How to choose a marketing agency in Miami, and check it before you sign

How to choose a marketing agency in Miami: what to decide before the first call

Agencies are good at selling what they already do. Walk in without a clear job and you walk out with their default package. Spend an hour on a one-page brief first. Every call gets shorter and every quote becomes comparable.

Write it in plain words. “More leads” is not a job. “Answer every Spanish inquiry from Instagram within the hour and book the consultation” is. So is “sell the whole catalog online and ship it across the US,” or “replace three spreadsheets with one system the team actually opens.”

A good agency will ask you all of this on the first call anyway. At Kivo Marketing it is step one of the process: get the brief right before anyone opens a design tool. Bring these answers and you skip a week of back and forth:

• What has to change, and how you will know it did.
• The deadline, and what happens if it slips.
• What you already have: website, domain, CRM, booking software, ad accounts, brand files.
• Who on your side owns the project and can say yes.
• A budget range. Agencies scope very differently for different numbers, and saying it early saves both sides time.
• Which languages your customers buy in. In Miami that question comes up early.

Which kind of marketing agency do you actually need?

“Marketing agency” covers very different businesses. A specialist will usually beat a generalist on its one channel. A full-service team makes sense when the brand, the site and the systems behind them have to change together. Decide which kind fits the job before you compare names.

Kivo Marketing sits in the first row: six disciplines, from AI and automation to film and motion, with the same team designing and writing the code. That is not the right answer for every job, which is the point of the table.

Questions to ask a marketing agency before you sign

Ask these in the first or second meeting. The answers matter, and so does how plainly they come back. An agency that has to “get back to you” on who writes its code is already answering.

• Can I open three projects you built that are live today? A screenshot proves a design. A live site proves it loads, the form arrives and the checkout charges.
• Who does the work, by name? The people in the pitch are not always the people on the project. Ask who designs, who writes the code and who writes the copy, and whether any of it is subcontracted.
• What exactly is in this quote? Number of pages, languages, integrations, rounds of changes, copy and photos. Then ask what gets billed as extra.
• Who owns what if we stop working together? Domain, hosting, code, design files, analytics, ad accounts and social profiles should be in your name, with the agency added as a user.
• What will you report, and how often? Agree on two or three numbers that matter to your business, not a long export nobody reads.
• What happens in the first three months after launch? Who fixes bugs, who answers when something breaks on a Saturday, and what is included versus billed.
• If you are proposing AI, what will it do and what will it never do? A useful agent reads real data, such as availability, prices or stock, and hands the chat to a person when it should. Ask to see that handoff. If you are not sure where AI fits yet, start with what to automate first with AI.
• How do you write the Spanish version? More on that below.

How to check an agency's work, not just its portfolio

A portfolio is a highlight reel. Twenty minutes of testing tells you what is behind it, and you don't need to be technical to do it.

You can run the same test on us. Everything on our work page is a real build, not a mockup.

• Open two or three of their live projects on your phone, not your laptop. That is where most of your customers will see yours.
• Fill in a form or start a checkout. Does it work, and does it still feel like the same brand at the last step?
• If the site has a language switch, use it. Read the Spanish page out loud: written copy and translated copy sound different.
• Run a page through PageSpeed Insights, Google's free tool. You don't need to read every number, only whether it flags the site as slow on mobile.
• Ask for one client you can call. Then ask that client what went wrong and how the agency handled it.
• Read their reviews on Google and on directories, starting with the worst ones. How the agency replies says more than the star average.

Hiring in Miami: does your agency need to work in English and Spanish?

If part of your market buys in Spanish, yes. And “we can translate it” is not the same thing. People don't search with the same words in both languages, and a headline that lands in English often reads stiff in Spanish. Each version needs its own keyword research, its own headlines and its own tone.

Ask the agency to show you one project in both languages and explain how the Spanish got made: researched and written for Spanish searches, or translated at the end. Then ask who answers the Spanish leads once they arrive. A Spanish ad that lands on an English-only form loses the customer at the last step.

Kivo Marketing works in English and Spanish, with a team in Miami, FL and a studio in Barcelona. The Spanish version of this guide is a small example: it is not a translation of this page, because it answers different searches. There is more in our guide to bilingual marketing in Miami.

Red flags when hiring a marketing agency in Miami

Any one of these deserves a follow-up question. Two or three together are usually enough to keep looking.

• Guaranteed rankings, guaranteed leads or a “number one on Google” promise. Nobody controls the results page.
• A price before anyone has asked about your business.
• Only mockups and screenshots, nothing you can open.
• Nobody can tell you who will write the code or the copy.
• Your domain, ad accounts or analytics registered in the agency's name.
• A long lock-in with no exit clause and no handover plan.
• An AI chatbot pitched without a word about what data it reads or when it hands off to a human.
• A “best agencies in Miami” list where the author ranks itself first.

Is there a best marketing agency in Miami?

Not one that is best for everyone. A restaurant group that needs reels every week, a med spa that wants bookings in Spanish and a B2B brand that needs a partner portal are hiring for three different jobs. The best marketing agency in Miami for you is the one that has already shipped something close to your job and can show it working.

Directories and “best of” lists are a fair place to start a shortlist. Check who publishes each list, how agencies get on it and whether the reviews are verified. Plenty of them are written by an agency, so read them the way you would read an ad.

Where Kivo Marketing fits: when the brand, the website and the systems behind them (AI agents, CRM, store, automations) need to be designed and built together, in English or Spanish. If the job is one channel, compare specialists in that channel first. If it is the whole machine, see how we work on our Miami page, or tell us what you are trying to move and we will reply.

Frequently asked questions