Marketing is different now than it was before; vanity numbers don't mean anything anymore. Companies are now looking for profitable growth from their marketing efforts rather than just click-throughs.
If your performance marketing agency can show that their ad spend generated an enormous return, but all other revenue within your business remains flat, this is a huge operational bleed within your company. Easy digital advertising is no longer a viable option for businesses.
The advent of privacy changes, increasing platform costs, and the increased complexity of customer journeys has led to a situation where the standard methods for purchasing advertising will no longer work.
Your agency needs to be measuring success based on real sales (not reported sales), pipeline velocity, and contribution margin.
How a Performance Marketing Agency Drives Returns
The top tier of the marketplace has moved away from just generating leads. The leading agencies today are focused primarily on connecting their ad platform data to your CRM system. They are looking for a complete financial picture of you.
For this reason, the following are three important changes to how agencies now run their campaigns:
Margin vs. Scale – Ad spend is directly related to contribution margin rather than just pure volumes.
Velocity of creative – Creative teams use creative assets as their primary targeting tool, while they quickly determine what works and what does not.
Reliance on first-party data – Agencies are building out systems based on using their customers' own data as opposed to relying on pixel data from the ad platforms to evaluate success.
Top Performance Marketing Agencies Ranked by Industry
There are many providers in the marketplace that claim to be data-driven. We reviewed the leading performance-based agencies based on actual pricing, client results, and strategic advantages. Based on our analysis, here is our ranking of the 18 agencies setting the standard this year.
1. Tinuiti
Tinuiti, the largest independent performance agency in the digital marketing world, has operated on a large scale and manages more than $3 billion of digital media spending annually. Their work is primarily in the enterprise retail, travel, and financial service industries.
Their minimum engagement typically starts at $15,000/month as a spend or as an engagement fee, depending on how they set it up, and their proprietary technology enables the complex multi-channel attribution that comes with managing so many digital media properties (search, social media, and Amazon).
2. Hawke Media
Hawke Media operates on a fractional CMO model, offering a variety of services on a month-to-month basis that combines strategic thinking with tactical support. This model is highly effective for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands and software companies who want to have high-level guidance from a CMO/COO level individual but do not want to hire a full-time executive to do so.
Their starting price point is $5,000/month, and they continuously work with major brands like Red Bull, Verizon, and Barkbox to help them reach their respective growth goals.
3. Web Tonic
Web Tonic offers global services and supports multiple channels, including Meta (Facebook), TikTok, programmatic advertising, out-of-home media, etc. They have developed an auditing process known as "Performance 360 Audit" and provide advanced analytic support.
Their services are offered to mid-market to enterprise clients such as L'Oréal and WorldRemit, with fees starting at $3,000/month.
4. Disruptive Advertising
Disruptive Advertising has combined the power of paid media with the ability to optimize conversion rates through the development of landing pages tested side-by-side with paid search campaigns. As a direct result, Disruptive Advertising has significantly reduced the cost per lead of a number of their clients.
One of their clients reported a 42% year-on-year increase in sales as a direct result of their paid search management. They primarily work with mid-market software and e-commerce companies, and their minimum engagement amount is generally around $5,000.
5. Power Digital Marketing
Power Digital Marketing works heavily with data science.
6. MuteSix
The marketing analytics platform called MuteSix targets DTC brands in apparel, beauty, and consumer goods. MuteSix builds every strategy around customer lifetime value and is focused on creating creative-heavy paid social ads.
In addition, MuteSix integrates email marketing deeply into its paid media strategy to create high retention rates after the first purchase. Some of MuteSix's brand partners include Caraway and Bombas. Pricing starts at $8,000/month plus ad spend.
7. Wpromote
Wpromote is located as the challenger agency to the top tier brands in the market. Wpromote helps mid-market brands build out and execute on their strategy to steal market share from the larger, established, and better-known brands.
Wpromote is extremely aggressive in their growth targets and has a retainer pricing model starting at $10,000/month.
8. Directive Consulting
Directive Consulting is focused entirely on B2B software and enterprise tech. Directive ignores all vanity metrics and only ties media spend directly to sales pipeline and revenue in the client's CRM.
Directive uses their DiscoverabilityOS framework to find and capture demand across search, review, and community. Among Directive's clients are ZoomInfo and Cisco. Pricing starts at $15,000/month.
9. NoGood
NoGood operates as a rapid experimentation laboratory. NoGood conducts tests using squad teams, with a focus on ads, creative designs, and landing pages.
The structure of this model is specifically designed for startup and scale-up companies that need to find profitable acquisition channels as quickly as possible (before they run out of money).
Some of the largest brands in the world have successfully scaled their advertising campaigns with the help of this model, including Nike, TikTok, and Intuit. The minimum monthly retainers start at $10,000.
10. Metric Theory
Metric Theory handles highly technical media buying on behalf of enterprise-level accounts. With many team members having previously worked with such big names as Google, Amazon, and Meta, they are able to produce highly advanced bidding models and create highly customized audiences.
Their customer base is comprised of complex business-to-business (B2B) and high-spending accounts such as Adobe and Zillow, which require in-depth platform knowledge. Monthly engagements have a minimum starting point of $12,000.
11. Moburst
Moburst focuses mostly on mobile app growth. They provide both user acquisition and app store optimization, along with in-app retention.
They take the overall mobile funnel into consideration in order to keep the cost per install to a minimum and maximize the number of active users. Their clients include Reddit, Uber, and Dunkin'. The cost of the mobile growth packages start from $12,000 per month.
12. KlientBoost
KlientBoost is unique in their extreme level of transparency and high focus on conversion-optimized design. They combine well-executed paid search strategies with highly tested landing pages to acquire B2B and software leads.
Transparent reporting has helped KlientBoost to acquire many well-known clients such as Airbnb and Dropbox. Monthly retainers begin at $5,000.
13. Inflow
Inflow is a 100% e-commerce specialist. They focus mostly on Google Shopping, Amazon, and complex product feed management for retail brands that have thousands of products in their catalog.
Inflow optimizes the data feeds of these retail brands, ensuring that their products appear for the appropriate searches. Inflow's clientele includes brands such as REI and Carhartt, and their retainers begin at $3,500 per month.
14. Ladder
Ladder approaches growth scientifically. Their method of advertising is a strict testing framework. This means they use different platforms to test their ideas before they decide which channels will receive any of their budget for advertisements.
By having a structured testing framework, they are less likely to waste money on advertising and only spend money on ads that will work. Therefore, by working with some of the biggest companies in the world, such as Booking.com and Facebook, they are able to generate substantial income as well, with a minimum engagement of $9,000 per month.
15. Common Thread Collective
The service they offer includes a direct link between what a business spends on media with what a business can expect in profit. Instead of only measuring whether or not an advertisement will be profitable based on an ad's return on ad spend (or ROAS), Common Thread Collective measures a business's overall contribution margin as well.
They determine whether or not a business can scale to direct-to-consumer sales by using mathematical formulas that illustrate how the revenue generated by a direct-to-consumer sales channel will impact the bottom line of that company. Currently, they have clients including Four Sigmatic and Blenders Eyewear.
16. Amsive
Amsive's primary focus is to provide clients in highly regulated industries with access to high-quality audience intelligence and strict data governance.
Their infrastructure for analytics provides their clients with an analytical framework to clearly identify the relationship between their marketing efforts and final revenue generated. As a result, Amsive provides value to clients that require a highly sophisticated level of marketing support. Some of Amsive's most noted clients are United Rentals and Terminix.
17. Hey Digital
Hey Digital has focused on the long sales cycles that are commonplace in B2B businesses that sell software. Instead of simply creating LinkedIn and Google campaigns that drive traffic to B2B companies, Hey Digital specifically engineered those campaigns to capture and channel traffic from users with the highest levels of intent, with the goal of improving the quality of the sales pipeline.
Hey Digital creates and manages media for other platforms, such as Hotjar and Pitch, with the sole objective of enabling their client to generate high levels of peak business growth at the lowest possible cost.
18. Growthcurve
Growthcurve is a creative growth agency that is known for employing non-traditional and unconventional approaches to generating rapid growth. Growthcurve utilizes "experimental growth loops" to quickly test new ideas and develop new media channels.
Growthcurve is commonly mentioned on industry lists because of the rapid pace and intensity with which they implement growth strategies for startups.
The Truth About Pricing and Contracts
Many businesses who engage with an advertising agency for service come into those discussions expecting to have unreasonable budgets. By having some type of baseline or standard pricing tier system in place, the company and agency can eliminate some of the wasted time that would occur during conversations.
Monthly costs to retain a performance marketing agency for entry-level services will generally be between $3,000-$6,000. Entry-level includes basic management of paid search and social media for smaller companies (i.e., local service or e-commerce companies).
The growth tier will typically be between $7,000-$12,000/month. Agencies in this tier manage multiple channels for their clients, provide dedicated creative testing, and assist clients in actively optimizing their conversion rates.
The enterprise tier costs start at $15,000 and can exceed $20,000 per month. The cost at this tier includes predictive data science, custom technology platforms, and teams to help facilitate the management of millions of dollars in ad spend on a global basis per month. At this level, agencies require longer contracts (typically 6-12 months) for complex technical onboarding.
How to Test an Agency in 48 Hours
When selecting an agency, one must not only consider the sales pitch but should audit the operational habits of the agency. An effective agency will be more than willing to demonstrate its operational methods.
During your evaluation, you should ask the following direct questions:
Data access - Will we have total administrative access to our ad accounts, ad tags, and analytics properties?
Reporting structure - Will you report metrics from your platforms, or will you connect to our CRM to provide reporting on sales and timeline velocity?
Creative testing - What is your exact schedule for weekly testing, and who is responsible for producing new creative assets?
Service level agreements - What are your guaranteed response times if you encounter campaign errors, and how often do you meet with us to discuss our strategic performance review face to face?
Agencies that take a long time to respond to these questions in a clear and succinct manner will likely struggle to manage your budget efficiently.
Why Ads Fail and How to Fix Them
Where do advertisements go wrong? Where does all of the money that has been invested in advertisements go? Where do advertisements fail?
Most performance marketing agencies do not talk about where they are losing money on advertising because it would not be helpful. However, knowing where advertisements fail is the best way to stop wasting ad dollars on failed campaigns.
Among other things, one of the most common areas where advertisements are failing is tracking breakage, particularly with the introduction of privacy changes implemented by Apple for their iOS operating systems and how pixel tracking is going to be much less accurate than before.
If you do not have any way to use your own customer data platform to track your marketing campaigns, then you are spending marketing money without knowing if the advertisements are working or not.
The second area that advertisements are failing in is creative fatigue. The new ad platforms today use creative assets as their primary means for targeting. Therefore, when an agency runs the same five images over and over again for a period of time, the cost per acquisition will increase to an unreasonable amount.
If you want your CPA to stay reasonable, then you will need to have a constant stream of new creative that has been tested and optimized to continue providing you with results.
The third area that often causes advertisements to fail in B2B advertising campaigns is misalignment between the agency and business-to-business (B2B) goals. If you are using LinkedIn advertising and your agency only optimizes the cost per lead, then you will not have effective leads.
To have successful leads in B2B, it is imperative that the agency has access to a prospect's entire sales cycle so that they can know when the B2B lead has closed.
The Final Verdict on Hiring a Performance Marketing Agency
The bottom line (or final verdict) for all performance marketing agencies that have high-performing campaigns is to think like a financial advisor. The agency does not care about the number of clicks or impressions on ad campaigns, but they do care about the cost of acquiring a customer, the speed that the customer goes from lead to sale, and the contribution margin of each customer.
If you operate like this, then you will create margins that will allow you to grow your business. When looking for a partner to work with, do not simply trust their promises about delivering data-driven results.
Look for partners who will require access to your CRM and ask meaningful questions about your profit margins. The best partners will connect their daily tactics on the platform to your financial goals so that every dollar they spend results in a growth of your business.
Common Questions About Hiring Performance Marketing Agencies
Why Do High Returns Not Always Mean More Revenue?
Ad platforms will take credit for the conversion of a sale as far back as possible. For instance, a person seeing an ad on social media but ultimately purchasing from your website three days later, multiple platforms will claim the credit for that same sale. The result is inflated platform metrics.
Without an established multi-touch attribution model and direct access to a client’s sales database, the agency is optimizing for the lowest-hanging fruit of easy conversions within the platform—rather than creating high-value customers.
How Often Should We Test New Ad Images?
For any accounts that spend over $50,000/month, the re-testing and rotation of creative assets should occur on a weekly basis. Because of the high levels of spending, there will be very rapid levels of ad fatigue.
Therefore, throughout the testing process, it will be essential to isolate certain specific variables (such as text hooks, background colors, calls-to-action, etc.). Testing creatively at random for creative assets will produce little in terms of actionable data. Every test should result in a key finding of what has succeeded, and how this data will inform the next group of designs.
What Should the Agency Report Show Before We Start?
You should never accept static monthly reports. What is critical to create and set up prior to launch will be a live dashboard that will continually provide real-time updates on performance versus target acquisition costs.
Furthermore, set up a strict weekly rhythm in order to review tactical efforts on the part of the agency as they come to light. The agency should provide a summary of what was successful, what they tested, and what they are going to do next. The agency providing transparency about failures (in addition to celebrating successes) will also be critical to building a successful partnership.