Do you need a marketing agency for your small business?
Hire a full-service marketing agency when your plan depends on paid ads, several locations or a brand campaign; for most single-location businesses, one accountable person handling a defined monthly scope across the website, Google profile and social media is the better first hire. A small business marketing agency plans and carries out marketing work for you, usually across several channels, for a monthly retainer, a project fee or a share of ad spend. At boomp.net, our recommended Local marketing plan is $900 a month: Kathleen Celmins handles Google Business Profile updates, one search page a month, small website updates and social posts for one business at one location. These are our prices, not an industry average.
What a small business marketing agency does
"Agency" covers everything from one person with a few contractors to a team of specialists. Most small business marketing services fall into seven jobs.
- Website. Service pages, a working contact form, small edits and sometimes a full rebuild.
- Google presence. Business Profile details, photos, updates and a way to ask customers for reviews.
- Search. Pages that answer what customers search for, plus technical fixes and links from other sites.
- Email. A regular message to past customers and people who asked to hear from you.
- Social media. Posts, publishing and sometimes replies to comments.
- Paid ads. Setting up and adjusting campaigns on Google, Meta and other platforms, with the ad spend billed separately.
- Planning and reporting. A plan for the next few months and a monthly report.
A full-service agency sells most of these jobs. A specialist sells one or two. If social media is the only job you want handed off, the social media agency guide covers that decision on its own.
Start with the job your business is missing, not the agency. If a customer cannot find a clear service page or a working contact form, more posts will not fix that. Website vs social media explains which one to put first.
How marketing agencies price their work
Agencies use three main pricing models, and many combine them.
Monthly retainer. A set fee each month for an agreed scope of recurring work. In SE Ranking and Duda's SEO pricing survey, published in December 2024 and drawing on 260 agencies in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, 53% of participants preferred monthly retainers over other models.
Project fee. A fixed price for work with an end date, such as a website rebuild, a rebrand or a launch.
Percentage of ad spend. Common when running ads is the main job. The fee grows with the budget, so ask how it is calculated, whether there is a monthly minimum and who decides when spend goes up.
Some agencies and most consultants also bill by the hour.
Published numbers are thin, and most cover one channel. The same SE Ranking survey found the most popular retainer range was $500 to $1,000 a month, 64% of agencies offered retainers below $1,000, and 30% charged less than $500. The most common hourly band was $50 to $100, and the most common project fee was $500 to $2,000. Those figures are for search work alone, and the authors note the sample may be too small for statistical significance. For agencies across digital channels, Credo's 2019 pricing survey found about half had a retainer minimum of $2,000 a month or less, and 13.5% set a minimum above $5,000.
A full-service agency prices each channel it covers, so the retainer rises with the scope. Ad spend sits on top of the fee. Local SEO pricing goes deeper on what search work costs.
What a small budget can realistically buy
A small monthly budget buys a narrow scope done well, or a small defined scope across a few connected jobs. It does not buy a team.
Every fee pays for someone's hours. When the fee is small and the list of channels is long, each channel gets very little attention. Three choices make a small budget go further.
- Fix the path first. A clear service page, an accurate Google profile and a contact step that works come before anything that buys reach.
- Make one person accountable for the whole path. Three vendors for three channels means three reports and nobody connecting them.
- Leave paid ads until the path converts. Every ad click lands on that path, so a weak page wastes the spend.
How much to spend in total is a separate question. How much a small business should spend on marketing helps you set that number first.
Who does the work: your options compared
Choose by who does the work first and by price second.
| Option | Who does the work | How it is priced | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software plus your own time | You, with software preparing drafts | A monthly subscription; the boomp.net self-serve plans start at $9 a month for social posts | You have a few hours a week and want to review everything yourself |
| In-house marketing hire | Your employee | A salary plus benefits, tools and your time managing them | You have steady full-time marketing work and someone to direct it |
| Freelancer | One independent person, usually with one skill | Hourly, per project or a monthly fee | One job needs a specialist, such as a website fix or an ad setup |
| Consultant or fractional CMO | An experienced marketer who plans and decides; you or others do the work | Hourly, per project or a monthly retainer | You need a plan and have people to carry it out |
| One-person done-for-you service, such as boomp.net | Kathleen Celmins, with boomp.net software for the social content | Three monthly plans: $275, $900 or $1,800 | One location needs its website, Google profile and social media handled by one person |
| Full-service agency | A team of specialists | A monthly retainer, often with a minimum, plus ad spend; project fees for builds | Paid ads lead, you run several locations or you need a brand campaign |
For scale on the in-house option, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for market research analysts and marketing specialists at $78,760 and for marketing managers at $166,790, both for May 2025. That is wages only, before benefits and tools.
A small business marketing consultant usually advises rather than does. The fractional CMO guide covers when a part-time marketing lead is the right hire.
When to hire a full-service agency instead
Some businesses need more than one person can carry. In these cases, hire the agency.
- Paid ads are your main channel. Campaigns need weekly budget and creative changes, landing page tests and tracking. We do not manage ads.
- You run several locations. Each location has its own Google profile, pages and reviews, and the work multiplies. Our local plans cover one business at one location.
- You need a brand campaign, rebrand or launch. That takes strategy, design, shoots and media buying on a deadline. Shoots and rebuilds sit outside our monthly fee.
- You need several specialists at once. Video production, public relations, development and analytics on the same project call for a team.
When one accountable person fits better
One person handling a defined scope fits a business that looks like this.
- You have one location, and customers find you through Google, search and referrals.
- Your gap is the path: an out-of-date profile, thin service pages, posting that stopped.
- Your budget is below many agencies' retainer minimums.
- You want to talk to the person who does the work.
That is what the boomp.net service plans are for. Social, handled, at $275 a month, covers social media only. Local marketing, at $900, adds Google Business Profile updates, a review-request process, one search page and up to two small website updates each month, with inquiry tracking. Marketing partner, at $1,800, adds a second search page, a customer email, an offer page or promotion and a monthly planning call. The marketing packages guide compares the three plans line by line, and local marketing services covers the local work in more depth.
Some work sits outside every monthly plan: ad management and ad spend, photo or video shoots, full website rebuilds, customer messages, custom software, link building, directory listing cleanup, technical SEO audits and writing review responses for you. They are outside the stated monthly scope. If your need includes one, raise it on the 15-minute call; a full website rebuild gets a separate quote. If social media is the only gap, cheaper alternatives to a social media agency compares the social-only options.
Already paying an agency? Read last month's work
If you are asking whether a cheaper provider or software could do the same job, list everything that arrived last month. Then sort each item into one of three groups.
- Recurring production. Posts, routine profile updates, report assembly. Software can prepare much of this, and a person still checks facts and claims.
- Judgment. Deciding what to promote, which page to write next and what the numbers mean. That needs a person who knows your business.
- Specialist work. Ad management, shoots, development.
If most of the fee pays for recurring production, a smaller provider or software may cover it for less. If it pays for ads or specialist work that brings in paying customers, keep it. Before you switch, confirm the accounts are in your name, as set out below. For the social side, the DIY vs agency cost calculator puts both costs in numbers.
Questions to ask before you hire anyone
- Who does the work each week, by name? Ask whether any of it is passed to subcontractors.
- What arrives each month, in numbers? Pages, posts, emails, updates.
- What is the minimum term and the notice period? A long lock-in needs a reason.
- What costs extra? Ad spend, software, shoots, rebuilds and anything outside the scope.
- How is any ad fee calculated, and whose card pays the platforms?
- What will the monthly report measure? Work delivered, inquiries and confirmed customers are three different numbers.
- Will you share every change you make to my website?
That last question is adapted from Google's guidance on hiring an SEO, which also suggests asking "How do you measure your success?" Google adds that "you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire."
Red flags
- Guaranteed rankings. Google says plainly: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google."
- Cold pitches. Google advises being wary of SEO firms, web consultants or agencies "that email you out of the blue."
- Secret methods. Google says to be careful if a company "won't clearly explain what they intend to do."
- Offers to write fake reviews or pay for good ones. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, in effect since October 21, 2024, makes it a violation for a business to buy fake reviews or to offer incentives for reviews that express a particular sentiment, positive or negative. Asking every customer for an honest review is a different thing.
- Accounts in the agency's name. If they hold the domain, the profile or the ad account, leaving gets expensive.
- Reports with no inquiries. Views and followers alone do not tell you whether the work brought customers.
What to keep in your own name
Whoever you hire, the accounts stay yours.
- Your domain. Register it to your business, in a registrar account you control. ICANN's registrant terms say the registrant assumes "sole responsibility for the registration and use of your domain name."
- Your website. Keep the hosting account and an administrator login.
- Your Google Business Profile. Stay the primary owner and add the provider as a manager. Google says managers cannot add or remove users or remove the profile, and only owners can remove other owners and managers.
- Your ad accounts. Keep Admin access in Google Ads, the level that can give account access and change access levels.
- Search Console and analytics. Google suggests giving a new SEO read access to Search Console at first, not write access.
- Your social accounts and email list. Add the provider through each platform's user or partner settings, keep the owner role and keep the ability to export the list.
Some things stay with you whoever does the work: current business facts, approval of any claim about your work, customer conversations and decisions about ad spend.
If one person handling your website, Google profile and social media sounds right, compare the three plans and talk with Kathleen.
