How do I choose a marketing agency for my small business?

1. Watch their work, not their pitch deck

Any agency can describe itself as creative. Ask for links to content they made that is live right now, on real business accounts, with the public view counts visible. If an agency can only show mockups or stock-footage reels, you're buying a promise.

Red flag: “Our results are confidential” with nothing public to show.

How Garnet answers: our portfolio links straight to the published videos. The Kramer Autoplex channels we make short-form for show 26M+ public TikTok views and 17M+ on YouTube Shorts (September 2026 counts), and we label those as view counts, not sales.

2. Make sure you own your accounts and content

Your Google Business Profile, ad accounts, social pages and raw video should be in your business's name. Google lets a profile have several owners but only one primary owner (Google Business Profile Help). The primary owner should be you, with the agency added as a manager.

Red flag: the agency creates the ad account or profile under its own login and “manages it for you.”

How Garnet answers: the content we produce is yours and ad accounts stay in your business's name.

3. Find out who actually makes the content

Plenty of agencies sell strategy and then hand your filming to a subcontractor or an AI tool. Ask who shows up to film, who edits, and who writes the captions. Ask to meet them.

Red flag: generic, templated posts that could belong to any business in any town. Customers scroll past that, and it doesn't build a brand.

4. Ask what you'll see every month

Good reporting ties content to things you can count: calls, form leads, direction requests, store visits, booked appointments. Views and followers are a start, not the finish line.

Red flag: reports that only list “impressions” and “reach.”

5. Read the exit terms before you sign

Ask how much notice you need to give, what happens to unused content, and how quickly you get admin access back. A long lock-in protects the agency, not you.

Red flag: a 12-month contract with no performance out, or ad spend bundled into the agency fee so you can't see what Google or Meta actually charged.

How Garnet answers: the minimum engagement is six months, because social media takes time and results don't happen overnight. After the six-month minimum, either side can end the engagement with a week or two of notice.

6. Look for experience in your kind of business

A dealership, a lakeside restaurant and a roofing company need different content. Ask what the agency has made for businesses like yours, and what they'd film first.

How Garnet answers: Steven Wilson has roughly ten years of car-dealership marketing behind him, plus work for restaurants and small businesses across Livingston, Lufkin and Huntsville. See dealership video marketing and East Texas restaurant marketing.

7. Check that their content gets shown to people

The point of marketing is to be seen. Look at an agency's client accounts: do people watch, comment and share? Volume without attention is just noise. Garnet builds brands with content people choose to watch: recurring faces, real places and a hook in the first seconds, instead of a quota of filler posts.

What it costs (and what's separate)

Published 2026 guides put agency retainers at roughly $1,000–$12,000+ a month (WebFX). Social media ad spend is usually extra: WebFX puts average ad spend at $850–$2,000 a month, with management at 10–20% of spend (WebFX, updated September 2026). At Garnet, engagements start at $1,500 a month, and ad spend is paid to the platform separately. For video specifically, see what short-form video production costs.