Four honest options, what each one really costs you, and the seven questions that separate a real team from a good pitch. We are one of these options, and the comparison below says plainly when we are the wrong one.
Last updated · Reviewed by Manashi Majumder, Founder
We compare kinds of provider rather than naming firms, because the label on the door tells you far less than how the work is actually staffed.
Lowest monthly outlay
Where it wins: Cheap, fast to start, one person who answers the phone and knows your business well.
Where it breaks: One skill set and one calendar. Design, ads, SEO and development rarely live in the same person, and a wedding, an illness or a better client stops your marketing entirely.
Best for: A single-location shop that needs posts and a Business Profile kept alive, nothing more.
Mid range
Where it wins: Knows the market, the seasonality and the language your customers search in. You can walk into the office. Turnaround on approvals is hours, not weeks.
Where it breaks: Quality varies enormously. Some are genuine teams, some are one person with a reseller panel. The gap is invisible from the website, which is why the questions below matter.
Best for: Most Siliguri and North Bengal businesses that want accountable, measurable growth.
Highest monthly outlay
Where it wins: Deep specialist benches, big-brand process, strong creative production capacity.
Where it breaks: Your account is small to them, so it goes to a junior. They do not know that Sevoke Road traffic behaves differently from Hill Cart Road, or that a Bengali hook outperforms English copy here.
Best for: National D2C brands with large budgets and no local search dependency.
Salary plus tools, usually the most expensive route
Where it wins: Full attention, full control, knowledge stays in the building.
Where it breaks: One salary buys one skill. You still pay separately for design, ads tooling and development, and you carry the hiring risk and the training time.
Best for: Businesses already spending heavily on media every month, where a full-time owner pays for itself.
Ask every shortlisted provider the same seven. The differences show up fast.
Ask for names and roles. If the person in the pitch will not be in the monthly review, you are buying a salesperson, not a team.
A real answer sounds like qualified enquiries per month or cost per booking. A weak answer sounds like reach, impressions or engagement.
It should be you, always. If the agency holds the Google Ads account or the domain, leaving them costs you your history.
It should be, and the spend should go directly to Google or Meta from your own account. Bundled spend hides the real management fee.
Any agency with real local results can arrange this. One that cannot has case studies but no clients willing to vouch.
You should get a dated deliverable list before you pay. Vague promises about strategy in month one usually mean nothing ships until month two.
Ask about notice periods and what you keep. A fair term is a short initial commitment so the work has time to show, then month to month.
If your customers search locally, hotels, clinics, showrooms, schools, restaurants, retail, a local team almost always wins because local search, Business Profile work and language nuance decide the result. If you are a national D2C brand with no local search dependency, a metro agency's specialist bench can be worth the premium.
For keeping a Google Business Profile and social feed alive, often yes. Once you need SEO, ads, landing pages and tracking working together, a single freelancer becomes the bottleneck, and the cost gap between a good freelancer and an entry agency retainer is smaller than most owners expect.
Paid media should produce enquiries in the first two to three weeks. Local search movement usually shows from about week six, with compounding gains through months three to six. Judge the first month on whether the promised work actually shipped.
Our retainers start at Rs 6,990 a month for a single-location business, with larger scopes quoted in writing after a free audit. The full breakdown of what moves the price is on our digital marketing cost page.
Because the comparison above argues against us in two of the four cases. We are a local Siliguri agency, which we think fits most businesses here, but a national D2C brand or a company already spending heavily on media is genuinely better served elsewhere, and we will say so on the call.
Next: what it costs in Siliguri, our Siliguri page, advertising and social media marketing.