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In 2020, even with social networks like Tik Tok dominating the headlines, content marketing is still the most powerful way for most B2B and B2C companies to generate new leads and sales without annoying customers via outbound channels.

Although we at Green Flag Digital offer content marketing as a cornerstone service offering, we wanted to highlight some of the best and brightest in the industry. In fact, we’re friends with a few of the owners and managers at these agencies.

There’s plenty of work to go around and the agency-client fit in content marketing is a specific one. It’s likely that for every company, only one or two agencies or consultancies are a strong fit. So do your research and go with the best culture fit.

Note: unlike agency aggregator websites offering you “100+” options, we are not sponsored by any of these agencies. In fact, we’ve done the opposite and hand-selected these based on years of observation and too much industry knowledge.

Siege Media

Siege Media has seemingly exploded onto the scene in the last 7+ years and built a fairly sizable agency purely focused on content marketing for link building.

They freely share what new content formats and outreach strategies are working for them, and what to avoid. For example, this campaign on customer service statistics shared in their portfolio goes above and beyond typical dry statistics pages, making is a super compelling, shareable page:

Source: Nextiva

I’ve personally been a fan of Ross Hudgens’s writing ever since his pre-agency days writing for his own blog. Ross’s writing style is at a university level – packing in a lot of information punches and strategic ideas – when a lot the standard industry blogs just touch on surface-level ideas (aka middle school level).

Ross and the team are extremely generous with sharing their knowledge, giving away tips and insider tactics that no other agency does, in a counter-intuitive way. But the way Ross puts it, when potential clients hear how much work is involved, they end up just hiring Siege rather than do it themselves.

cost per link analysis
Source: Siege Media

Siege Media has found a blue ocean and built an agile, smart company that delivers links and traffic for their clients, on repeat.

Some of their self-announced clients are in the finance, home services, and ecommerce verticals including Zillow, TripAdvisor, and Shutterfly. Check out their podcast and YouTube channel for a crash course in content marketing and link building.

Neomam

Neomam is a U.K.-based agency producing some of the highest-quality and most innovative visual assets I’ve ever seen. They’re creating 3D rendering images of sports cars and cities when no one else is. I’ve tried to look into how to get some of these assets made and they’ve truly built a moat somehow.

Source: Expedia

The CEO Gisele and founder Danny are quite approachable on Twitter and LinkedIn, and do a great job sharing ideas and wins from their 10+ years in business.

They also work with finance and home services companies, in addition to brand-name travel companies. Check out their blog to read up on their thought leadership.

Fractl

Fractl has launched some of the most ambitious and successful content marketing and digital PR campaigns I’ve ever seen. It’s not uncommon for their campaigns to get picked up by tier 1 publications, and see upwards of 200+ placements. Some campaigns have crossed the 500 linking root domain barrier.

What Fractl does that others don’t is push the limits with data analysis, data science, and AI tools in their content marketing campaigns.

Source: Moz

Many of their team members frequenty contribute to Moz and break down what has and hasn’t worked for them.

Source: Moz

They work with blue chip clients and big retainers to deliver big results.

Rise at Seven

Rise at Seven has turned the idea of the SEO agency on its head. They’ve created a blended SEO, content marketing, and digital PR agency that is refreshingly transparent. They’re so confident in their abilities that they share client wins all day long, and pick up more links in the process.

Carrie Rose is the driving force on social media, and is levels above most SEO agency heads in generating traction for her firm. I don’t think I’d ever be on the same wavelength to think like she does.

Competing agencies may be jealous of the successes they share, but in the end just have to love Rise at Seven because of the new ideas generated for their own clients.

In addition, Carrie runs the uber-helpful @DigitalPREx Twitter account, sharing digital PR examples from many brands.

Propellernet

I became aware of Propellernet’s work via Louise Parker’s Twitter – and Tik Toks:

They regularly put out digital PR campaigns that get picked up by top news outlets, such as this lingerie dream job piece on Metro.

They list all of these brands as clients on their website:

In a big recent win, they’ve been announced as Gymshark’s SEO partner agency:

There’s something in the Gulf Stream bringing fresh ideas to UK-based agencies, who seem to be some of the most productive in the English-speaking world.

Takeaways

These content marketing agencies have done what their services promise – they’ve successfully marketed their own agencies by showing their work and demonstrating their expertise via education.

As an upstart content marketing and link building agency ourselves, we’ve been inspired by these leaders and done our best to follow in their footsteps.

Joe Robison

Founder & Consultant
Joe Robison is the founder of Green Flag Digital. He founded the agency in 2015 and has been heads-down scaling content marketing and SEO services for clients ever since. He is an occasional surfer, fledgling yogi, and sucker for organized travel tours.
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