Choosing the best
marketing agency.

"Someone gave me a name, I am checking it out".

That is almost always how it starts. A partner passes you a contact, or you have seen three agencies and all three have sent you a quote that says the same things in different words. A single best agency in Italy, valid for everyone, does not exist. The question that matters is how you check the one in front of you, before signing.

To answer it we needed to know what the market is really made of, beyond how it describes itself. Between June and July 2026 we collected 3,103 Italian marketing agencies from their public Google Maps profiles, recording declared services, tags, rating and number of reviews. The limit of the survey has to be said straight away: these are public declarations and ratings, not checks in the field. They are enough, though, to take apart the two signals almost everyone chooses on.

The first criterion is a knockout round.

If the agency or freelancer you are considering belongs to a community of marketers with a leader, or follows a guru, stop there. It is not a judgement on the people, it is three mechanisms that concern you closely. The visibility of the group is artificial, because the community cites itself, reviews itself and gives itself awards. By joining it you join it too, and from that moment a thousand other members have a reason to sell you something. And quality has nobody answering for it, because the method comes down from the leader as doctrine: when the data contradicts it, the group changes subject instead of changing method.

This criterion comes before all the others. If the answer is yes, the others are not needed.

What a 4.9 on Google really means.

Almost nothing, and it is the figure that surprises people choosing a supplier the most. Of the 3,103 agencies collected, three out of four declare at least 4.9.

Deep Marketing survey of 3,103 public Google Maps profiles of Italian agencies, June and July 2026. The rating is present on 3,087 profiles.

The median number of reviews is 14. So the 4.9 that convinced you rests, in half the cases, on a handful of happy clients perhaps collected in the same month. The number that tells you something is the volume, together with the date: how many reviews, over how long, across how many different platforms.

Our own perimeter, since it applies to us too: 112 reviews collected across four platforms, average 4.8. On Google, SortList and GoodFirms the average is 4.9. The perimeter should always be asked for, from anyone: without it, a rating says nothing.

How many disciplines a full-service agency really covers.

The market declares plenty, and this you can check yourself on any profile.

The press office is the rarest service in the Italian market: 184 agencies out of 3,103. The real jump, though, is in the combination. Web design, advertising, SEO, branding and press office all five declared together: 54 agencies out of 3,103, 1.74%. Adding social, content and e-commerce brings it down to 24. Those declaring themselves international are 6.8%, and international with a press office 1.3%.

It serves you for one question, to ask in the call: which of these disciplines do you do in-house, and which do you pass to someone else? There is no right answer. There is, however, an enormous difference between a supplier coordinating its own people and one reselling you the work of three studios that never speak to each other, and that pass the blame around when the numbers do not add up.

Price: the two extremes say the same thing.

A quote far above the average usually makes you pay for things that do not touch the result: the representative office, the events, the sales network that brought you there. One far below is inexperience, or land-grabbing below cost, with the fee rising once changing supplier has become hard work.

The defence is the same in both cases: two or three comparable quotes, and every figure explained line by line. If a line cannot be explained, you have already learned something.

What has to be written down before you sign.

Five things, and you can ask for all of them without looking difficult:

• A project built on your case, instead of a generic quote. The in-depth study is done inside the work and on your real data: no serious supplier gives it away before signing, and demanding it makes you choose whoever promises most.
• The baseline of the starting numbers, put in writing by the first month at the latest, with the reports always compared against it.
• The name of the person who will follow the work, written into the contract, so you know what you have bought.
• What comes out at the end: which content and data, in what format, in how long, with what written guarantee.
• The minimum duration and the exit conditions, read before and not after.

One thing, though, you should not demand: a phone call with another client. Confidentiality agreements often prevent it, and a no on that request is more often seriousness than concealment. Look instead at who the clients are, how long they stay, and whether the published cases carry numbers with the context around them.

On brand work there is one more warning: the return shows over years, and a monthly report there measures only intermediate signals. When the result is far away, the check moves from the report to the supplier.

Lock-in is not judged by the licence.

"Proprietary platform" as an accusation is convenient and wrong, and it would be friendly fire for us too, given that we wrote the CMS our sites run on. Declared openness is often fake: supplier databases shared between several clients, content scattered across the formats of twenty plugins, themes and licences that work as a padlock, migrations that take weeks.

The criterion that holds is another one, and it applies identically to anyone, us included: what comes out, in what format, in how long, with what written guarantee. Here the answer is an SQLite database you can download whenever you want and final handover as a contractual obligation, in the format you ask for, and you find it written on the DeepCMS page. Ask everyone else the same question and compare the faces.

And us, measured by these criteria.

The five disciplines are all in-house, press office included: in the survey 54 agencies out of 3,103 do that. The awards on the page are four and each one has its public source linked, so you can check them without asking anyone. The reviews are 112 across four platforms, average 4.8. Every published case carries the period and the perimeter next to the numbers, because a ROAS without a market and without months is a brochure number.

If you need one thing only and you already know how to buy it, a multidisciplinary agency is a cost you do not need: take the best specialist you can find and keep the criteria on this page to judge them by.

If instead you have several fronts open and nobody in the company holding them together, take twenty minutes on a call: you come out knowing where you would start from and what you need to ask the others.