Hiring an agency · FAQ
What people ask before hiring a digital marketing agency
The questions buyers type into Google and into ChatGPT before they hire an agency — cost, timelines, SEO vs GEO, agency vs in-house — answered without the sales pitch.
FissionX · September 20, 2026 · 7 min read
What does a digital marketing agency do?
A digital marketing agency grows a business through online channels: search, AI assistants, paid media, social and content. FissionX runs them as one programme — SEO so you rank on Google, GEO so assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini cite you, ads and campaigns so paid spend returns customers, and online reputation management so buyers trust what they find when they look you up — and reports all of it in revenue.
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) earns you a ranked link on a results page. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) earns you a mention or citation inside an AI-generated answer. They share a foundation — crawlable pages, clear entities, real authority — but GEO adds answer-first content, third-party citations and tracking of what the assistants actually say about you.
Is SEO still worth it now that people use ChatGPT and AI Overviews?
Yes. AI assistants build their answers from pages they can crawl, understand and trust, which is exactly what SEO produces. What has changed is the goal: a ranking alone is no longer enough, so the same work now has to make your content quotable and your brand the one the answer names.
How much does a digital marketing agency cost?
It depends on the size of the site, the competition and the scope. Across the industry, monthly retainers commonly run from the low thousands of dollars for a small site to five figures for an enterprise one, with audits priced separately and ad spend on top of any paid media fee. FissionX starts with a fixed-scope audit sprint and sizes any retainer to the backlog that audit produces, so you see the work before you see the number.
How long does SEO take to show results?
Technical fixes can move indexation and impressions within weeks. Content and authority work compounds over two to three quarters — an audit finding fixed in month one usually shows in the data by month two, while a new topic cluster is typically judged at month six. Any agency promising rankings by a fixed date is guessing.
How do I choose the right digital marketing agency?
Ask what they will diagnose before they prescribe, what they will report when something does not work, and who owns the accounts and documentation if you leave. Avoid anyone who guarantees positions, sells a fixed package before looking at your site, or reports rankings, clicks and impressions without tying them to revenue.
How do I get my brand mentioned by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity?
Assistants mention brands they can verify from several sources. State plainly on your own pages what you do and who for, structure content so the answer comes first, earn coverage on the third-party sites the models already cite in your category, and let AI crawlers such as GPTBot and PerplexityBot in. Then track the answers, prompt by prompt, to see what moved.
Should I hire an agency or build an in-house SEO team?
Hire in-house when search is a permanent core channel and you can keep a specialist busy full-time. Use an agency when you need senior technical, content and digital PR skills at once but not forty hours a week of each. Many teams do both: an agency for diagnosis and strategy, in-house writers and developers for execution.
Do you work with our in-house team or replace it?
Either. Most engagements are a technical team plus briefs your writers execute, because your team knows the product better than we ever will. Where you have no in-house capacity, we write and ship.
Do we need GEO yet, or is it too early?
You need it when a measurable share of your category research already happens in an assistant. We baseline that before recommending spend — how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews answer your buyers’ prompts today — so the answer is a number rather than a hunch.
Will you guarantee a number-one ranking?
No. Nobody controls a search engine result or an AI answer. We commit to the work, the reporting and the diagnosis — which pages moved, why, and what changes next.
What do you need from us to start?
Read access to Google Search Console, Google Analytics and your CMS, plus server log access where we can get it. A first-call conversation about which product lines actually carry margin, so we optimize for those instead of the easiest keywords.
How do engagements run?
We start with a fixed-scope audit sprint so you own a prioritized plan whether or not you continue with us. Ongoing work then runs as a monthly retainer sized to the backlog that audit produced.