Top 15 Startup Marketing Agencies [2023 Deep Dive]

If you are here looking for a great startup marketing agency, we’re taking a strong guess that either you just launched your startup and looking for an agency to help you confirm product-market fit...

...And grow an active customer base, or your startup is currently not growing at the rate you wish, and so you are looking for a marketing team to help you fill your pipeline with hot leads. 

We got you. In this post, we will be discussing the merits of the 15 top startup marketing agencies and will guide you to make an informed decision and work with the company that best serves your unique needs and pain points.

But first, let’s get clear on the pillars of startup marketing. 

15 best startup marketing agencies for lead generation

Now that you know why lead generation is essential for your startups, let’s take a look at the 15 best startup marketing agencies for lead generation.

1 - Nerdy Joe

At Nerdy Joe, we specialize in helping businesses grow by generating high-quality leads that convert into paying customers.

Our team of experienced marketers uses proven strategies to attract and engage potential customers through cold outreach strategies such as cold email and email marketing.

We work closely with our clients to understand their unique needs and tailor our services to deliver the results they're looking for.

What sets us apart from other lead generation agencies is our unwavering commitment to quality. We believe that generating leads is only half the battle — the real challenge lies in converting those leads into loyal customers for you. 

That's why we focus on generating leads that are not only interested in your product or service but are also more likely to make a purchase.

We understand your business is different and unique, which is why we always offer customized lead generation solutions that are tailored to your specific needs. 

Whether you're a startup or an established business looking to expand, we have the expertise and resources to help you achieve your goals. 

So if you're tired of wasting time and money on ineffective lead generation strategies, our team of experts is here to help you take your business to the next level by generating high-quality leads that convert. 

Why Nerdy Joe is the best startup marketing agency for you

There are a couple of perks and approaches that make us a unique lead generation company for your needs. Here are the main reasons you need to consider Nerdy Joe. 

We care about your brand image: we will represent you in the best way possible by creating meaningful campaigns and cold emails that are representative of your brand

Log into your Twitter account and type cold email into the search to see what most of the so-called “cold email gurus” are preaching on the platform. You will find Tweets like the following:

Caught what’s wrong with that? They’re all preaching to send thousands of emails to only get a few replies and clients closed.

They imagine scenarios like sending 1000 cold emails per day, and at the end of the week, you have at least 100 replies and 10 booked calls or clients closed. 

This could work. We are not claiming that it won’t. But here is a quick question for you. How would you like your brand or company to be represented? Or, what startup marketing agency would you choose?  

• A: One that builds huge lists of thousands of people and blasts them with generic emails and hopes to convert a reasonable percentage of them. 

• B: On that builds a well-researched list of 30 prospects and crafts personalized, relevant, and compelling emails to reach out to them and close a good deal of them.

B, yeah? That’s what we figured.

The thing is, the A agency could get you results too. Because it’s easy to believe that cold outreach or lead generation success is a matter of volume. The more cold emails you send, the more likely you are to close clients. 

But that’s the best way to damage your brand and your relationship with prospective clients. Here are some well-known issues attached with targeting huge prospects lists. 

• ESPs and ISPs will flag your email and IP addresses as spammers.  

• They’ll kill your company’s reputation, and you’ll get a bad rap on social media. 

• The quality of the leads you get will be subpar. 

• Your domain will face severe deliverability issues.

Imagine waking up on a Thursday morning to 200 Twitter and LinkedIn notifications about how your company’s cold emails suck. 

We avoid this by being super-specific in who we target and creating personalized messages to very short prospect lists, and guess what? It works, and we are able to drive measurable business growth with it. 

A significant part of our strategy development is to spend time learning about your ideal customer profile (ICP) in and out before we send a single email.

We want each recipient to feel like you know them and wonder why you didn’t cross their paths months ago.

Honestly, we don’t want to send 1000 emails per day for a week to get you 4 sign-ups or meetings booked at the end of the week.

Our ideal scenario is that we send 20 emails, get 15 replies, 10 positives, and get you 4 sales-qualified leads or sign-ups.

Now, don’t get this wrong. By personalization, we mean we make each email relatable and timely. We don’t just add [[First name]] and other variables to the email subject lines. 

Just for some context on how this works for us, here’s an example of a reply we received as we reached out to a VP of Marketing who has historically blocked or reported SPAM to anyone who’s sent him a cold email.

Here’s another example where we pitched a Head of Marketing, and here’s the response. 

Contrary to what these gurus suggest, most of our cold email marketing campaigns are run towards 10 or 15 people, not 1000. That’s why most of the responses we get are:

• “Wow, such a nice email.”

• “Your email is well-done, partener”

• “Thank you for the nice words and compliment.”

• “Love your cold emails. Wanna write for us?”

• “Let’s catch up next Thursday.”

• “Love your email. Can you follow up on the 25th?” 

We believe the best marketing approach is the one that promotes trust and relationships. That’s why we always put in the extra work and patience it requires. 

You might wonder where we get information about each prospect or member of your target audience we use for personalization.

• We listen to podcasts your potential customers have been on.

• We read blog posts they wrote. 

• We read their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon posts.

• We read discussions on forums they’re in.

Using the data we collect, we craft first lines and icebreakers customized to each individual.

Here’s what it looks like in real life. We pitched CoSchedule’s Head of Content, Ben Sailer, and asked him if we could write for them.

Here’s what he replied 1 hour later.

Here is another successful example from a similar strategy.

As you can see from both screenshots, the cold emails sent to the prospects were so compelling that they couldn’t help but acknowledge it before offering to hire us.

We are unwavering about data quality: we do the prospecting, list building, and everything manually.

First thing, it’s not that we are a bunch of people from the Victorian era trying it at marketing. We could easily sign up for a data intelligence tool like LeadsEngine, ZoomInfo, or Lusha, and they’ll quickly scrape up the net to build us lead lists, including 1000s of targets. 

And it could work. It does work for some people. But we know the level of data accuracy and customization it takes to cut it into someone’s inbox with an unsolicited cold email and get their attention. 

That’s why we do not rely on data intelligence tools. In most cases, such tools only compile technographic and demographic data from companies. For example, using these tools, it’s easy to find data regarding companies that: 

• Are in the healthcare industry, 

• Have 1000 to 1500 employees,

• Are series A-funded companies,

• They sell to eCommerce companies,

• Are in the U.S,

• Use financial technology,

• Use HubSpot or Salesforce as part of their tech stack.

• Etc.

It can even tell you that the company has a ping pong table at the office. You get the idea. Anyone with enough experience in the digital marketing industry can look at a company and guess those.

The thing is that this type of data can’t serve anywhere near strong personalization. You can only use it to devise poor first lines like:

Subject line: HubSpot integration

Hey [[First name]],

You are in the U.S. You sell to doctors, and you are using Salesforce. Cool, that’s something we have in common, bla bla bla…let’s get married. 

[[Sender name]]

So instead, we want quality data that we can use to create personalized emails that make the prospects feel like we know them and everything about their day-to-day and more.

So, we seek and make use of psychographic data and other types of data.

How do we do that? Glad you asked. 

Upon signing a new client, the first thing we do is ask about their ICP.

We ask questions like:

• Which type of client has the highest lifetime value?

• Which type of clients is easiest to close?

• Which type of clients churns the fastest?

• What are the top 3 objections you hear from prospective clients during sales calls?

• Why did you start your company? 

• What pain points were you trying to solve?

• Etc.

By getting them to answer these questions, we can pinpoint precisely who we should target and why — and it gets easy to do it manually. And this type of information makes the difference between: 

“We’re targeting series A tech companies,” 

And 

“Our ICP is a CTO at a software company selling to DevOps, and his main pain points are lack of organization, time management, and team collaboration. He often refers to XYZ podcasts to get insights as to how to manage his team efficiently.” 

Once we have a clear understanding of who the ICP is, we proceed to manually build our list, and that’s what we use to run our lead generation campaigns.

We care about your ROI: so you pay us for the results we get for you, not for the number of emails we send

There generally are four types of startup marketing companies:

• Those who’ll charge you based on the number of emails they send or the number of contacts they put in your list.

• Those charge you a monthly fee and promise you’ll get the best B2B leads ever but never deliver on their promise.

• Those that call everyone who’s downloaded an ebook or PDF  a LEAD and charge you for that.

• Those that charge based on the number of QUALIFIED leads they generate for your sales team.

To be fair, it’s only the last type of company that truly cares about your ROI and brings you great results. 

As a startup, you mainly care about your ROI, and chances are that your main point is that you need more leads to sell to, and that’s why you were looking for a startup marketing company in the first place. 

So, given this, our value does not revolve around the number of emails we send or the work we do, but rather the results we deliver.

Because of this, our experts only make sense of success and lack thereof with metrics that matter — not vanity metrics like open rate, bounce rate, clickthrough rate, etc.

Metrics we lead with include: 

• Number of positive replies

• Number of meetings booked

• Lead to close rate.

For instance, if you want to work with us to increase the customer base for your SaaS product, we’ll report:

• The number of new sign-ups you get. 

• The number of positive replies we get.

• The number of demo calls we book for you.

• And the number of new clients we get for you.

If you’re a B2B company selling to accountants, we’ll only charge you for the number of appointments we set for your sales teams. 

Our offering varies depending on your company’s overall goal and what outcome matters the most to you.

You don’t have to sign retainer agreements and contracts: You are free to stop your subscription based on satisfaction

It’s a common service type for most B2B lead generation and startup marketing companies. Most companies will ask you to sign a 3 to 6-month contract before you start working together.

They’ll explain it by saying they’ll need to do some testing and that the purchase journey is long. 

That means that you pay every month for the results you are supposed to get — even when you don’t get them.

So, this makes you invest a lot of money, and at the end of the day, you may not have anything to show for it. That’s why our services are subscription-based. 

We promise to offer you results exactly from the first month, and you’ll have to choose whether to continue to pay and get the results or whether you want to stop working with us — depending on how satisfied you are with our service and your budget. 

That means that even before the get-go, you know exactly what you are paying for. We eliminate the stress that comes with long-term and binding contracts and let you decide.

Here are the benefits you can enjoy from this. 

• Flexibility: A retainer contract usually requires you to commit to a fixed period of time and payment, regardless of your satisfaction with the service. In contrast, you are free to choose when to subscribe and when to stop. It’s all based on whether you are satisfied or not, which means that you won’t have to stay committed while you are not getting the results you want. 

• Risk mitigation: If you are dissatisfied with the service, you can stop the subscription without incurring financial and legal consequences. You take on less risk than with a retainer contract. 

• Accountability: The system rewards us for maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction. We know you have the option to stop your subscription if you aren't satisfied. The opposite is true with a retainer contract since the provider is already obligated to pay for the service regardless of your satisfaction.

Pricing

Our marketing service’s pricing is crystal clear. We have three plans:

• Silver: It costs $499/month and only gives you two warm LEAD.

• Gold: This is the plan we recommend, as it gives you the biggest bang for your buck. It costs $999/month and gives you 6 hot and sales-qualified appointments or LEADS.

• Platinum: This plan is for mid-level to enterprise companies willing to fuel their sales team with up to 15 sales-ready leads on a monthly basis.

Our email marketing pricing includes the following:

• The tech stack we use to build your prospect list and send and monitor your campaign.

• A complete list of prospects that fit your buyer persona and ICP.

• The campaign setup fees.

2 - Crowdform

Crowdform is one of the best digital marketing agencies. It is a digital product agency that launches ventures from scratch and partners with various companies to build digital products for their clients in the web3, cryptocurrency, gaming, and blockchain industry.

They have worked with various notable firms such as Sony, RedBull, Pura, HomeOffice, Inshur, Red Deer, and others. 

They are a design-led company that focuses on startups and help them develop digital products — websites and digital apps – through advanced technologies. They ensure that the developed products are easy to use and address users’ pain points.

Some of the services they offer include:

• Product strategy

• Product design

• Product development 

• Product growth

There is no pricing detail about their service, but you can contact them to get a quote.

3 - SeeResponse

SeeResponse is a digital marketing agency that focuses on helping B2B startups to generate qualified leads and grow their sales pipeline through a series of custom marketing strategies such as email marketing, outbound lead generation, marketing automation, and demand generation. 

They partner with startups to drive traffic, generate qualified leads, and grow your business. Some of the services they deliver for startups include:

• Build a fast, functional, and well-designed website that makes the brand visible

• Build apps to drive traffic and grow your business

• Run targeted marketing campaigns across various channels 

• Set up email drip sequences to move your audience through the buyer’s journey

• Automate tasks and processes through marketing automation tools.

If you want to partner with them, you can call them, send them an email, or fill out the form on their website. 

4 - WEBITMD

WEBITMD is a digital growth agency that provides marketing, sales, and technology services for businesses.

They have partnered with various businesses that range from venture-backed startups to large enterprises.

Some notable organizations they have partnered with include Amazon, Google, Meta, HubSpot, Shopify, and more. 

Their goal is to create brand awareness, increase qualified leads, and drive revenue to grow their business. They operate through an all-in-one sales and marketing approach known as “The Growth Stack” to deliver measurable results and accelerate business growth. 

Here are some of the services you get from this approach.

• They use email marketing campaigns such as email sequences and templates to build trust and nurture leads.

• They set up intelligent workflow and automation to scale through the client’s journey.

• They measure your lead’s activities and identify when they are ready for sales.

• They improve the sales process.

There is no pricing information about their services. But you can give them a call, send them a message, fill out a form, or book a meeting to get in touch with them.

5 - WebFx

WebFx is a digital marketing agency that provides various marketing services such as content marketing, lead generation services, paid ads, SEO, and others to grow businesses. 

They have partnered with various companies and have generated over 7.5 million leads for their clients. Although their general focus is on digital marketing, they can also help startups to grow their business. 

If you want to partner with WebFX, you will have to contact them and request a quote from their website.

6 - Write2Market

Write2Market is a tech public relations firm that provides lead generation and digital marketing services for startups and other companies.

They optimize the sales pipeline and ensure that various marketing efforts achieve measurable results. 

They specialize in the healthcare, tech, and retail industry while generating qualified leads and accelerating the sales funnel for their clients. Here is a quick view of how they work.

• They evaluate their client’s pain points at each stage of the buying cycle.

• They create a clear call to action that attracts, nurtures, and closes deals for their prospects.

• They improve their sales pipeline and measure their results.

To get their pricing details, you can call, email, or fill out their forms.

7 - Tuff Growth

TuffGrowth is a growth marketing agency that executes holistic and efficient marketing strategies to grow startups. They create customized growth marketing plans for each startup to help them scale their business.

They also have an in-house marketing team to help businesses in case they are short of in-house marketers or freelancers. 

They execute their systematic approach on different marketing channels to discover new opportunities and achieve measurable growth. Here are some of their processes:

• They perform foundational research and analyze your existing funnel.

• They set up clear goals.

• They identify and tests underperforming marketing strategies and end up with the most effective one.

• They evaluate results.

TuffGrowth offers three pricing plans for their services, and includes;

• Growth plan, which costs $12,500 per month

• Lean plan, which costs $25,000 per month

• Full plan, which is a custom plan and is available on request. 

8 - Ironpaper

Ironpapper is a B2B growth agency that provides B2B marketing, lead generation, and content marketing services for B2B companies, especially startups.

They generate qualified leads and nurture sales opportunities for their clients. 

To do this, they implement various strategies to improve lead generation rates. Some of these strategies include:

• Account-based and inbound marketing strategy to attract and convert qualified leads

• Content and engagement strategy to build post-conversion

• Full-funnel analytics to gather data from users across the funnel

• Retention strategy to improve customer acquisition and retention

• Behavior-based email marketing to send targeted messages

You must call or fill out their contact on their website to know about their pricing details. 

9 - Transcend Digital

Transcend Digital is a digital marketing agency that helps various brands, including startups, to build an online presence and achieve their goals in the digital space. They have worked with several firms, including Total, Tara, GoSnow, Fyxt, and more. 

They work on business objectives to craft solutions that boost ROI and improve customer retention. They also rely on their technological and analytics expertise to solve their client’s pain points and deliver measurable results. 

Depending on their client’s software, they integrate tons of software to help them produce scalable results. Some examples of CRMs they integrate with include HubSpot, Shopify, Salesforce, and so on. 

You have to contact them to get their pricing details if you want to work with them.

10 - Klicker 

Klicker is a digital marketing agency that offers inbound marketing and lead generation service for businesses. Although they work with businesses of any size, they give startups special attention to help them off the ground. 

They utilize advanced technologies and implement effective strategies to help startups drive traffic, generate leads, and close deals.

Some of the services they offer include content strategy, brand development, drip marketing, email marketing campaigns, drip marketing, and more.

There is no information about their pricing, but you can contact them to get a quote. 

11 - Digital Uncut

Digital Uncut is a digital marketing agency specifically for startups. They are a data-driven agency that enables startups to scale effectively and achieve measurable results.

On their website is a 5-step approach that shows how they work for their clients. Some services they offer include SEO, Digital PR, web development, data analysis, consultancy, and more. 

If you want to work with them, you have to contact them and know their pricing details. 

12 - Enventys Partners

Enventys Partners is a product development firm and marketing agency that works on new product ideas from scratch and scale them to the market.

They have worked with over 600 businesses and launched over 2,500 products to the market.

 They also focus on crowdfunding and e-commerce marketing which allows them to test the product’s market demand and find funds to scale it to commercial success. 

There are no pricing details on the company’s website, but you can contact them to request a quote.

13 - BAMF

BAMF is a LinkedIn marketing agency that provides LinkedIn influencer and lead generation services for businesses.

Although their primary service is LinkedIn, they also offer growth hacking services to help startups and businesses grow effectively and boost their revenue. 

They specialize in providing their services to B2B SaaS founders, sales leaders, agencies, and consultants. Here is a quick look at how their LinkedIn marketing service works.

• They write ghost content for their client’s profile

• They connect with relevant prospects that interact with the content

• The message prospects and book meetings with them. 

To get their pricing details, contact them on your website. 

14 - GrowthRocks

GrowthRocks is a growth-hacking marketing agency that helps startups and other companies to achieve sustainable growth.

They are a data-driven digital agency that uses different experimentation and cost-effective tactics to grow a business.

Their main goal is to increase customer acquisition, improve customer retention, and generate more revenue. Some of their processes involve discovering new customer acquisition channels, generating leads,  optimizing marketing campaigns, and more.

 You have to contact them to get a quote if you want to work with them.

15 - CB Web Design

CB Web Design is a web development agency that helps businesses, including startups, with all their web development needs. They ensure that your website is efficient in terms of form and functionality.  

Although the agency primarily deals with web development, they also help their clients with marketing strategies such as paid search. They use paid search (Google Adwords, retargeting, or paid social campaigns) to generate B2B leads at a faster rate. 

If you want to know about their pricing details, you must fill out a form on their website.

What are the benefits of working with a startup marketing agency?

Working with a startup marketing agency provides numerous advantages. Some of these include:

1 - Marketing expertise

One major advantage of hiring a startup marketing agency is to have expertise in different areas of marketing. As a startup, you may not yet be familiar with different aspects of marketing or understand how it works. 

However, a good startup agency consists of experts who have real, hands-on experience in creating an effective online marketing strategy that can propel your brand to new heights.

Since they have mastered the art of marketing, their expertise can give you advantages over your competitors and ensure that you stay at the top.

For instance, if you are a startup looking for ways to generate leads, you can hire a lead generation agency that already knows the rudiment to help you scale faster and achieve the desired results.

2 - More time to focus on business needs

Most entrepreneurs are busy with one task or the other, thus prompting them to have less time to manage the marketing side of their business effectively. 

With the support of a startup marketing agency, entrepreneurs can better focus on more urgent matters that require their attention, such as the products or services they offer.

Consequently, this allows the marketing agency to take full responsibility for the brand message and amplify its growth to customers. 

3 - Expand the business

Traditionally, the urgent need of a startup agency is to expand the business. But that would require you to hire your marketing team. This can be costly and takes time, especially if the hires are new on the job. 

However, a startup agency doesn’t have to go through the process. They already have a customized marketing strategy that can help to scale up your business. 

By strategies, this doesn’t mean they already have a bunch of keywords to add to your webpage and hope for the best. Instead, they already have analytics that measures the effectiveness of each strategy. 

They have learned what can scale up your business and prevent it from falling. Unless you hire experts as your marketing team, which may turn out to be expensive, a startup marketing agency is the best shot to scale your brand. 

In some cases, you can also hire a cold email agency to perform outbound lead generation and reach prospects that can contribute to the growth of your business.

Three tips for choosing the right startup marketing agency

As a business owner, you have to consider some factors before choosing the right startup agency. Here are some tips to get started.

1 - A proven track record

Most startup marketing agencies claim to have an effective track record. However, you can’t just believe what they claim outrightly without any proof. 

Just like you review an employee’s work history before hiring them, you must apply the same principle to a startup agency. 

This ensures that you do not get crickets in the long run. Hiring a startup marketing agency with a proven track record enables you to get the desired results you aim for.

2 - Industry

Choosing the right marketing agency directly correlates to the industry of your business. In fact, you should avoid an agency that is too generic. Good agencies tend to be industry-specific. This ensures you will have a good fit that can accomplish your goals. 

For instance, if your company is a tech startup seeking to generate leads through email marketing, you wouldn’t make the right decision if you select an agency that primarily works for the retail or e-commerce industry.

Instead, you can hire a B2B SaaS agency that can implement some SaaS email marketing strategies and achieve your goals.

3 - Price

A common true principle is that “you get what you pay for.” When it comes to marketing, the return on investment is often determined by how much you are willing to invest. 

Going for the cheapest service may result in little or no return on investment, which can affect your business growth. 

Also, going for an expensive agency may affect your ROI. What matters is to find a business that fits within your budget and can achieve your marketing objectives.

Why brand storytelling and lead generation should be the top priority for your startup marketing strategy

Let’s discuss brand storytelling and lead generation and why you need them to establish and grow your business. 

Startup storytelling

Every business needs to connect with its audience and engage with them on a deeper level. This is where brand storytelling appears in the picture. 

Brand storytelling is the cohesive and coherent narrative that weaves the facts together and evokes your brand’s emotions. 

As a startup, your customers need to connect with your brand and relate to your solution so they can buy. You should tell them the story behind your brand and why it exists across all communication channels. 

Wrap up the message to stir people’s imagination and elicit an emotional response from them. For instance, you can tell a story about your startup’s history, value proposition, and more. The story must be woven creatively such that people see your value and differentiate you from the competition.

Brand storytelling isn’t just a nice-to-have tool for your startup. You need to implement it to enhance your business’s visibility, stand out from your competitors, and generate revenue. 

Outbound lead generation

In addition to brand storytelling, there is a need for startups to include outbound lead generation as a part of their marketing strategy. It is a process that is essential for getting yourself into general conversations and gaining brand awareness. 

As a startup operating as a new entity in the market, you probably don’t have customers, and you can’t sit around waiting for inbound strategies such as content marketing and SEO to take off. It’ll take too much time and budget you probably lack already. 

Generating leads helps you to identify people that may be interested in your products/services and convince them to become paying customers. It is a process that identifies who your target audience is and the problems they aim to solve, and you reach out to them with your solution. 

You do this by creating cold emails and crafting engaging campaigns that educate and build relationships with the target audience. Lead generation ensures that you acquire new customers to grow your business. 

We are that startup marketing agency you’ve been looking for

If you are looking for an agency that will use paid advertising, Search Engine Optimization, social media marketing, and content marketing to boost your sales, Digital Uncut, CallBox, and the others on this list are suitable lead generation agencies for you. 

But if what you’re looking for is:

• An agency that charges you for results, not tasks.

• An agency that doesn’t require you to commit to a contract.

• An agency that does not waste your time and that’s affordable.

• A group of experts that care about your company's reputation and relationship with prospects.

Nerdy Joe is the startup marketing agency you’re looking for.