Digital marketing services for small business, on the evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to buy digital marketing without overbuying

1. Name the constraint before you name the service. Are you not being found, being found but not called, or getting calls that do not close. Those three problems need search work, conversion and site work, and sales process work respectively, and buying the wrong one wastes a year. Diagnose it from your own numbers first, then let the diagnosis decide which services you are shopping for.
2. Ask every provider for a minimum engagement in writing. This single question removes more unsuitable candidates than any other and takes one email to answer. Where a starting price is published, treat it as a floor for the narrowest scope rather than a forecast. A provider who will not state a minimum is usually pricing from what they think your business can afford.
3. Buy a fixed scope project before a long retainer. An audit, a site fix or a defined content build tells you how a firm thinks, writes and communicates for a fraction of a year of retainer. It is the cheapest possible interview. Providers confident in their work will accept one, and the deliverable is useful to you even if you then hire someone else.
4. Own everything the work runs on. Create the domain, hosting, analytics, Search Console and advertising accounts in your own name and grant the agency access. This is the single most common regret among small businesses changing providers, and it costs nothing to get right at the start while it can cost a rebuild to fix later.

What small budgets should buy first

At the smaller end, the order that works is nearly always the same. A site that loads quickly, states plainly what you do and where, and makes contact easy on a phone. Accurate listings and a maintained business profile if you serve a local area. A page for each service you actually sell, written properly rather than generated from a template. Then reviews, then paid search if you need volume faster than search work can deliver it.

What can wait is almost everything else: brand video, social posting schedules, marketing automation, podcast production and monthly blog volume are all legitimate work in the right context, and all commonly sold before the basics exist. When a proposal at a small budget spans six channels, ask the provider which two they would keep if the budget halved. The answer tells you whether they are planning for your business or selling a package.

How to compare proposals that look nothing alike

Build one sheet with fixed rows: setup fee, monthly fee, minimum term, notice period, hours or deliverables included, who does the work, whether it is subcontracted, what is produced in month one, how results are reported, and who owns the accounts and content. Map each proposal into those rows and leave the unmappable items in a bucket at the bottom. That bucket is where price differences usually hide.

Then check what each firm publishes about itself. Our index records published pricing, disclosed minimums and named clients as separate fields with the date read, because a firm that states any of these in public has accepted a constraint that most of the market avoids. It is not proof of quality, but it is evidence you can verify without a sales call, which is more than most of the market offers.

Advertising rules that apply to you, not just to them

The claims on your site are your responsibility even when an agency wrote them. The Federal Trade Commission publishes advertising guidance for small businesses covering truthfulness, substantiation and clear disclosure, and its endorsement guides explain when a connection between you and a reviewer must be disclosed. Testimonials that are incentivised, employee reviews presented as customer reviews, and results described without context are the everyday failure cases.

Ask any candidate who reviews copy for claim risk and how they handle review generation. A provider offering to supply reviews or write them on your behalf is offering a problem. A provider who asks about your substantiation before writing a claim is doing the job properly, and that conversation is a reasonable proxy for how they will behave on everything else.

Questions people actually ask

How much should a small business spend?

Enough to do one or two things properly rather than five thinly, which usually means starting from what a single new customer is worth and how many you can serve. We record published prices rather than quoting an average, because the honest answer varies more with your market and your site's condition than with the size of your business.

Agency, freelancer or in house?

A freelancer suits a single discipline and a tight budget, an agency suits work needing several skills at once, and in house makes sense when the work is continuous and you can supervise it. Many small firms do best with a freelancer for content and an agency for technical and paid work, which also avoids one supplier owning everything.

What contract terms are reasonable?

A three to six month minimum for search and content work is fair given how long it takes to show movement, with a rolling arrangement afterwards and a short notice period. Twelve month lock ins with no break clause put the risk entirely on you, and are hardest to justify from firms that publish nothing about their pricing.

How do I know it is working?

Agree in advance what a countable enquiry is, track it by source, and review closed revenue rather than traffic. Rankings and impressions are leading indicators worth watching, but a report full of them and empty of enquiries after two quarters is telling you the aim was wrong, not that you need more patience.

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