Digital marketing is a powerful growth tool, no matter your business size or industry. For startups, though, it’s more than that—it’s the key to moving from obscurity to prominence. 

As hiring in-house digital marketers can be resource-intensive, you may decide to partner with a digital marketing agency. With a wide range of experts and tools, an agency can help you identify your audience, build brand awareness, and hit your revenue goals.

However, not all agencies are equipped to meet the unique needs of up-and-coming businesses. To help you find the best digital marketing agency for startups, we’ve assembled a top 5 list with all the critical information you need to make an informed choice.

You’ll also learn about MarketerHire—a more affordable and efficient way to get expert digital marketing services for your startup.

What Does a Digital Marketing Agency for Startups Do?

Digital marketing agencies usually offer a variety of services. This is highly beneficial for startups that are building their marketing engines from scratch and need all the help they can get. Some of the services startups find particularly useful include: 

• Branding: Helping you find your messaging, voice, and visual identity, along with creating critical assets such as logos and brand guidelines
• Research: Analyzing your audience, competitors, and industry to identify lucrative opportunities and ensure informed decision-making
• SEO: Designing a website that ranks high in Google search results and attracts the right audience
• Advertising: Managing paid search and social ads to help you make the most of your ad budget
• Social media: Building your social presence and interacting with your audience while collecting valuable feedback
• Content: Creating visual and written content that resonates with your audience
• Reporting: Measuring the performance of your marketing campaigns and making data-based changes to improve outcomes

What To Look For in a Digital Marketing Agency for Startups 

While some are easier to assess than others, the following qualities set apart great startup marketing agencies from the rest:

1. Experience: Your chosen agency should have a proven track record of growing startups, with numerous success stories and battle-tested strategies
2. Full scope: The agency should be able to handle the entirety of your marketing efforts, from research to reporting
3. Adaptability: The agency must create a custom strategy, update it as needed, and tailor its services and approach to fit your specific needs
4. Scalability: As your startup evolves, the agency should accommodate an increased workload without sacrificing quality
5. Transparency: Pick an agency that’s open about its pricing, processes, tools, and past results
6. Communication: Go for an agency that maintains regular, clear communication to keep everyone in the loop

1. SeeResponse

SeeResponse is a marketing agency with a nationwide reach and a global team. It specializes in B2B and startup marketing, offering a variety of services like:

1. Design: Branding, UI design, web design, and video production
2. Build: Tech consulting, e-commerce, and WordPress 
3. Grow: SEO, email marketing, demand generation, and marketing automation

To engage with SeeResponse, schedule a discovery exercise on their website. After learning about your key challenges, the agency will create a custom strategy and implement simple and sustainable solutions that you and your team can easily follow.

One of SeeResponse’s most successful projects was Curacubby, a SaaS for educators, for which it managed to deliver 500 qualified leads per week.

SeeResponse Pricing

• Available upon request

SeeResponse Pros & Cons

2. WEBITMD 

WEBITMD is a digital growth marketing agency for startups and SMBs. Although it has over 15 years of experience, it’s a boutique agency with a personal approach and adaptable solutions.

Partnering with WEBITMD gives your startup access to a wide range of services, including branding, web design, and sales enablement. The agency also offers Hubspot onboarding to help you navigate and get the most out of the platform. 

Still, its most notable feature is the WEBITMD® Growth Stack—a complete marketing and tech bundle designed to drive measurable growth. 

A great example of WEBITMD’s impact is its collaboration with Foresight Works, a high-tech SaaS startup. Within a year, the business saw a 4,000% increase in organic search traffic and a 2,500% increase in organic social media traffic.

WEBITMD Pricing

• Available upon request

WEBITMD Pros & Cons

3. Growth Division 

What makes Growth Division unique is its exclusive focus on startups. Although founded just five years ago, this U.K.-based marketing agency has already developed tried and true methods to help startups grow exponentially.

During its collaboration with Weavr, a financial startup, Growth Division secured over 175 qualified leads and an 87% average monthly increase in SEM leads.

You can get started with Growth Division in only one to two weeks and be as involved as you want to. After the initial calls, the process goes as follows:

1. Strategy: Analyzing your target audience and selecting four to six channels
2. Infrastructure: Building your marketing growth stack 
3. Team: Forming a team of experts and specialists
4. Testing: Experimenting to identify the most profitable channels and double down on them

Growth Division Pricing

• £1,000 per month per channel expert on average
• Growth Strategists range from £1,000 to £3,000
• Typical retainer ranges from £4,000 to £9,000 per month (+VAT)

Growth Division Pros & Cons

4. Directive 

Directive, a SaaS-focused agency, has been around for a decade. What makes it one of the best marketing agencies for startups is its all-in-one startup package, which comes with an entire marketing team and pipeline to support growth.

The package entails services such as paid media, SEO, creative, and research. Additional perks include data-backed budgeting, real-time reporting, and a dedicated Customer Generation Consultant. 

Here’s what the process of kicking things off with Directive looks like:

1. You book an intro call to see if you’re qualified
2. Directive’s team builds a custom game plan
3. The plan is put into action. According to Directive, you should start seeing results within the first month

Directive set up the initial paid marketing campaign for DBT, a SaaS company. As a result, DBT’s conference achieved 124% over projected goal sign-up volume and 94% over projected goal conversion rates.

Directive Pricing

• Tech startup marketing package: $6,250/month

Directive Pros & Cons

5. Avalaunch Media

Founded in 2005, Avalaunch is a well-established, full-service agency offering everything from branding and PR to social media and marketing automation. 

While not startup-focused, Avalaunch offers customized marketing solutions that consider your specific business goals, challenges, and budget. Among the most notable features is its fractional CMO service that gives you access to executive-level expertise without the commitment and cost of a full-time hire.

One of Avalaunch Media’s most significant achievements is the strategy it implemented for the healthcare provider MAPMG. It yielded a 39% year-over-year increase in overall website traffic and a 1,953% year-over-year increase in blog traffic. 

Avalaunch Media Pricing

• Depends on the needs and scope of the project

Avalaunch Media Pros & Cons

Drawbacks of Engaging With a Digital Marketing Agency for Startups

Before you hire a digital marketing agency, consider the downsides of doing so:

• Lack of control: You don’t get much insight into the agency’s inner processes, and any organizational issues will reflect negatively on your business
• Lack of alignment: While having open communication helps, it may be hard for the agency to fully understand your brand, goals, and pain points
• Questionable dedication: Agencies typically handle multiple clients simultaneously. If they don’t have a big enough team, they may not be able to commit to your startup properly
• Selection process: Finding an agency that fits into your budget and timeline and can cater to your specific industry is a long and challenging endeavor
• Potential risks: An incompatible or unreliable agency can hurt your performance and brand reputation. If you’re lucky, you’ll only end up wasting resources and having to find a replacement

To avoid the pitfalls of employing an agency for your digital marketing campaigns, consider assembling an in-house marketing team. This approach lets you build a sustainable and consistent marketing machine perfectly in tune with your brand and goals. 

However, the traditional process of hiring in-house marketers is typically risky and inefficient, especially if you’re not a marketing expert yourself. Luckily, there’s a better alternative that combines efficiency and flexibility while being significantly more affordable than an agency—MarketerHire.

Why Is MarketerHire the Best Choice for Your Digital Marketing Campaigns?

MarketerHire is a platform that connects you with pre-vetted digital marketers for your startup, removing all the hassle and risk of traditional recruiting. You only have to share your needs, and the platform will match you with the ideal candidate within days. Assess their fit during a two-week trial period, and if you’re not satisfied, MarketerHire will rematch you for free.

The platform has made over 30,000 successful matches between businesses, including elite ones such as Netflix and Forbes, and top-notch marketing talent that has worked for household brands. Its experts pre-screen all applicants rigorously, admitting only the top 1% into the network.

MarketerHire offers flexibility, which is ideal for a fast-paced startup environment. It lets you scale up, scale down, or cancel as needed with its short-term contract. It’s also suitable for a wide range of marketing and other roles, from programmatic marketers to fractional CMOs. You can hire them on a full-time, part-time, or fractional basis—the choice is yours. 

How MarketerHire Works

The process of recruiting expert digital marketers with MarketerHire is simple and takes only three steps:

1. Describe your needs: Hop on a short call with your marketing manager to tell them about your startup and hiring needs
2. Meet your match: Using a proprietary MarketerMatch system that combines AI and human insight, the platform will find the perfect candidate within 48 hours
3. Hire them: If you’re satisfied with your match, you can hire them in as little as three days

If your marketing, design, or sales team is struggling with any repetitive work, the platform can connect you with an Expert Assistant who can provide additional support while you focus on high-impact work.

Staff your startup with high-caliber digital marketing talent and sprint toward your goals. Reach out to MarketerHire today!

Hiring Guides To Check Out

If you’re looking to hire experts yourself, learn how to do so using our many guides: