A full service marketing agency runs every channel that brings you customers under one roof: local SEO, the website, content, your Google Business Profile, paid search and paid social, and the lead capture that happens when the phone rings. One team, one report, one invoice. Olive Group works out of Tacoma with small and local businesses across Puget Sound. To start, call 844-441-0058 or Talk to Olive Group.
Most owners don't come to us because they want an agency. They come because they have a web guy who doesn't do SEO, an SEO tool nobody logs into, a Facebook page a former employee still admins, and no idea which of those produced last month's four calls. Consolidating that is the whole point.
What a full service marketing agency includes
Scope varies by shop. Here's what we actually run, and what each piece is for.
Local SEO and AI search visibility
Service pages built one service and one city at a time, technical cleanup, internal links, and the citations that back your name, address and phone. Local results turn on relevance, distance and prominence, which is why a single "services" page rarely beats a competitor running a page per service and per city. We've watched it happen on our own site: one page written for a neighboring city was ranking for Kent, so Kent got its own page. The same pages feed AI answers in ChatGPT and Google's AI results, because those systems read the same text. Details on our local SEO and AI search services.
Website design and development
A site that loads fast and asks for the call. Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds put a good Largest Contentful Paint at 2.5 seconds or less for 75% of visits (web.dev), and a slow site quietly taxes every other channel you pay for. We build on WordPress, keep forms short, and put the phone number where a thumb lands. See web design that pays for itself.
Content marketing
Two kinds. Money pages that answer commercial searches ("emergency plumber Kent," "kitchen remodel cost Tacoma"), and how-to or comparison pieces that get you in front of someone still deciding. Content without a keyword behind it is a hobby.
Google Business Profile management
Categories, services, hours, photos, products, Q&A, and a review response cadence. Profiles get suspended more often than owners expect, usually over a virtual office address or a keyword-stuffed business name, so we keep listings clean: the real legal name, an address where you actually meet customers, service areas instead of fake locations.
Paid search and paid social
Search ads for demand that already exists and Meta ads for demand you have to create. Conversion tracking gets installed before the first dollar runs, not after. If a channel can't show a cost per lead in 60 days, we turn it off.
Lead capture with Columa
Marketing that works creates calls at 6:40 p.m. on a Friday. Columa is our AI receptionist and growth platform: it answers, qualifies, books, and texts the caller back, then logs the lead so you can see which page and which channel produced it. Ranking is only half the job; answering is the other half.
Monthly reporting
Calls, forms, source, and what changed. Not a 40-page screenshot dump. You should be able to read it in four minutes and know whether to spend more or less.
How the work runs, month by month
The first 90 days look roughly the same for every new client.
- Weeks 1–2: audit and access. We pull Search Console, Analytics, your ad accounts and your Business Profile into your own ownership, not ours. We map current keywords, current rankings, and where calls are coming from today. You can start with a free SEO audit of your keywords and competitors.
- Weeks 2–4: fix and publish. Technical issues, tracking, the Business Profile, and the first batch of service and city pages. Tracking first, always, or month three becomes an argument about attribution.
- Weeks 4–8: build volume. More pages, review requests, ad campaigns live with conversion tracking, call answering wired up.
- Weeks 8–12: read the data and cut. The first real ranking and cost-per-lead numbers land here. We shift budget toward what produced calls and stop what didn't.
After that it's a monthly rhythm: publish, optimize the pages already sitting on page one, respond to reviews, adjust ad budgets, report. Most of the compounding comes from the boring part, month after month.
What it costs
Nobody can quote a number without knowing your revenue and your market. But you can size a budget in five minutes. The U.S. Small Business Administration's guidance for small businesses is to set marketing spend at roughly 7 to 8% of gross revenue and to build the number off a written plan rather than a hunch (SBA). Run the arithmetic at 7.5%:
| Annual revenue | Budget at ~7.5% | All-in per month | What that usually buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| $500,000 | $37,500 | ~$3,100 | One channel done properly: local SEO plus the Business Profile, or ads only |
| $1,000,000 | $75,000 | ~$6,300 | SEO and content, listings, a modest ad budget, call answering |
| $3,000,000 | $225,000 | ~$18,800 | Multi-city SEO, ongoing site work, search and social ads, full reporting |
Two things to keep straight in that number. Ad spend and agency fees are separate lines — money that goes to Google isn't work performed on your account, and any agency that blends them is making comparison harder on purpose. Second, a one-time website build sits outside the monthly figure; budget it like equipment, not rent.
The in-house comparison is worth doing too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts median pay for advertising, promotions and marketing managers above $150,000 a year before benefits (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook), and that one hire still doesn't write code, design, or run ads. For most businesses under $5 million, an agency retainer is the cheaper way to get five skill sets.
How to choose a provider
Ask these before you sign anything. The answers separate the operators from the invoice senders.
- Who owns the accounts? Your Google Ads account, Analytics, Search Console, Business Profile and domain should be in your name. If leaving costs you your data, that's a hostage situation.
- What gets published, and who writes it? Ask for the first 90 days as a list of page titles. Vague "content strategy" usually means four blog posts about industry trends.
- How do they count a lead? Calls and form fills with a source, or clicks and impressions? Impressions don't pay payroll. We've seen our own site pull tens of thousands of monthly impressions with a fraction of the clicks — visibility and revenue are different problems.
- What happens to a lead after hours? If the plan ends at "they'll call you," half the work leaks out the bottom.
- Does anyone guarantee rankings? Walk. Nobody controls Google's index. What can be committed to is scope, cadence and reporting.
- Do they work in your market? Knowing that Kent, Auburn and Federal Way are three separate search markets matters more than a national case study deck. Our client case studies show the kind of work we do.
One more practical filter: ask who you'll talk to each month. At a two-to-fifteen person shop that should be a person who touches the account, not a coordinator relaying notes.
Where we work
Olive Group is based in Tacoma and works across Puget Sound — Seattle, Bellevue, Kent, Covington, Auburn, Federal Way and Olympia — plus clients further out who need the same stack run remotely. If you're north of the bridge, start with marketing in Seattle.
Ready to see what one team would do with your site, your listing and your phone? Call 844-441-0058 or Talk to Olive Group. We'll look at your current keywords first and tell you straight whether you need an agency or just two fixes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a full service marketing agency actually do?
It runs every customer-acquisition channel from one place: local SEO, website design and maintenance, content, your Google Business Profile, paid search and paid social, lead capture, and monthly reporting. The value is coordination. The same team that ranks a page also writes the offer on it, runs ads to it, and tracks the calls it produces.
How much should a small business spend on marketing?
SBA guidance puts small-business marketing spend at roughly 7 to 8% of gross revenue, so a $1 million business lands around $6,300 a month all in. Split that into ad spend and agency fees as separate lines. Below roughly $3,000 a month, pick one channel and do it properly instead of spreading thin across four.
How long before SEO produces leads?
New service and city pages usually start showing impressions within four to eight weeks and produce calls somewhere between month three and month six, depending on competition and your existing domain history. Paid search produces leads the week it launches, which is why we often run both: ads for cash flow now, SEO for cost per lead later.
Is an agency better than hiring in-house?
Under about $5 million in revenue, usually yes. BLS median pay for a marketing manager runs above $150,000 a year before benefits, and that hire still can't build a site, design creative, write content and run ad accounts alone. An agency gives you the whole bench for less than one salary, with no ramp-up.
Can you guarantee first-page rankings?
No, and no honest shop will. Nobody controls Google's index or its updates. What we commit to is scope, publishing cadence, technical standards, and reporting you can read. Rankings, calls and cost per lead get reported monthly, and budget moves toward whatever is producing the calls.
Do you handle answering the calls marketing generates?
Yes. Columa, our AI receptionist, answers, qualifies, books and texts callers back around the clock, then logs each lead with its source. Marketing that works creates after-hours calls, and a voicemail box is where those leads go to die. Answering is treated as part of the campaign, not an afterthought.