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Marketing is the lifeblood of every business, and every year, it gets more and more digital. Online content creation, social media management, SEO, email marketing…the list goes ever on and on.
Digital marketing agencies can take these ever-expanding marketing strategies and tactics off your plate so you can focus on running your business. They save you the time and money you’d lose by trying to figure everything out yourself or training new team members. And they use their experience and expertise to help you get results you’d never reach alone.
There’s just one problem: there are tens of thousands of digital marketing agencies out there. And they all say they’re the best, no matter what you’re actually looking for.
So, how do you choose the best one for you—and how do you even start looking?
We’ve examined hundreds of digital marketing agencies for this guide and found the nine that will give you the most value in today’s market.
WebFX is an all-in-one digital marketing agency that works with businesses of all shapes and sizes. They’ve helped their clients drive more than $2 billion in the last five years alone. However, they specialize in SEO services, including e-commerce SEO, enterprise SEO, local search, and SEO website audits to help businesses identify potential problems before they wreak havoc. Other services include PPC, content marketing, social media, and Amazon optimization.
The 9 Best Digital Marketing Agencies To Consider
When It Makes Sense To Invest In A Digital Marketing Agency
Digital marketing agencies provide value to businesses at a broad range of revenue levels and sizes. Let’s face it, just about any business will benefit from expert marketing consulting and strategy. But here are four more specific times when it will make sense for your business to work with a digital marketing agency.
When you’ve done all you can by yourself.
If you’ve exhausted your knowledge and bandwidth (and/or your team’s) when it comes to marketing and you’re still not getting the results you want, it’s time to bring in the big guns and get some expert consulting.
When you’re expanding into new marketing channels.
It’s great to take risks with new marketing ventures, but it’s even better to mitigate that risk by getting help from people who already know where you’re going and how best to get there. This is when an agency really saves you the time and hassle of trying to figure it out yourself and gets you faster results.
When you don’t have time to train new marketing staff.
Making rapid progress is a great problem to have, but it often means things like recruiting, onboarding, and training get left behind for a while. Working with an agency gives you access to experts who’ve already been fully trained in exactly the areas you’d need new team members for.
When you’re ready to grow, scale, or break out of a plateau…but aren’t quite sure how.
In these scenarios, having an outside perspective on your company’s best marketing strategies can be invaluable. Agencies already know the best strategies to get you out of a rut and where you want to go.
Here are the nine agencies to consider working with when you’re in one (or more) of those scenarios.
#1 – WebFX – Best Agency For SEO
WebFX is an all-in-one digital marketing agency that works with businesses of all shapes and sizes. They’ve helped their clients drive more than $2 billion in the last five years alone. However, they specialize in SEO services, including e-commerce SEO, enterprise SEO, local search, and SEO website audits to help businesses identify potential problems before they wreak havoc. Other services include PPC, content marketing, social media, and Amazon optimization.
For many businesses, the best option is the one that provides the most options—that is, a full-service agency that can help you with a little bit (or a lot) of everything. WebFX is at the top of the list of full-service firms. They’ve been in business since 1996, and in the last five years alone, have helped clients drive over $2 billion in revenue.
They also are known for excellent customer service—their customer retention rate is a mind-blowing 91%. (The industry average is closer to 20%.)
WebFX offers comprehensive SEO services, five different levels of social media marketing packages, web design, content marketing, PPC services, and even Amazon optimization. In terms of SEO, WebFX has a MarketingCloudFX technology platform and a top SEO team to create campaigns designed to drive traffic to your website immediately.
However, what really makes them stand out is how flexible they are to offer all these services to companies of any size and budget. If you’re a small local business with a three-figure monthly marketing budget, WebFX can help you. If you’re a national-level corporation that can spend tens of thousands per month, WebFX can help you as well. If you’re somewhere in between, they’ve got your back.
And they’ve worked with an extensive range of industries, so what kind of company you run won’t make a difference. If you’re looking for a full-service option that will work for you no matter your niche, size, budget, or goals, WebFX is where to go.
#2 – 97th Floor – Best Agency For Larger Businesses
Best for Large Businesses
If you’d like to join the likes of Adobe, Dell, Capital One, Salesforce, and ESPN, 97th Floor is the well-respected full-service digital marketing agency behind them. With 97th Floor, you get an entire marketing team dedicated to customizing your marketing strategy across platforms from SEO to social media, advertising, graphic design, copywriting, content marketing, email, and more.
97th Floor is another well-respected full-service agency. The firm was founded in 2005 and has worked with quite a few high-profile clients, from Adobe and Dell to Salesforce and LinkedIn to ESPN and the Utah Jazz pro basketball team.
97th Floor’s goal is to help companies reach as many consumers as possible across as many channels as possible. To facilitate this, they assign each client a dedicated marketing team to customize that company’s strategy. The attention to detail that goes into assigning this team is particularly impressive—97th Floor will examine not only your company’s goals and industry expertise but also areas where their experts share common interests with you and your team (and thus will likely work well together).
97th Floor divides its services into five areas of focus: SEO services (including link building, keyword research, and technical SEO), creative services (including copywriting, design, and content creation), email marketing (including automation and analytics), CRO services (including landing page design and heat mapping) and paid media (including social media ads and audience testing). Their customized marketing plans can include any or all of these services, depending on your company’s needs.
The trade-off here is that 97th Floor is not cheap. They have worked with and can work with small to mid-sized businesses before, but they shine when working with larger companies with five-figure and six-figure marketing budgets. So, if you’re ready to spend $20,000 (or $200,000) on marketing every month, they’ll be a solid choice for you. If you’re not, well, some other options on this list will probably fit your business better.
#3 – Ignite Visibility – Best Agency for Mid-Sized Businesses
Best for Mid-Sized Businesses
As a midsize business themselves, Ignite Visibility understands the needs and market of midsize businesses. Today, the company has around 100 employees with no plans to grow that number in the future. So, you can rest easy knowing your marketing partner knows exactly how to help expand your business. Ignite Visibility offers various marketing services spanning nearly every platform plus PR and reputation management.
For a company that’s only seven years old, Ignite Visibility has been making a lot of waves. They’ve already been named the #1 digital marketing agency on several review sites, made the Inc. 5000 list four times, and was named a finalist for annual marketing awards like Best Enterprise SEO Campaign and Best B2B Paid Media Campaign. Their CEO and founder, John Lincoln, was named Search Marketer of the Year in 2017.
Based in San Diego, Ignite is a mid-sized agency (~100 employees) specializing in working with mid-sized clients. Like 97th Floor, they’re a full-service agency that aims to help their clients reach prospects and customers across multiple marketing channels. They just focus on helping a different business size and stay that size themselves to make sure they remain connected to that niche’s needs and goals.
Like the other full-service agencies on this list, Ignite offers SEO, PPC, social media marketing, website design and development, email marketing, and so on. But they also offer several services mid-sized companies can find especially beneficial, including public relations, reputation management, and franchise management services.
Ignite also excels at project management, providing quarterly business plans to all their clients, including forecasting, timeline management, and competitive analysis in all of their services.
Ignite Visibility is an excellent choice for a mid-sized and growing business ready to dive deeper into marketing.
#4 – Rise Interactive – Best Agency For Multi-Channel Marketing
Best for Multi-Channel Marketing
A lot of agencies claim to be great at multi-channel marketing. But Rise Interactive knocks it out of the park with their authentic AND data-driven approach. It starts with a broad content rollout and quickly switches to focus solely on the most beneficial channels as data becomes available. Their system is actually proprietary, meaning no one else on the market does what they do.
It might be evident by now that any full-service agency will be able to help create and implement a marketing strategy that uses multiple different channels. Several of the entries on this list so far specifically prioritize that strategy. And at first glance, Rise Interactive might seem like just another one of those.
But what makes Rise Interactive stand out so much is their unique approach to multi-channel tactics. Their Interactive Investment Management strategy begins with a broad rollout of marketing content and effort across many channels but then adapts in real-time to focus on the channels that provide the best ROI.
Interactive Investment Management is a proprietary system for Rise, which means no one else is doing multi-channel marketing the way they are. The system includes real-time metrics and analytics for all marketing campaigns.
In addition to this system and a slate of typical full-service offerings, Rise also offers affiliate marketing, Amazon marketing, and customer experience analytics. E-commerce companies with multiple platforms will find these services especially valuable.
They also have a growing international presence, specifically in Argentina and Mexico, which companies with Latinx customer bases will likely appreciate.
#5 – WebiMax – Best Agency For Small Businesses and Reputation Management
Best for Small Businesses
WebiMax is a small team of around 50 employees. As such, they know the everyday struggles of small businesses trying to market themselves. They leverage what they know to help small teams make the most of their small marketing budgets, regardless of the platforms they’d like to use and the services they need. Unlike most agencies, WebiMax posts pricing online, starting at $400 per month depending on what you need.
If 97th Floor is here for the big guys, and Ignite Visibility specializes in mid-sized companies, WebiMax is perfectly positioned to help the businesses on the smaller end of the size and budget scale. With only about 50 employees, they use their own size to make sure their small, close-knit teams give other small businesses amazing service.
And it’s working. Webimax boasts a customer retention rate of 97%, even higher than WebFX’s. If you work with them once, you’ll want to work with them for the life of your business.
In addition to providing close personal guidance, Webimax empowers its clients to master their own marketing with a detailed online portal. This portal includes a reporting dashboard where you can see all of your campaigns at a glance, as well as additional dashboards for monitoring online reviews, social media activity, analytics, and more.
Also, Webimax excels at reputation management. They work closely and confidentially with companies that need to change how their brand is perceived online or engage in damage control, and they’re generally considered one of the best agencies for it.
Finally, the best small business agency has great small business pricing, starting at $400 per month. If a five-figure price tag is too stiff for you, Webimax will be right up your alley.
#6 – Mad Fish Digital – Best Agency For Nonprofit and For-Benefit Companies
Best for Nonprofits and For-Benefits
Mad Fish Digital is a certified B corporation, meaning they exist to benefit the world through supporting causes they care about. As such, it makes sense that they excel at delivering marketing services to nonprofits and other for-benefit businesses. Service offerings include a full suite of digital marketing options, from video creation and content to SEO, social media, web design, and more.
You may be noticing a trend with some of these full-service agencies: many of them are positioned to work with the same size clients as they are. The next entry on this list takes that approach one step further.
Mad Fish Digital is a Certified B Corporation, also known as a for-benefit business. B corporations aren’t nonprofits, but they exist to benefit the world by supporting causes they care about. Mad Fish isn’t just here to help you, they’re here to help the world.
Mad Fish Digital is the full-service digital marketing agency for other businesses that want to pursue positive changes in the world. Many of their clients are nonprofits, environmentally or socially conscious businesses, and other B corporations who use their profits to support important causes. Healthcare, sustainability, higher education, and environmental companies are some of their main client focuses.
In addition to a full suite of digital services, Mad Fish doubles down on visual storytelling, branded videos, and brand awareness services—all marketing tactics proven to move the needle for nonprofits and mission-driven businesses.
They also choose their clients carefully, only working with 50 or so at a time. This allows them to make sure each client’s mission gets the attention and dedicated service it needs to inspire and improve the world.
If you run a nonprofit or a B corporation or your business has strong environmental or social values or supports a mission or cause, Mad Fish will be your agency.
#7 – Location3 – Best Agency For Franchise Businesses
Streamlining marketing campaigns across various locations is a daunting task. However, Location3 specializes in helping brands like Advantage and Edible Arrangements reach more of the right people in a cohesive manner from location to location. Location3 is a full-service agency with franchise management and development options as well.
Franchise businesses are highly specific and typically need a different digital marketing strategy than other companies. So, why wouldn’t they have a digital marketing agency that specializes in helping them?
Location3 is that agency. They’ve worked with national chains you see every day, including Mathnasium, Edible Arrangements, Advantage Rent A Car, and Honey Baked Ham. But they also work with many local businesses who only franchise within one or two cities.
They also have more experience than many other names on this list—they were founded in 1999, making them older than any here outside of WebFX.
Like the other entries, Location3 is a full-service agency. But to help their franchise clients, they include a lot of franchise development services as well, including local listings management, paid search and media services, and local SEO strategy.
They also have a technical backend and platform designed with local franchise businesses in mind. Called “LOCALACT,” this highly customizable platform is designed to help brick and mortar businesses with multiple locations manage digital marketing campaigns in real-time.
Whether you have a national franchise or a local one, Location3 will be worth considering for you.
#8 – Disruptive Advertising – Best Agency For PPC and Ads
Best for PPC and Ads
As the name implies, Disruptive Advertising helps businesses across the board disrupt the business of advertising by reducing wasted ad spend and producing excellent results. They focus on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn paid media, including PPC management, site testing, retargeting, lifecycle marketing, and advanced analytical services.
If your business does (or plans to do) a lot of advertising work in your digital marketing campaigns, you might want to consider an agency that focuses on pay-per-click and ad management.
Disruptive Advertising is one of the best PPC/ad agencies out there, focusing mainly on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn ad campaigns alongside full departments for PPC management, site testing, and analytics.
Since ad campaigns continuously shift and adapt, Disruptive Advertising creates and implements strategies that update and re-optimize in real-time. Their expert consultants optimize client PPC campaigns weekly to make sure the lowest ad costs are bringing in the highest ROI. They also assist clients in understanding their customers for the most accurate ad targeting.
The tradeoff with Disruptive Advertising is that they’re strictly a PPC and digital advertising agency. Unlike most of the entries on this list, they don’t offer full-service marketing consulting. So, if you need content creation or SEO management and advertising, you’ll need to double up with another agency.
#9 – Lyfe Marketing – Best Agency for Social Media Management
Best for Social Media Management
Lyfe Marketing specializes in social media management services for social-heavy businesses. And since they’re a specialized agency, you know you’re getting the best social media marketing services available. To date, they’ve managed more than 2,000 success campaigns, generating nearly 1 million new leads for their clients. They also offer web design, PPC management, SEO, SMS, and email marketing services.
Another area of digital marketing where you might need or want additional expertise is social media management. Some full-service agencies do offer this, but not all—and most don’t go as deep as Lyfe Marketing does.
Founded in 2011, Lyfe boasts over 2,000 social media marketing campaigns that have driven nearly one million leads via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. And they’re surprisingly customizable given how broad social media can be—each client is assigned a dedicated social media manager who develops a strategy specific to the client’s business. Lyfe also manages developing content calendars and ad copy, optimizing the campaigns as they run, and reporting results.
If your business has a strong presence on any (or all) social media platforms or wants to grow and develop one, Lyfe Marketing will be worth the investment.
Methodology For Choosing The Best Digital Marketing Agency
As with most of our “best of” guides, the most important and helpful way to choose the best digital marketing agency is to select the one that fits your business the best. But since most agencies offer similar services, that’s not always an easy choice to figure out. This is the methodology we used to pick the nine top digital marketing agencies, and these are the factors you should keep in mind as you consider which agency will work best for your needs.
Your Marketing Goals
What are you trying to achieve by hiring a digital marketing agency? What does success look like for your company? Do you have one or two specific goals, like increasing website conversions or starting a Twitter campaign? Or do you need across-the-board guidance on marketing strategy and implementation? Is your business local, regional, national, or international?
How you answer these questions will help determine which agency is the right one to get you to reach those goals.
Areas of Specific Expertise
You know by now that most full-service agencies offer similar packages of services. And that may be precisely what you’re looking for. But you might want an agency that can focus on something specific—Webimax for relationship management, for instance, or Rise Interactive for multi-channel marketing. You might even want an agency that sacrifices full-service offerings to focus on doing much more in their area of focus, like Lyfe Marketing for social media management or Disruptive Advertising for PPC. If you know what specific services you want, you’ll have a much better chance of finding an agency that can give them to you.
Fit With Your Business
We wouldn’t normally mention such an obvious point, except that so many entries on this list clearly prioritize it themselves by their own size, positioning, and niche approaches. Several of the best agencies make a point of being the kind of company they work best with, whether that’s a large company, a franchise, or even for-benefit. When considering digital marketing agencies, it will help a lot to find ones that have a few things in common with your own business—and/or have worked extensively with businesses similar to yours.
Budget
This is another one that’s usually a no-brainer but is worth mentioning here for one crucial reason: digital marketing campaigns take time before you know whether they’re working or not. Paying the wrong amount of money for an agency to run those campaigns risks spending way too much for too little return or not nearly enough to get the results you want.
So, when you consider an agency’s rates and fees, consider whether you’re comfortable laying out that amount of money for six to twelve months even if there’s little or no ROI right away. If you really like the agency but their rates feel high, consider trying one or two services rather than a full-service package first. If the agency typically works with bigger (or smaller) budgets than yours, consider a different agency.
Best for SEO
WebFX is an all-in-one digital marketing agency that works with businesses of all shapes and sizes. They’ve helped their clients drive more than $2 billion in the last five years alone. However, they specialize in SEO services, including e-commerce SEO, enterprise SEO, local search, and SEO website audits to help businesses identify potential problems before they wreak havoc. Other services include PPC, content marketing, social media, and Amazon optimization.
Our top pick for the best full-service digital marketing agency is WebFx. It offers the most services for the best prices to the widest variety of businesses, and for a full-service agency, you can’t ask for much more than that.
But remember, the best option for you is the one that best fits your business needs, goals, and budget. So, make sure to check out the other entries on this list and consider them just as carefully—one of them might be exactly what you need.
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