SMB Marketing Agencies? Good, bad, or even ugly

July 09, 2023

by a searcher from University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business in Miami, FL, USA

Folks, anyone worked with excellent / top notch SMB marketing agencies?

Would love to know which ones

In fact, I'd also probably want to know MORE about any SMB agencies and strategies that failed! What didn't work and why do you think that is so.

I am most interested in two areas :

1. Branding

Generally, how did an agency help with a new or rebrand.

2. Online marketing

Generally, how did an agency help grow your business

Happy to explain, but I am currently in the middle of using a lot of AI tools (design, SEO, etc) and getting curious about how to leverage these. A lot of interesting ideas are in how to streamline marketing efforts and could work for SMBs, but generally I think SMBs prefer a little face-to-face explanations and help and thus the diverse set of agencies for SMBs.

Reply by a searcher
from University of West Florida in Charleston, SC, USA

Matt, I have worked with SMB's directly over the last 13 years and managed hundreds of millions of adspend. I am happy to talk through this in a call as its a lot to unpack, but a few things, specifically on what went wrong as I witnessed lots of struggle pre-during-and post covid.

Holistic marketing strategy matters.

Many CEO's or Owners either fall in love or hate a certain channel. Either because a friend who is successful told them, or they experienced a scammy agency who put a bad taste in their mouth. Regardless, each respective channel has a role in digital marketing. Specifically I mean: PPC, SEO, Maps, Content, Video, Email, Social, OTT commercials (tv), direct mail.

The best strategy is your 24/7 salesmen, your website and ways in which inbound leads can come in. This is what has helped us grow and thrive in serving north of $100 million in SMB marketing. Again happy to talk more as this could be a book.

Reply by a searcher
in Cyprus

For small sideprojects the current state of the ai tools might be fine, but for proper branding I did not find one that did the job even partly as good as a professional. For Branding I can recommend quaandry.com - they're really good at branding strategy aswell as with great design for smb in various industries. They offer a free introductory call. You can tell them I sent you 👍🏽 (also others who might read this)

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