TL;DR
- With AI, anyone can produce volume. Hire an agency for how it researches, how it writes, and whether it understands your buyer, not for how many posts it can crank out per month.
- Red flags: per-piece prices that only work with unedited AI output, promises of traffic, a generic in-house blog, and teams that won’t let you meet the person actually writing.
- Before signing, ask how they use AI, how they measure presence in AI answers, who owns the content, and what happens if you cancel.
- In the US, 68% of Google searches now end without a click. Track branded search, pipeline and AI citations, not just visits.
- If you sell something complex (fintech, crypto, technical B2B) or in two languages, prioritize an agency that truly understands your niche.
For five years, Postdigitalist operated primarily as a content marketing studio. And as a content marketing studio, we had a blog post about how to choose a content marketing studio. It’s the post every agency has on its blog, us included, and we’re updating it because the old version described a market that no longer exists. In that market, producing content was expensive, and ranking first on Google guaranteed you visits.
Today it’s the opposite. A passable article costs almost nothing; getting someone to read it gets more expensive every month. That changes what’s worth asking from an agency. We’re talking about content marketing agencies here, but almost all of this applies if you’re trying to figure out how to choose a digital marketing agency in general.
Choosing a content marketing agency means evaluating whether a team can research your market, write in a voice that’s recognizable, memorable and right for your audience, and get that content in front of your buyer: in search engines, in AI answers, and in the channels where they already spend their time.
What’s changed since the last time you hired a content agency
The click is no longer guaranteed. According to a SparkToro study based on Similarweb data, 68.01% of Google searches in the US ended without a click between January and April 2026, up from 60.45% in 2024. The same report notes that branded, local and transactional searches are still performing well for SEO.
Authority and volume aren’t enough either. According to Ahrefs estimates, HubSpot went from nearly 11 million organic visits a month at its peak to about 3.6 million in October 2026, despite having one of the strongest domains in the industry. We covered this in this case study on HubSpot’s SEO.
What’s become cheap is the draft. What’s become expensive is having something to say. An agency that sells you “X articles a month” isn’t really selling you anything. For the first time in a long while, it seems quality beats quantity.
Agency or in-house team?
An agency makes sense when you need senior judgment fast to build your content strategy, an editorial process you don’t already have, and the ability to scale up or down without hiring. It also makes sense when your in-house team is swamped and content always gets pushed to “next week.”
It doesn’t make sense if you’re hoping to outsource knowledge of your own customer. No agency, including ours, replaces conversations with your users. The quality of the work depends on that information flowing in both directions.
Red flags when hiring a content agency
A per-piece price that only works with unedited AI output
Researching, writing and editing well takes hours. If the price doesn’t cover those hours, it’s because someone is skipping them. AI can be part of the process; what can’t be missing is a person who rewrites the output, or who uses what the AI produces to build something better, in less time than was possible a few years ago.
Its own blog is generic
Look at what the agency publishes for itself. If its content could belong to anyone, yours will too.
It promises specific traffic or rankings
Results depend on your category, your competition, your domain, and now also on how much Google answers without sending anyone to your site. Anyone who guarantees you a number isn’t looking at that context, and will probably end up selling you 20 low-quality posts a month.
It only talks about keywords
SEO is still the foundation, but today search happens across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, TikTok and YouTube at once. We go into this in more detail in our interview on search everywhere optimization. An agency that only thinks in terms of search volume is leaving out half the job: volume is always a function of quality. There’s no volume without quality.
It talks more than it listens
In the first meeting, a good agency asks about your business, your buyer, and how you measure success. For us, a discovery call should feel like a coffee chat, even if it’s virtual, where we get to know each other and we’re the ones receiving your needs.
Questions to ask a content marketing agency before signing
About the team
- Who writes and who edits? Can I see something published by those people?
- How much does the team turn over, and what happens if whoever runs my account leaves?
About the process
- How do you use AI, and which parts of the work are done by people?
- How do you research? Do you use primary sources, proprietary data, interviews with our team?
- How do you choose topics: by search volume or by relevance to what we sell?
About measurement
- What metrics do you propose besides traffic?
- How do you measure whether we show up in AI answers?
- How often do you report, and what recommendations come with the report?
About the contract
- Who owns the content, the accounts and the data?
- How many rounds of revisions does each piece include?
- What happens if we decide to cancel?
What a content marketing agency charges (and what each pricing model incentivizes)
| Model | Good for | What it incentivizes | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | Ongoing production and planning months ahead | Predictability for both sides | Quotas of pieces filled just to hit the quota |
| Per project | Campaigns, audits, a website, a sprint | A single deliverable with defined scope | They deliver and disappear |
| Per piece | Testing the waters before committing | Volume | Quality that drops as quantity rises |
| Hybrid | Ongoing strategy plus one-off projects | Flexibility | Making sure the scope of each part is in writing |
Before signing a long contract, ask for a paid trial project. It’s the cheapest way to see how they research, how they write, and how they handle feedback.
How to tell if the agency you hired is delivering
Don’t judge it after two months. Content works on buyers who aren’t buying today, and that curve is long and painfully slow.
Beyond traffic, pay attention to things like:
- Branded search: if more people are searching for you by name, the content is leaving a mark.
- Presence in AI answers: whether ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity cite you when someone asks about your category.
- Visits to commercial pages that come from content.
- Influenced pipeline: opportunities where content shows up somewhere in the journey.
- Owned audience: newsletter subscribers, followers who come back.
Measure what can be measured, but don’t let the number decide what kind of brand you want to be. We expand on this idea in our conversation on branded media.
If you sell something complex or in two languages
In fintech, crypto or technical B2B, the hard part is usually explaining something the buyer doesn’t yet understand and earning their trust. There, it matters more that the agency understands the category and knows how to build a narrative than how many pieces it delivers.
The same goes for languages. Writing for another market requires knowing that buyer: someone in Mexico City and someone in New York have different reference points and different alternatives. If you sell in English and Spanish, look for a team with native speakers in both who understand buyers on each side.
On top of that, AI agents now read your site to decide whether to recommend you. We wrote about what’s happening with agentic search: a clear story is now also a technical requirement.
Go with whoever actually shows interest in you
Choose the agency that asks you uncomfortable questions about your product over that first coffee. If all it wants to know is how many posts a month you’ll pay for, you already know what it’s selling: volume, and these days any tool can give you that for free. We’d rather write less and make sure every piece has something to say.
If what you need is to figure out what your brand has to say before producing more, that’s what we built The Program for, a four-week sprint with founders. And if you’re looking for something more tailored, tell us where you’re at.
By Circe Galanternik
Frequently asked questions
What does a digital marketing or content agency charge?
It depends on volume, the seniority of the team, and whether it includes content strategy or just production. More than the number, compare what’s included and what the pricing model incentivizes.
How long does it take to see results?
Months, not weeks. Be wary of anyone promising quick results, and agree from the start on what you’ll measure and when you’ll review it.
Content agency or SEO agency?
An SEO agency optimizes your site for search engines; a content agency researches and writes for your buyer. Today it’s best if they do both, because content without a technical foundation can’t be found, and technical work without content has nothing to show.
Is it bad for an agency to use AI?
No, as long as they tell you how they use it and which parts people review and rewrite. What you should avoid is paying for text that’s generated and published without editing.