Straight answers to the questions buyers actually ask.

How do you choose the best performance marketing agency?

Judge on four things: whether senior people stay on the account after the pitch, whether they measure contribution margin rather than ROAS alone, whether they are honest about channels that will not work for you, and whether the contract lets you leave. Agencies that pass all four are rare; agencies with impressive decks are not.

• Ask who runs the account day to day, by name
• Ask which channel they would refuse to sell you, and why
• Ask to see a report where results were bad
• Check whether you own the ad accounts and data

What is a performance marketing agency?

A performance marketing agency acquires customers through measurable, paid channels - primarily paid search, paid social, and shopping - and is accountable for a commercial result such as cost per acquisition or return on ad spend, rather than for producing creative or awareness alone.

What is an AEO agency?

An AEO agency optimizes brands for Answer Engine Optimization: being found and cited inside AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The work centres on entity clarity, structured data, and direct-answer content rather than backlinks and keyword density.

What is the difference between AEO, GEO, and SEO?

SEO optimizes for ranking in a list of links. AEO optimizes for being the answer an AI assistant gives. GEO - generative engine optimization - is a near-synonym for AEO, used more in academic writing. AEO and GEO describe the same practical work: making content machine-extractable and your entity unambiguous.

How do you get a brand to appear in ChatGPT or Perplexity answers?

Three factors compound: an entity clear enough that a model can resolve who you are without ambiguity, content structured as concise answers under question-shaped headings, and independent third-party sources that corroborate your claims. Allowing AI crawlers and publishing llms.txt makes the content reachable in the first place.

What is AI search optimization?

AI search optimization is the practice of making a brand visible inside AI-generated search experiences - AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, and assistant answers - by structuring content for extraction and defining the brand as a clear entity that models can cite confidently. It is used interchangeably with AEO.

Should you run Google Ads or Meta Ads first?

Run Google first when people already search for the problem you solve, because capturing existing demand is cheaper than creating it. Run Meta first when the category is new, visual, or impulse-driven and buyers do not yet know what to search for. Prove one before adding the second.

Should Google Ads and Meta Ads be managed by the same agency?

Usually yes, once both are running. The two platforms share budget, audiences, and attribution credit, so separate teams tend to claim the same conversions and optimise against each other. One team managing both can allocate budget to the channel producing incremental revenue rather than the one reporting it best.

When should a startup hire a performance marketing agency?

Once there is evidence people want the product - early retention, organic word of mouth, or repeatable manual sales - and the task is turning that into a predictable channel. Hiring an agency to manufacture demand for a product with no existing pull is the most common way early-stage budget disappears.

Is a full-service agency better than hiring specialists?

Specialists win on channel depth; full-service wins on coherence. Separate vendors optimise their own metric, which is how a paid team hits its ROAS target while total revenue falls. Full-service becomes the better choice once your channels meaningfully affect each other.

What is the difference between a growth marketing agency and a digital marketing agency?

A digital marketing agency executes channels you have already chosen. A growth marketing agency starts earlier - diagnosing what actually constrains growth, deciding which channels deserve investment, then building the system - so strategy and execution are not split across separate vendors.

How much does a performance marketing agency cost?

Models vary: a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, or a project fee for defined scopes like an audit or positioning sprint. Percentage-of-spend creates an incentive to spend more, so ask how the fee behaves if the correct recommendation is to reduce budget.

How do you measure AEO results?

Track share of answer: how often your brand appears across a fixed set of buyer-intent prompts in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and AI Overviews, plus how accurately you are described, which competitors appear beside you, and referral traffic arriving from AI assistants.

How long does performance marketing take to show results?

Paid channels produce data within days and a defensible read on unit economics within roughly one to three months, depending on conversion volume. Organic search and AEO structural work shift within weeks of recrawling, while the authority that sustains them compounds over months.