What does a full service marketing agency do?

Every agency defines its menu of marketing agency services differently, but an agency that covers every channel typically handles:

• Strategy and planning. Who your customers are, what you offer them and which channels to use. The U.S. Small Business Administration's guide to managing your business notes that a marketing plan can persuade consumers to buy your products and services, and strategy is where that plan is built.
• Search engine optimization. Helping your website show up in organic search results.
• Paid advertising. Planning and managing ads on Google, Meta, LinkedIn and other platforms.
• Content. Blog posts, guides, videos and other material that answers your customers' questions.
• Social media. Planning, posting and engaging on the platforms your customers use.
• Email marketing. Newsletters, follow-up sequences and campaigns to past customers.
• Website design and conversion work. Making sure the traffic all of the above produces turns into calls, bookings or sales.
• Analytics and reporting. Tracking what is working and adjusting.

Most engagements follow a similar rhythm, whatever the agency calls each step.

1. Discovery. The agency learns your business, customers, margins and goals.
2. Audit. It reviews your website, ad accounts, analytics and current results to find the biggest gaps.
3. Plan. It proposes which channels to use, in what order and how success will be measured.
4. Execution. The team builds and runs the work month by month.
5. Reporting and adjustment. Regular reports show what happened, and the plan changes based on results.

Ask any agency you talk to how it handles each of these steps and who leads them.

A specialist agency focuses on one channel, such as SEO or paid ads, and often goes deeper in that one area. An agency that covers every channel trades some of that depth for coordination.

The case for one agency across every channel is consistency. When the same team writes your ads, builds your landing pages and reports on results, the message stays consistent, and nobody can blame another vendor when something stops working.

The case for specialists is depth. If you already have a marketing team and need expert help in one channel, a specialist may be the better fit.

• You do not have an in-house marketing team, or you have one person stretched too thin.
• You are juggling several vendors and spending too much time coordinating them.
• Your channels send mixed messages, or nobody can tell you which one produces customers.
• You want one partner responsible for results, not a collection of tasks.

1. Who will actually do the work? Ask whether the people in the pitch are the people on your account, and whether any work is outsourced.
2. How do you measure success? Look for leads, sales and cost per customer, with traffic and impressions as supporting numbers.
3. Who owns the accounts? Your business should own its ad accounts, analytics and website. Google Ads, for example, supports several access levels, so an agency can do the work without taking ownership away from you.
4. What credentials do you hold? Platform programs give you a way to compare. Google's Partners program sets requirements in performance, spend and certifications.
5. How will you handle reviews and testimonials? The FTC's rule on consumer reviews went into effect on October 21, 2024, and the FTC says advertising agencies and reputation management companies can be liable under it. An agency should know these rules well.
6. What happens if we part ways? You should keep your accounts, data, content and creative.

Line up the proposals together and look past the price. Compare what is included each month, who does the work, how often you will meet and what the reporting looks like. Ask for examples of work in your industry and talk to a current client if you can.

Be wary of guarantees. Google's own guide to hiring an SEO says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, and the same caution applies to anyone promising a fixed number of leads.

The best results come from a working partnership. Share what you know about your customers, answer questions quickly, give access promptly and tell the agency what a good customer is worth to you. An agency can only aim at the target you describe, so the clearer your goals, the better the work gets.

If you are still deciding, our guides on how to choose marketing services, what digital marketing services include and marketing agency pricing will help you compare your options.