This is written to be useful even if you hire someone else. Four questions separate the field, one check almost nobody offers, and a short list of things worth walking away from.
| Segment | Monthly retainer |
|---|---|
| Small business | $2K to $10K |
| Mid market | $10K to $30K |
| Managed social only | $2K to $10K |
Before media spend. The number that matters is what the fee buys in hours and seniority, so ask for that breakdown.
Agency pitches are hard to compare because each one is measured on something different. These four force a like for like comparison.
Good answer: one your finance team already reads.
Good answer: named people you meet before signing.
Good answer: a company name attached to a figure.
Good answer: you own everything, immediately.
This sits upstream of every other number an agency might show you, and most proposals do not mention it. It is worth asking in the first call.
| Crawler | What it decides | Predicts citation |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot, ClaudeBot | Training data collection | No |
| OAI-SearchBot | Whether you can appear in ChatGPT search answers at all | Eligibility gate |
| ChatGPT-User | A real person question just pulled your page | Closest real signal |
A site opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not appear in ChatGPT search answers. It is binary, usually accidental, and takes minutes to fix. Among the top 10,000 sites, 17.6% block GPTBot while only 6.6% block OAI-SearchBot.
None of these are matters of taste. Each one predicts a specific way the engagement goes wrong.
| Red flag | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Guaranteed rankings | Nobody controls a search engine. The guarantee is unenforceable |
| Guaranteed placement in AI answers | OpenAI states plainly that placement is not guaranteed |
| The agency owns your ad accounts | Your historical data leaves with them |
| Every case study is anonymous | The results may not be theirs, and no engine can attribute them |
| Reporting is entirely platform metrics | Impressions cannot fail, which is why they get reported |
| Vague answers about the exit | The end of the contract is when ownership actually matters |
For roughly half the accounts we audit, the honest finding is that the leads already exist and are dying somewhere between arriving and being called. More traffic into that funnel makes the leak more expensive, not less.
If an agency will not tell you that marketing is not your constraint when it is not, they are not diagnosing, they are selling.
This is not run by a black box of tools. It is a team of Growth Architects who plan, build and optimize it, using AI where it accelerates the work and human judgment where it actually matters. Different specialists, one accountable team.
Meet the team →
Michael · Engineering Lead
Amal · Automation Architect
Bryn · Solutions Engineer
If we can't increase your revenue by the 6 month mark, our team works for free until we do.
“BusySeed created and managed our social media and wrote blogs that raised our SEO to a new level. We are getting new clients from organic search, and their lead generation campaigns made it easy to justify the investment by focusing on ROI.”
“BusySeed demonstrated tremendous ability in understanding our needs and taking us by the hand in the process of designing a digital strategy from scratch.”
“Great professionals. They manage our company's social media and designed our website. I highly recommend them for social media management and web design.”
Judge them on four things: what number they will be measured on, who specifically does the work, whether they can name a client alongside a result, and what happens to your accounts and data if you leave. An agency that answers the first question with impressions or engagement rate is selling activity. An agency that cannot name a single client is showing you results that may not be theirs.
Small business retainers generally run $2,000 to $10,000 a month, mid market $10,000 to $30,000, and that is before media spend. The spread is mostly about who does the work: a named senior person costs more than a pooled junior team, and it usually shows. The more useful question is not the fee but what the fee buys in hours and seniority, so ask for that breakdown specifically.
Guaranteed rankings, guaranteed placement inside AI answers, a contract that owns your ad accounts, unnamed case studies, reporting built entirely on platform metrics, and any reluctance about what happens at the end of the agreement. The ranking guarantee is the clearest: nobody controls a search engine, and OpenAI states plainly that placement in its answers is not guaranteed.
Hire a specialist when you know exactly which channel is your constraint and need depth. Hire full service when you do not know, or when the constraint keeps moving, because a specialist will tend to find that their channel is the answer. The test is whether they will tell you that marketing is not your problem. For roughly half the accounts we audit, the leads already exist and are dying in follow up.
It is a check of whether AI assistants can actually fetch your pages when someone asks them a question. A site that disallows OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt cannot appear in ChatGPT search answers at all, no matter how good its content is. It is binary, it is usually accidental, and it takes minutes to fix. Almost no agency offers it, and it sits upstream of every other number they might show you.
Paid acquisition should show a reliable cost per lead within four to six weeks; if it cannot, something is wrong with the offer or the targeting rather than the optimization. Search, content and AI visibility compound over a quarter or more. Agree in writing which number is being judged at 90 days before you sign, because that conversation is much harder to have afterwards.
Book a free 15 minute session and ask every question on this page. If the answers do not satisfy you, you will have a sharper list for the next agency you call.
