
- No a la carte or per project services
- Has a selection process for clients—not all are guaranteed
Ignite Visibility only provides custom quotes based on your budget requirements, business size, and needs. However, prices are believed to be anywhere between $1,000 and $10,000, with prices varying for each business. Services will also be tailor-made to fit the unique needs of your business, and all quotes are employed on a month-to-month basis with no contract.
Ignite Visibility reviews on Clutch.co gave the small business digital marketing agency a 4.9-star rating. Users praise the company’s expertise and love that they work closely with clients to reach business goals. Reviews also show that clients love that their services are fully customized based on their needs, goals, and industry, though a few negative reviews mentioned dissatisfaction with their output quality.
Ignite Visibility customizes marketing solutions for each client, including multilocation franchise marketing plans. This makes it best for small businesses with storefronts or franchises in multiple locations.
An award-winning digital marketing agency for small businesses, Ignite Visibility offers comprehensive solutions to build a positive brand presence from the ground up, including website design, on-page and off-page marketing, advertising strategies, and others.
Ignite Visibility Features
Ignite Visibility offers a wide range of digital marketing services in quotes that are custom-built for your business. The services and strategies proposed will be based on factors such as your industry, business model, target consumer, and business goals. A few of the essential features of Ignite Visibility include:
Ignite Visibility can set up your small business website, help you transfer or redesign your website for rebranding, or simply drive more traffic to your current site via optimization. They code each site from scratch, creating a custom site that aligns with your business model, industry, target consumer, and goals.
One plus is that Ignite Visibility also specializes in multiregional websites. As a result, your content comes across well no matter where your customer is located—making it ideal for businesses with regional franchises.
Ignite Visibility’s SEO process begins with keyword analysis based on your business and industry along with optimization of your website (including code optimization). They then incorporate the ranking keywords throughout your site to increase its visibility on search results.
Ignite Visibility’s consultants will optimize both your internal and external linking strategies. In addition to following best practices for internal linking, they also reach out to get backlinks from high-authority sites and engage influencers to create more brand awareness and website traffic.
They’ll also target your audience by location locally or internationally, using a location-based keyword strategy on your website. They create a location-specific brand reputation across business listing sites and social media by claiming or building your business pages, incorporating your contact information, and building positive reviews. Amazon and ecommerce SEO is also offered for stores.
As part of its SEO services, Ignite Visibility creates a plan to optimize your website’s on-page content using ranking keywords taken from their keyword analysis. A team of expert writers and editors will then incorporate the keywords in appropriate pages on your website, all while optimizing existing web pages. They can also craft new content to include topics your target audiences are searching for.
Ignite Visibility offers services for email marketing, short message service (SMS) text messaging, and push notifications. This makes it a great option for restaurants and retailers looking to drive website and in-person traffic through strategic email marketing campaigns.
Email marketing services include strategy development, triggered and data-driven messaging, contact list growth, and advanced analytics and optimization. They will also integrate email marketing services alongside your customer relationship management (CRM), making it a great option for sales-oriented businesses looking to nurture leads and grow sales through email marketing.
Ignite Visibility offers a long list of off-page marketing strategies, including social, email, Amazon marketing, and public relations. After completing on-site optimization, they create and employ marketing strategies for other channels. For example, they create a strategy for marketing on social channels that heavily integrates with your website’s content strategy to earn more links and brand awareness.
Ignite Visibility’s email growth strategy services follow the same pattern. First, they help you build an email marketing list. Then, they employ a custom email marketing plan based on competitor research, target consumer insights, your business size, and your goals.
What sets Ignite Visibility apart from the other digital marketing agencies on this list is their services for franchises. First, they start with optimizing your website for your audiences, no matter where they are. Then they implement a multiregional SEO and paid search strategy for foreign language queries. They also work on your social media profiles through organic and paid social strategies to attract customers to your brick-and-mortar stores.
Ignite Visibility offers paid search management and Google Display, Facebook, Amazon, and Bing advertising. They pair you with an expert on online marketing for small businesses who consults with you on how to increase revenue and leads while cutting costs via targeted strategies and a pay-per-click audit.
They offer targeted and retargeted ads for U.S. consumers and can create international PPC campaigns. Finally, they build landing pages to capture leads. If you’re not sure how this benefits your business, learn how to create a landing page and what you need to do to ensure it produces conversions.
Ignite Visibility Customer Support
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. Check-ins are available weekly, as well as in-depth monthly and quarterly reports.
Hibu: Best All-in-one Digital Marketing Solution
Pros
- Dedicated account manager
- In-depth weekly or monthly reports
- Complete digital marketing solution customized for your business
- Affordable bundled packages
- Dashboard to monitor online brand reputation
Cons
- No a la carte options
- Pricing isn’t transparent
- No monthly contracts
- No email marketing services
- Social marketing is locked behind the highest-plan tier
Hibu’s digital marketing offers custom plans based on your business needs, with bundled plans believed to start from $1,000 to $2,000 per month. The starter plan includes website design, listings and reputation management, and optimization—however, remember your quote may vary depending on the services quoted. To get a custom quote, visit the Hibu homepage and click “Get Started,” then fill out the form to set up a free consultation.
Hibu holds an average rating of 3.0 on Trustpilot. Positive reviews said they liked that the digital marketing agency offers a full-service approach, ensuring they are consistently branded across the web. However, negative reviews expressed frustration with Hibu’s long contracts (at least six months) and complicated cancellation policies, and were overall dissatisfied with their work quality.
Although their pricing is custom, Hibu is generally an affordable digital marketing agency for local small businesses due to its all-in-one approach. You get a website, listing and reputation management, and more—all in one plan.
Hibu also integrates local SEO into the website design and reputation management components of their digital marketing plans. Plus, they offer custom plans that take your business needs into account. As such, Hibu is one of the best online marketing companies small businesses can choose for custom solutions.
Hibu Features
Hibu offers an integrated suite of digital marketing agency services for small businesses. All the services are offered in custom bundled plans, so you get a targeted solution for your business. Open the drop-downs below to learn more about Hibu’s small business marketing services:
Hibu’s web design services ensure a branded, smooth site visitor experience. It also ensures that search engines can easily index your site to help it rank higher on Google.
Websites are custom-built around each client’s goals, industry, and brand. They are then synced with up to 60 online business directory listings, including social platforms and business listing sites, to ensure that information is always up to date and consistent across the brand’s online presence.
Hibu offers many SEO services to improve the visibility of your website’s content among your target audiences. This includes optimizing existing content for search engines, managing meta tags, detecting duplicate content, optimizing for mobile, building link profiles, and auditing websites for search bots.
Hibu’s business listing management includes local SEO. They constantly review and manage your business information (e.g., business name, contact information, hours of operation, and even photos and promotions) across business listing sites like Google Business Profile and Foursquare. Once they confirm your information, it is automatically updated across the web, then “locked” so it can’t be edited without authorization.
Hibu also offers review and reputation management services by giving you a dashboard to monitor and respond to reviews across all your business listings. You can request feedback from the dashboard via email. When customers respond with feedback, you can invite those who replied positively to post a review on one of your business listing sites.
In addition, Hibu offers Listings Management to monitor and manage all of your online business listings, including on voice search platforms like Siri, Alexa, and Google. Give Hibu a call with changes, and they’ll ensure your listings are updated online.
Hibu offers social media, search, and display advertising for search engine marketing. Social media ads extend across Facebook and Instagram, and Hibu carefully targets each ad to appear before potential leads and continues to retarget them to increase brand familiarity and the chance of a conversion.
Hibu’s search (aka pay-per-click) and display marketing ads also advertise your business, which your customers frequent across the web. For example, search ads target consumers on the most popular search engines—like Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Advertising. Display ads target consumers across the websites they most frequent, including blogs, news sites, Gmail, and social media sites.
Hibu Customer Support
Hibu offers flexible client support, and each client is connected with a dedicated account manager. You have the option to check in weekly or even monthly, and can do so via phone, video conference, or email.
Hibu offers a custom schedule for check-ins during business hours from Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time, and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. As business doesn’t always happen during office hours, clients can connect with Hibu’s digital support team 24/7 via email or chat.
Thrive: Best Digital Marketing Agency for Ecommerce
Pros
- Multiple ecommerce-specific services
- Dedicated point-of-contact, with the ability to communicate directly with the others on the team
- Complete digital marketing solution custom-built for your business
Cons
- Pricing isn’t mentioned—all plans are custom
- Clients say cost is on the higher side
Thrive isn’t upfront about pricing, but clients on Clutch report spending a few thousand per service. The number of services you need will influence the final price, and to get a completely accurate price for your project, reach out to Thrive for free for a proposal.
Thrive currently has 4.7 out of 5 stars on Clutch. Customers love the quality of the work, and many report an increase in traffic, sales, and overall customer engagement while working with Thrive. Clients also love how transparent, communicative, and professional the whole team is. However, there were a few times when the agency failed to hit expectations.
Thrive offers extensive digital marketing services for ecommerce platforms. Among these are Shopify, Walmart, Target, and Amazon, making them the best agency to reach out to if you need to market an ecommerce business. In addition, you can get just about any other digital marketing service you might need, from SEO and PPC to email and text marketing, and more.
Thrive Features
Thrive offers nearly everything you need from a digital marketing agency, including website design, SEO, PPC, link building, social media marketing, and reputation management. However, like many other marketing agencies, you’ll have to reach out directly to Thrive so that they can build a strategy to address your business needs.
Click the tabs below to learn more about Thrive’s digital marketing capabilities:
Thrive works with you to build a custom website that reflects your business and ensures a seamless marketing experience for your customers. Whether you need a website to attract new clients or an ecommerce website complete with a store, Thrive can do it all for you. If you need a website you can maintain by yourself, Thrive also offers WordPress and Shopify design services.
Thrive can help optimize your website to garner more site traffic. First, they perform keyword research and build a strategy for your site. Then, they create content or optimize your existing content with these keywords. Thrive also performs local SEO (alongside their reputation management services) and off-page optimization with social media marketing.
Aside from general SEO, Thrive also has extensive ecommerce optimization to help customers make purchasing decisions more seamlessly. They can optimize your website, but they also offer SEO for specific ecommerce marketplaces like Walmart and Target.
In conjunction with social media, Thrive works to build a positive reputation for your brand through its reputation management services. As a client, you can access an easy-to-use reputation management dashboard to monitor and respond to your reviews on different platforms. They also perform reputation repair services, which work to erase any fake or malicious reviews.
Thrive Customer Support
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 them through various channels, like phone, email, and Zoom, during their business hours from Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Central Time.
Fiverr Pro: Cheapest Project-based Digital Marketing Services
Pros
- Variety of services and pre-vetted professionals
- Project-based or work with a freelancer on an ongoing basis
- Very affordable; from $100
- Virtually every digital marketing agency service is represented
Cons
- No proprietary tools like WebFX’s ROI Dashboard
- Few (if any) bundled solutions
- Takes time to vet freelancers
- No dedicated account manager—you’ll have to oversee your projects
Fiverr Pro freelancers offer digital marketing agency services ranging from $15 to $1,000-plus per task, depending on the provider and specialty. To learn more about the pricing around your digital marketing needs, sign up for a Fiverr account, head over to the Pro section, and search for the service of interest. Then, click on various profiles to learn about the pricing and services each Fiverr freelancer offers.
Here are a few sample freelancers on Fiverr Pro providing various digital marketing services:
Individual Fiverr Pro providers all have their own client reviews and ratings. However, Fiverr Pro experts are the best of the best: each has 4.8 to 5-star ratings on the platform—you’ll simply need to find one that fits the criteria you’re looking for. Then, click on the provider’s profile and scroll to the bottom to view past clients’ star ratings and written reviews.
Fiverr Pro is a freelance platform that stands out by offering one-time or ongoing digital marketing services at affordable prices. If there’s a digital marketing need you’re looking for, chances are you will find it on Fiverr Pro, including web design and maintenance, digital advertising, and SEO, among others.
It’s a step up from the standard Fiverr, as the freelancers on Fiverr Pro are all verified and highly rated. As a result, the prices aren’t as low as $5—expect to find starting prices closer to $100. It’s still affordable for many, and the platform is best for small businesses looking for help with digital marketing on a tight budget.
Fiverr Pro Features
Fiverr Pro contractors offer every type of digital marketing service available. These include web design, search engine optimization, off-page marketing, and digital advertising. However, while prices start relatively low, you must take time sifting through professionals to find those offering the specific services you are looking for.
In addition, freelancers (especially those you hire for one-time projects) won’t have the same relationship with your business the way an agency would, and it will take time to build a rapport with them. Finally, since it isn’t a marketing agency per se, you won’t find any bundled plans with multiple services—each service will require hiring a different freelancer.
Here are some marketing services you can hire professionals for on Fiverr Pro:
Fiverr Pro freelancers offering web design services often specialize in creating sites on 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.
Fiverr SEO experts specialize in certain types of SEO tasks and campaigns, such as writing optimized content for your blog, 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). Because SEO is so broad, look for a Fiverr provider specifically offering the types of SEO projects you seek to complete.
Fiverr contractors cover a range of services like social media, email, and Amazon marketing, as well as local SEO citation building and reviews 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 plus “marketing.”
For example, search “email marketing” or “social media marketing.” Then, peruse the providers to learn the specific tasks they complete (social media content creation or influencer marketing, for example).
Fiverr advertising specialists offer a long list of ad-related services, including pay-per-click ads, animated video ads, hand-drawn advertisements for digital assets, banner ad design, advertising on Facebook, and display ads. To find a provider who offers the specific types of ads you seek, simply search for that ad type using the Fiverr search bar. For example, you could search “Facebook ads,” “Google ads,” or “display ads.”
Fiverr freelancers offer two types of analytics: general website analytics and analytics specific to the type of campaign created by the provider. If you are looking for analytics reporting for a campaign a Fiverr pro created for you, be sure to ask what types of reporting and what tools they used when creating your campaign.
If you need someone to install analytics on your website or help you track analytics around your existing campaign (like social media analytics, for example), simply search the platform you’d like to track, then “analytics.” For example, search “Facebook analytics” or “Google Analytics” to find relevant providers.
Fiverr Pro Customer Support
The amount of 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 hands-off approach to digital marketing. Be sure to discuss with your chosen provider how they can be contacted and if they provide regular campaign reporting and reviews.
Thinking of in-house self-managed digital marketing services? Check out our list of digital marketing tips to make sure you and your team cover all the bases so you can build a strong brand online.
How We Evaluated the Best Digital Marketing Agencies
Small businesses often need outside expert help to build a brand presence online and reach marketing goals. They may be seeking solutions for web design, search engine optimization, and off-page marketing like link building, email, social media, and advertising—and they need it to be affordable.
Here is how we evaluated the best digital marketing agencies for small businesses:
- Price: We preferred agencies offering comprehensive digital marketing services at small business-friendly prices. We also considered how transparent the pricing is, rating agencies with upfront prices a higher ranking.
- Digital marketing services: Judging wouldn’t be complete without testing an agency’s marketing services. Both digital and off-page marketing were taken into consideration. At a minimum, we searched for agencies that offer social media marketing and PPC advertising. We also included providers that offer more advanced digital campaigns, like video ads.
- SEO-specific services: The best digital marketing agency for small businesses will offer various services to develop your brand’s online presence. Web design with user experience (UX) in mind and SEO for local or international audiences should be a priority, as well as agencies that provide services tailored to ecommerce, like Amazon or website stores.
- Customer support: Small businesses often hire digital marketing agencies as an extension of the marketing department. Knowing this, we looked for providers that assign a dedicated project manager to each client’s account who are available during regular business hours to answer questions, consult, and manage plan-pivot requests.
- Reviews: We also prioritized the small business marketing companies reputed to offer superior solutions and customer support, as reflected in their online reviews and 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. 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. Here are some key considerations to keep in mind when comparing digital marketing agencies:
- Agency reputation: Does the agency have a good reputation based on client reviews online? Check places like Clutch.co, 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.
- Measurable results: An agency should be able to 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, it can also be a waste of time. 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 on for.
- Clearly defined goals: Likewise, it’s important for you to 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 small business marketing agency can definitely be worth it for a custom, professional marketing strategy built specifically around your business’ needs. There are dozens of digital marketing agencies with various price points and specialties, and you’ll likely find one that suits your needs. Determine which services you need, canvass agencies and review their work, and then schedule a consultation to see if they’re a good fit.
The cost to work with a digital marketing agency for small businesses varies based on the service provided and the scope of work. However, you could spend as little as $100 for an a la carte service or as much as tens of thousands of dollars for a completely outsourced digital marketing solution. And in either case, it could be worth it if the return on investment outweighs your costs.
Digital marketing for small businesses usually involves setting up a website, optimizing for search engines (SEO), social media marketing, and PPC advertising. Other helpful and affordable strategies are email marketing, review management, and setting up a Google Business Profile.
Bottom Line
Finding the best digital marketing agency for small businesses can be a challenge, as each has its own specialty and plan setup. For example, if your focus is PPC advertising, Straight North would likely be your best choice. Or, if you prefer a more a la carte approach, Fiverr Pro or SEO Discovery might be your better option. With that, to choose the best small business marketing agency for your business, carefully evaluate your business’ needs and do tons of research.
Whether your objective is awareness, engagement, loyalty, or increasing your site traffic, SEO Discovery can build a social media campaign to grow your business on Facebook, Instagram, 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.