Portland's marketing scene thrives on creativity and authenticity, energized by its deep ties to global sportswear brands, flourishing tech companies, and a vibrant community of local artisans.
In this era of digitalization, marketing agencies have primarily transitioned to digital platforms. To thrive in today’s business environment, companies need marketing agencies to convert their target audience into customers, retain their existing client base, boost sales and revenue, and scale their operations.
The role of a marketing agency varies based on each client’s needs and the specific niches or services it provides. Generally, a marketing agency’s responsibilities include market research, establishing a marketing budget, and creating and implementing marketing campaigns. Their services can encompass social media, content creation, advertising, SEO, PPC, CRO, branding, PR, web design and development, among others. A marketing agency may provide specialized services such as social media management, focus on a particular niche like B2B, or even offer a comprehensive range of marketing services from A to Z.
Every product, service, business, or individual needs marketing. Even if it is a not-for-profit organization or an individual working only on philanthropy, the business will need to be promoted. A marketing agency strategizes and develops promotion tactics, helping businesses bring awareness about their products and services to their target audience.
Whether you are a business or individual, if you are selling a product, a service, your content, or doing philanthropy, you need marketing. Even governments require marketing when they campaign. Marketing agencies develop creative strategies based on your promotional needs. They employ different channels of promotion and ensure that your brand gets the right kind of attention.
There are different tactics in marketing, and all of these can have various kinds of impacts on your brand. Depending on your requirements, a marketing agency can strategize a 3-month, 6-month, yearly, or 5-yearly strategic plan for execution. Consistent marketing delivers more impact than a small-term campaign.
Every marketing agency functions differently, but there are a few things that they must do in order to be qualified as a good agency:
A good marketing agency stays current with the evolving trends and behaviors of various industries. They have teams that analyze market trends and gather diverse data to determine which marketing strategies resonate with consumers. As times and preferences change, consumers are continually seeking new experiences, making it crucial for agencies to remain aware of these shifts.
Marketing agencies are engaged to promote brands and boost sales. They employ a team of experts who analyze market trends and create tailored strategies for each brand they represent. Effective marketing agencies design tactics that cater specifically to the target audience rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach.
Marketing agencies must provide feedback on the impact of their projects and campaigns. Clients and marketing agency teams need to understand how their strategies function. If an agency neglects to report on the impact and evaluate the tactics, it risks wasting money and time on future strategies.
Specialized Service Agency (Digital & Branding Agency)
Headquarters
Hillsboro, OR
Founded
2007
Company Size
19
Speak! is a digital brand marketing agency based in Portland, Oregon, with a satellite office in Minneapolis. They work with a wide range of clients, from Fortune 500 companies to tech startups, across various industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, construction, professional services, and manufacturing. They specialize in helping clients with complex products or services communicate their brand story and product values to purchasers and decision-makers in their target clients. For this reason, they work best with B2B brands that need to rebrand themselves or need help communicating more effectively with their target market.
Specialized Service Agency (Digital PR Agency)
Headquarters
Portland, Oregon
Founded
2014
Company Size
6
Veracity is a Portland Digital PR Agency that serves as a boutique firm for the local area. They have a unique background, with their founder coming from a traditional PR & sales background and their CEO coming from a digital marketing background. They have merged this to create a digital PR offering that has given them a base of SEO clients benefiting from organic links with high domain authority from media and traditional PR clients benefiting from digital assets for content marketing, increased SEO value, and social media.
Food & Beverage Marketing Agency
Headquarters
Portland, Oregon
Founded
2012
Company Size
8
Heart Creative is a women and POC owned B Corp agency in Portland that focuses on photo, video, and digital marketing for food, beverage, and wellness brands. They offer in-house test kitchens and production studios, allowing them to develop and execute creative projects entirely on-site. Their services include photography, videography, content marketing, and social media management, with an emphasis on modern design, practical storytelling, and data-driven strategy. By handling both creative production and strategic distribution, they aim to help brands—from emerging to well-established—connect with audiences and stand out in competitive markets.
Specialized Service Agency (Advertising Agency)
Headquarters
Portland, Oregon
Founded
2006
Company Size
176
NORTH is an advertising agency based out of Portland. Founded in 2006 by two big agency expats, they sought to make a purpose-driven agency. To this end, they have created an ethos called "Brand Retaliation." Through this process, they attempt to identify what is uniquely real and meaningfully inherent to a brand, its origin, or its place in culture. They then match these through media segmenting and indexing to users who share those cultures and beliefs. Remaining a creative and advertising agency at its core, NORTH has now scaled to become a global agency with team members throughout the world, including a big base in England and regional offices in India, Brazil, and France. Their site has transparent pricing for branding, advertising creative, and media services, starting at $40K for a single campaign.
Specialized Service Agency (Digital Marketing Agency)
Headquarters
Portland, Oregon
Founded
2002
Company Size
325
Thesis is a full-service digital agency based in Portland, Oregon. Its digital prowess has helped it become one of the largest agencies in the U.S. They are a people-first agency that humanizes digital marketing. Through a deep dive into data, customer interviews, and market research, they come up with creative and thoughtful solutions to problems that focus on users and user experience. A top digital agency, they will be the best fit for more prominent brands with larger budgets, enabling Thesis to bring their full team and process out to bear.
Specialized Service Agency (Advertising Agency)
Headquarters
Portland, Oregon
Founded
2019
Company Size
37
Theo is an advertising agency in Portland, Oregon, that works with well-known brands and startups to launch full-funnel marketing activations centered around paid digital, traditional, and social media. They are extremely data-driven and technical, capable of leveraging financial, marketing, operational, CRM, and website data to create models that drive advertising decisions. In addition, they are experts in UX, having worked with large brands like the Portland Trail Blazers to optimize their sales funnels, boosting conversion rates. They work best with brands that have significant media budgets and are comfortable taking a data-driven approach that will typically require changes in strategy or even web assets.
Specialized Service Agency (Creative Agency)
Headquarters
Portland, OR
Founded
2001
Company Size
78
Roundhouse is an independent creative agency in Portland, OR. Our talented creative, account and management teams put their hearts into making campaigns, content, environments, and communications that build brand stories, sell at retail, drive digital, enhance experiences, boost business, and better conversations. Because we live to make great work for the brands we love.
Headquarters
Portland, OR
Founded
2003
Company Size
244
Fish Marketing is a full-service, results-driven advertising and marketing agency in Portland, Oregon. We help our clients succeed and grow with well-crafted, hard-working, integrated advertising campaigns. That deliver the right message. To the right audience. Through the right medium. At exactly the right time.If you are looking for well-coordinated TV, Radio, Print, PR, Web, Paid Digital, Connected TV & SEO to present your brand in a recognizable and unified way, you've found the right agency. We work hand-in-hand with our clients to develop marketing strategies that deliver business results.Interested? Let's Talk.
Headquarters
Portland, Oregon
Founded
2008
Company Size
19
We’re a fun, honest & hard-working crew of storytellers, creators, and builders based in Portland, Oregon. Our craft is marketing but helping people is at the heart of what we do.We specialize in Marketing Strategy, Branding, Messaging, Logo Design, Website Design & Development, WordPress Hosting, Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search & Social Advertising, Video Marketing, and Social Media Management.
Headquarters
Portland, Oregon
Founded
2012
Company Size
16
Intuitive Digital is a B Corp Certified, data-driven digital marketing agency in Portland, Oregon. At Intuitive, we strive to be strategic, innovative, and supportive of your goals in order to get you the results that will grow your business. We specialize in search engine marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses. Everything we do aims to engage the right audience at the right time with the right message. The result? More traffic and greater sales, all while keeping your costs low to ensure you a high ROI.Our values include building long-term relationships and doing what’s right. So you can count on us to fill you in on everything we do for you. We believe transparency is key to a successful and great business-partner relationship.We can help you get found online.
Headquarters
Portland, OR
Founded
1974
Company Size
38
Portland’s Original B-Corp Marketing Agency. Founded in 1974, Grady Britton is a woman-owned, values-based, full-service marketing agency. We partner with like-minded companies, driving their business purpose throughout their brand’s fullest potential. The world needs what good brands bring; we’re here to see the good companies win.
Specialized Service Agency (Creative)
Headquarters
Portland, OR
Founded
1982
Company Size
1875
Wieden+Kennedy is an independent, global creative company that has built and transformed some of the world’s most well-known, exciting brands for over forty years. Offering world-class creative, media, social, design and strategy operations, W+K is driven by a core mission—using creativity to help brands breakthrough in culture and bring value to people.