At some point most B2B founders hit the same wall. The first customers came from your network, a few referrals, maybe a launch that went well. Then that runs dry, and you start wondering whether to hire a marketer or bring in an agency. I run a demand generation firm, so I'm not neutral here. Still, there's a story I hear a lot. A startup signs with an agency, spends six months and a real chunk of runway, and ends up with a nice-looking report and no pipeline. Usually the agency wasn't bad. It was just the wrong type for that stage. So here's my attempt at a straight answer: the kinds of agencies out there, roughly what they charge, and how I'd pick between them if I were in your seat. What Does Demand Generation Actually Mean? Demand generation is everything that has to go right before a buyer books a call with you. They need to know you exist. They need to believe you understand their problem. And when they compare you with two or three other options, they need to find the answers that make them pick you. Lead generation is a narrower thing. It collects names and email addresses, usually with ads or a downloadable guide. That's useful, but a list of names doesn't help much if nobody on it wants to talk. For a startup, the difference matters because it changes what you're paying for. Some agencies sell you leads. Others build the reasons people want to buy. When Does a Startup Need an Agency at All? Not every startup does. If you're still working out who your best customer is, an agency will mostly burn money while you figure it out. Talk to more customers first. It starts to make sense when a few things are true: You know who buys from you and why, and you can say it in a sentence Referrals and your own network have stopped filling the calendar You have someone who can take sales calls when they come in You can commit to at least six months, because B2B buying cycles are slow If two or more of those aren't true yet, wait. Or hire a consultant for a few weeks to help you get there, which costs a lot less. What Are the Main Types of Demand Generation Agencies? The word "agency" covers very different businesses. Here are the five you'll run into most. Paid media specialists These firms run your ads on Google and LinkedIn and nothing much else. They're good if you already know your message works and you want to put money behind it. The catch is that the results stop the day you stop paying for ads, and someone else still has to write the content and fix your website. Full-service growth teams This is basically renting a whole marketing team. Strategy, ads, SEO, content, the website, all on one monthly bill. I like how Gripped handles this. It's a London shop that only takes B2B SaaS and tech clients, and it's unusually frank about who it's for. It says its retainers usually run between £5,000 and £15,000 a month, and it's blunt about smaller budgets. If you want to "test" with £2,000 a month, it says, B2B marketing doesn't work at that level. Starting small for Gripped means about £5,000 a month on one channel. That honesty is useful. It tells you roughly what a real full-service retainer costs before you spend an hour on a sales call. Demand strategy firms for later stages Some of the best-known names are built for companies well past the startup phase. Refine Labs, for example, says it works with B2B tech companies at Series B and beyond, and its six-week diagnostic starts at $35,000. There's nothing wrong with that. It just isn't built for a seed-stage company with a team of eight, and it would be a stretch to pretend otherwise. RevOps firms Revenue operations firms don't run campaigns. They fix the systems underneath: your CRM, your tracking, how leads get passed from marketing to sales. RevPartners, which works on HubSpot and Clay, is one well-known example. You'll want this kind of help when you have demand coming in but can't tell where it came from or which deals it turned into. For a very early startup, it's usually too soon. Content-led systems The last type builds content that does a sales job and wires it into your CRM, so you can see what each piece did. This is the kind of firm I run, so take this section with that in mind. The idea is that most startups already have some content, like blog posts or a webinar recording, but none of it is set up to help close deals. A content-led partner writes the material buyers look for late in their decision, like honest comparisons and real pricing context. It also gets you named when buyers ask Google or an AI tool for options, and hooks everything into the CRM. How Much Should a Startup Expect to Pay? Prices vary a lot, and most agencies don't publish them. From the ones that do, here's a rough picture: Consulting: from about $2,000 a month at a small firm, while one-off diagnostics at the big names start at $35,000 Full-service retainers: roughly £5,000 to £15,000 a month, plus ad spend Startup rates: a few agencies (mine is one) have a cheaper tier for small companies, and it never hurts to ask If ads are in the plan, that money goes to Google and LinkedIn on top of the agency fee, and people forget this all the time. Give it three to six months before you judge the pipeline, too. Revenue shows up on your sales cycle's schedule, not the agency's. What Questions Should You Ask Before You Sign? Don't forget the first call is their sales call. Bring your own list. Here's mine: "Who's a bad fit for you?" If they can't name anyone, they'll take anyone's money. "Roughly what would this cost me?" You shouldn't need three meetings to get a range. "Show me a client about my size and what it did for their pipeline." "Will the people on this call be doing the work, or someone junior?" "Can I see a real report you send a client today?" "If I leave in six months, what do I walk away with?" People skip that last question and regret it. Some agencies set up the ad accounts and the content in their own name, and then switching means months of rebuilding. What Are the Red Flags? Some of these I'd walk away over: Every result is traffic, followers, or impressions, and nobody mentions a single deal A 12-month lock-in with no exit if month three goes badly A pitch that sounds the same whether you sell software, legal services, or industrial parts No named clients, or case studies with every company name blurred out Promises of fast results. B2B deals take months, and an honest agency will tell you that up front Where Does Content RevOps Fit? Here's the plug, and I'll keep it short. Content RevOps works with B2B companies where the sale takes trust and time. We build content that does a sales job and the CRM wiring underneath it. That means the technical work you'd normally pay a developer or a CRM consultant for gets built into ordinary marketing. For small companies and startups we charge about half our standard rates, month to month. Consulting starts at $2,000 a month and the full system at $4,200. You can see how the work runs on our demand generation agency page. A couple of results from smaller clients. Radius saw organic traffic rise 600% and cost per lead drop 70% in three months, with $15,000 in new monthly revenue. Ori Learning grew inbound leads by 680% within a year of rebuilding after a rebrand. The downsides are real too. We were founded in 2024, so we're young, and we don't have many reviews yet. If you sell to consumers or run an online store, we're not the right fit. Whoever you pick, choose for your stage. A great agency for a Series C company can be a terrible one for a startup with eight people and a year of runway.
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