💸Pricing: 

• Undisclosed

✅Why Choose Them:

• All the work gets completed by their in-house team.
• They’re an award-winning agency and most recently was a Bronze Winner in Promotion Materials for Social Change at 2023’s Indigo Awards.

📁Case Studies: View examples of work

7. Imagination Publishing

🔗Website: https://www.imaginepub.com/

⏳Founded: 1994

📍Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA

🧑‍💻Number of Employees: 51-200

Imagination Publishing is one of the oldest content marketing agencies. They also recently joined the Mx Group, empowering them to create powerful end-to-end marketing experiences and unlock even more opportunities for clients.

They describe themselves as “content thought leaders” that include strategists, digital marketers, creators, and journalists. When it comes to creating content, they take an audience-first, strategy-driven approach.

📉Key Services:

• Content strategy
• Content distribution
• Content creation
• SEO and interlinking strategy
• KPI and goal setting
• Reporting

⚙️Industries Served:

• Financial
• B2B
• Healthcare

🔝Best for:

• B2B and B2C organizations that want to focus on thought leadership.

💸Pricing: 

• Undisclosed

✅Why Choose Them:

• They’re an award-winning agency and recently walked away with 13 awards at the AM&P Network Association Council EXCEL Awards.
• They use a proprietary, data-driven benchmarking tool to uncover insights into the performance of thought leadership articles.

📁Case Studies: View examples of work

8. Dear Content 

🔗Website: https://www.dearcontent.com/

⏳Founded: 2018

📍Location: Barcelona, Spain

🧑‍💻Number of Employees: 2-10

Dear Content is one of the newer content marketing agencies. It’s run by Julia and Lin who share a love for content, coffee, and the same work ethic.

When it comes to work ethic, they dig deep to identify clear data-backed goals and create content that their clients’ target audience will find informative. This means that you can look forward to localised content that takes into account nuances.

📉Key Services:

• Content strategy
• Content writing
• Lead generation
• Social media marketing
• Digital media relations
• SEO

⚙️Industries Served:

• B2B

🔝Best for:

• B2B businesses that prefer a boutique feel.

💸Pricing: 

• Undisclosed

✅Why Choose Them:

• There’s no middleman. You’ll deal directly with the team member who’s producing your content.

📁Case Studies: Undisclosed

9. Optimist 

🔗Website: https://www.yesoptimist.com/

⏳Founded: 2016

📍Location: Denver, Colorado, USA

🧑‍💻Number of Employees: 2-10

Optimist is a small, full-service content marketing agency that’s remote and distributed. They have a team of full-time, experienced freelancers from which they group talent together to build a custom team for each client.

Another key difference between Optimist and many other content marketing agencies is that they place a lot of emphasis on strategy. Their approach places strategy before content creation and before they take on a new project they’ll first get to know your business and its specific requirements along with the industry. The goal is then to create content that connects your goals with your buyers’ needs. For clients that want to leverage paid promotion, Optimist can also partner with your in-house team for extra distribution.

📉Key Services:

• SEO
• Link building
• Content creation
• Content optimization

⚙️Industries Served:

• SaaS
• Non-profit

🔝Best for:

• Startups and growth-stage businesses with bigger budgets.

💸Pricing: 

• Pricing starts at $10,000 per month for full-service engagements.

✅Why Choose Them:

• They also include SEO in their list of services.
• They tailor their content marketing team to fit in with your business needs.

📁Case Studies: View examples of work

10. Omniscient Digital 

🔗Website: https://beomniscient.com/

⏳Founded: 2019

📍Location: Austin, Texas, USA

🧑‍💻Number of Employees: 11-50

Omniscient Digital is one of the newer content marketing agencies on the scene, but they’ve already added huge names like Jasper, AppSumo and Lokalise to their client list. Instead of labeling themselves as only a content marketing company, they choose to categorise their company as an organic growth agency.

One of their unique selling propositions is that they make revenue the end goal. While acquiring valuable traffic is part of the mission, it’s not the final destination. To do this, they implement the “Barbell Strategy” (a concept they’re borrowing from financial investing) to find the best balance between buzzworthy content and low-risk, product-led content.

📉Key Services:

• Content strategy
• Content production and optimization
• Link building
• Technical SEO
• Digital PR

⚙️Industries Served:

• B2B SaaS

🔝Best for:

• B2B software companies that want to focus only on content and SEO and are willing to spend more for these two services.

💸Pricing: 

• Pricing starts at $10,000 per month.

✅Why Choose Them:

• They offer a fully managed content production service and will deliver articles that are ready to publish.
• Reporting is a crucial part of their process.

📁Case Studies: View examples of work

11. Siege Media 

🔗Website: https://www.siegemedia.com/

⏳Founded: 2012

📍Location: Headquartered in San Diego, California, USA, but operates completely remotely

🧑‍💻Number of Employees: 51-200

Siege Media has a remote team of creatives, SEO strategists, and marketers that offers all the content marketing services that you’ll need. From strategy to optimization to link building to content uploading, they can help with all aspects involved.

They describe their approach as audience-first and scientific. It’s based on a combination of optimizing blog designs, analyzing competitors, and uncovering high-value ranking opportunities. Armed with a strategy, their in-house team will start with the content creation process. AI will only be used to speed up parts of the process like keyword research and brainstorming.

📉Key Services:

• Technical SEO
• Content localization
• Link building
• Digital PR
• Web design
• Graphic design

⚙️Industries Served:

• SaaS
• Fintech
• eCommerce

🔝Best for:

• Businesses with bigger budgets that can sign up for a 12-month commitment.
• Brands that want to prioritise design too and would like to share interactive content pieces such as calculators and quizzes.

💸Pricing: 

• They charge a minimum monthly spend of $8,000. You’ll also need to sign a year-long contract (which includes a 30-day out clause).

✅Why Choose Them:

• All the content is written by in-house writers who use AI only for non-critical steps.
• They use a proprietary process to identify passive link topics.

📁Case Studies: View examples of work

12. Influence & Co. 

🔗Website: https://www.influenceandco.com/

⏳Founded: 2011

📍Location: Columbia, Missouri, USA

🧑‍💻Number of Employees: 201-500

Influence & Co. is a results-driven content marketing agency that prioritises strategy. Using a collaborative approach and a proprietary content management platform dubbed ICo. Core, their team simplifies content marketing.

What makes them one of the best content marketing agencies is that they also have relationships with over 1,000 publications across an array of industries. These contacts are useful for establishing your brand as a thought leader. Aside from thought leadership, they also have a track record of generating leads and getting their clients ranked higher in the SERPs.

📉Key Services:

• Content audits
• Strategy
• Keyword research
• PR
• Content amplification
• Paid media
• Reporting

⚙️Industries Served:

• Education
• Financial
• Fitness
• Technology
• Healthcare
• Insurance

🔝Best for:

• Businesses that want to sign up for a long-term commitment.

💸Pricing: 

• Influence & Co. charges a monthly fee based on the scope of work. Pricing starts at $5,000 per month. For one-time projects, you can expect to pay 30% more than their standard fees.

✅Why Choose Them:

• They’re an award-winning content marketing agency. Most recently, they’ve won a Kindness in Business award for their positive workplace culture.
• They charge a fixed monthly fee, making it easier to budget.
• You can look forward to quarterly strategy calls which include reporting.

📁Case Studies: View examples of work

Characteristics That Make a Great Content Marketing Agency

It’s easy to call yourself a content marketing agency. All you have to do is write, right? Wrong.

Here’s what the top content marketing agencies do:

• Prioritise Strategy: You first need to plan before you can create. For this, you’ll need data. What are the interests and pain points of the target audience? What content is available on these topics? These are the types of questions that need to be answered beforehand.
• Include SEO: While SEO and content marketing are two separate strategies, a lot of your content will be informed by keyword research. Ultimately, you’re creating content for two audiences — potential customers and the search engines.
• Take a personalised approach: No two businesses are the same. They have different brand voices, audiences, goals, etc. A good content marketing agency will adjust their style to match their clients’ branding so that everything is on-brand.

What to Expect From a Content Marketing Agency

Content marketing companies take a more specialised approach. Instead of focusing on digital marketing in general, their strengths lie in using content to market your brand and products. While the focus is on content, you can expect that the agency will also look at basic SEO. That said, ensure that you clarify this beforehand.

You can also expect that the agency will include you in the early phases. While they’ll have their own set of tools that they’ll use to create a data-driven marketing strategy, there are some questions that only you’ll be able to answer.

Then, you’ll also most likely be looped in again during the approval process. Even if the agency takes care of distribution, you should be given the opportunity first to approve any content before it gets published.

Then, there’s the issue of AI. It’s a realistic expectation that their team will be using AI for content creation. It’s generally used only for non-critical steps that can improve efficiency. Double-check how they use AI. The agency should be transparent about their use of AI and other content tools.

A Fresh Perspective on Business with NinjaPromo: Content That Clients Talk About

At NinjaPromo, we realize that good content marketing takes time. The goal isn’t to get words on a page for the sake of showing to your target audience that you’re active. It serves a bigger purpose.

While it’s great that clients talk about the content that you’re creating, whether that’s by sharing it to their LinkedIn page or adding their views in the comments section, clients should also talk about your brand. After reading a guest post or watching an interview, they should start to view you as an industry expert. That’s good content — content that brings value to your clients while at the same time showing how valuable you are to your industry.