Digital marketing firms have become the backbone of nearly every successful brand’s growth strategy, and choosing the right one can mean the difference between a stagnant online presence and a thriving, revenue-generating machine. Whether you’re a startup trying to build visibility from scratch or an established company looking to scale, the right partner brings strategy, creativity, and measurable results to the table.
In this guide, we’re breaking down the top digital marketing firms by specialty, so you can quickly identify which type of agency fits your goals, budget, and industry. Here’s a quick look at the categories we’ll cover in detail below:
- Full-Service Digital Marketing Agencies
- SEO-Focused Digital Marketing Firms
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Agencies
- Social Media Marketing Agencies
- Content Marketing Agencies
- Email Marketing Specialists
- Web Design & Development-Led Agencies
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Firms
- Influencer Marketing Agencies
- Industry-Specific Boutique Agencies
Each of these plays a distinct role in a brand’s growth strategy, and many businesses end up working with more than one type depending on their needs. Below, we’ll go through each category in detail, explain what makes them valuable, and help you figure out which is the right fit for your business.
Contents
- 1 What Makes a Great Digital Marketing Firm?
- 2 1. Full-Service Digital Marketing Agencies
- 3 2. SEO-Focused Digital Marketing Firms
- 4 3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Agencies
- 5 4. Social Media Marketing Agencies
- 6 5. Content Marketing Agencies
- 7 6. Email Marketing Specialists
- 8 7. Web Design & Development-Led Agencies
- 9 8. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Firms
- 10 9. Influencer Marketing Agencies
- 11 10. Industry-Specific Boutique Agencies
- 12 How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Firm for Your Business
- 13 Common Mistakes When Hiring a Digital Marketing Firm
- 14 Frequently Asked Questions
- 15 Signs It’s Time to Switch Digital Marketing Firms
- 16 The Future of Digital Marketing Firms
- 17 What Makes a Great Digital Marketing Firm?
- 18 1. Full-Service Digital Marketing Agencies
- 19 2. SEO-Focused Digital Marketing Firms
- 20 3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Agencies
- 21 4. Social Media Marketing Agencies
- 22 5. Content Marketing Agencies
- 23 6. Email Marketing Specialists
- 24 7. Web Design & Development-Led Agencies
- 25 8. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Firms
- 26 9. Influencer Marketing Agencies
- 27 10. Industry-Specific Boutique Agencies
- 28 How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Firm for Your Business
- 29 Common Mistakes When Hiring a Digital Marketing Firm
- 30 Frequently Asked Questions
- 31 Final Thoughts
What Makes a Great Digital Marketing Firm?
Before diving into the list, it’s worth understanding what separates a mediocre agency from a genuinely great one. The best digital marketing firms share a few common traits: transparent reporting, data-driven decision-making, clear communication, and a proven track record across multiple industries.
According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, companies that prioritize data-driven marketing strategies are significantly more likely to report positive ROI than those relying on guesswork. This underscores why vetting a digital marketing firm’s analytics capabilities should be a top priority during your selection process.
A strong agency will also take time to understand your business model, target audience, and competitive landscape before proposing a strategy. If a firm jumps straight into a generic package without asking detailed questions about your goals, that’s often a red flag.
1. Full-Service Digital Marketing Agencies
Full-service digital marketing firms handle everything under one roof — SEO, PPC, social media, content, email, and web design. This is ideal for businesses that want a single point of contact managing their entire online presence rather than juggling multiple vendors.
Why Choose a Full-Service Agency
The biggest advantage of a full-service digital marketing firm is strategic cohesion. When one team manages your SEO, ads, and social content together, campaigns stay aligned instead of working in silos. This typically results in more consistent branding and messaging across every channel.
Full-service agencies are particularly valuable for mid-sized to large businesses that need scalable support across multiple channels simultaneously. They usually offer dedicated account managers, quarterly strategy reviews, and integrated reporting dashboards that pull data from every campaign into one place.
What to Expect from Pricing
Because of the breadth of services, full-service digital marketing firms tend to charge more than specialized boutiques — often starting around $3,000–$10,000+ per month depending on scope. However, many businesses find the convenience and consistency worth the premium.
2. SEO-Focused Digital Marketing Firms
Search engine optimization remains one of the highest-ROI channels in digital marketing, and specialized digital marketing firms dedicated entirely to SEO tend to deliver deeper technical expertise than generalist agencies.
Technical SEO vs. Content SEO
The best SEO-focused digital marketing firms split their work into two core areas: technical SEO (site speed, crawlability, schema markup, mobile optimization) and content SEO (keyword research, on-page optimization, topical authority building). A firm that only focuses on one half of this equation will leave results on the table.
According to Search Engine Journal, businesses that invest consistently in both technical and content SEO see compounding organic traffic growth over 12–18 months, compared to short-lived spikes from one-off optimization efforts.
Local SEO Specialists
Within this category, many digital marketing firms specialize specifically in local SEO — optimizing Google Business Profiles, managing local citations, and building location-specific landing pages. This is especially valuable for service-area businesses like law firms, dentists, HVAC companies, and restaurants that depend on “near me” search traffic.
3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Agencies
PPC-focused digital marketing firms specialize in paid search and paid social campaigns across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, and increasingly TikTok. Unlike SEO, which takes months to show results, PPC can generate leads and sales almost immediately.
Google Ads Management
A quality PPC agency will constantly test ad copy, refine keyword match types, and adjust bidding strategies to reduce cost-per-acquisition over time. Many digital marketing firms in this space are certified Google Partners, which signals a baseline level of platform expertise and access to beta features.
Paid Social Advertising
Beyond search, paid social campaigns on Meta and TikTok require a very different creative approach — native-feeling video content tends to outperform traditional banner-style ads. Agencies that specialize in paid social understand platform-specific nuances that a generalist team might miss.
4. Social Media Marketing Agencies
Social media-focused digital marketing firms manage organic content strategy, community engagement, and brand voice across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and X. This is distinct from paid social advertising, though many agencies offer both under one umbrella.
Content Calendars and Community Management
A strong social media agency builds a consistent content calendar tailored to each platform’s algorithm and audience behavior, rather than posting the same content everywhere. They also handle community management — responding to comments, DMs, and reviews in a brand-appropriate voice.
Influencer Partnerships
Many social-first digital marketing firms also facilitate micro-influencer partnerships, which tend to deliver higher engagement rates than celebrity endorsements for a fraction of the cost.
5. Content Marketing Agencies
Content marketing digital marketing firms focus on producing blog posts, whitepapers, videos, and other assets designed to attract and nurture leads over time. This category overlaps heavily with SEO but is distinguished by a stronger emphasis on storytelling and thought leadership.
Building Topical Authority
Search engines increasingly reward websites that demonstrate deep topical authority rather than isolated keyword-optimized pages. The best content-focused digital marketing firms build out comprehensive content clusters — a central pillar page supported by dozens of related articles — to signal expertise to both readers and search algorithms.
Video and Podcast Production
Many content agencies have expanded into video and podcast production as these formats continue gaining traction, particularly among B2B audiences on LinkedIn and YouTube.
6. Email Marketing Specialists
Email remains one of the highest ROI channels available, and specialized digital marketing firms in this niche focus on list segmentation, automated drip campaigns, and lifecycle marketing.
Automation and Personalization
Effective email specialists build behavior-triggered automation flows — abandoned cart sequences, post-purchase follow-ups, re-engagement campaigns — that run continuously without manual intervention. Personalization based on purchase history or browsing behavior significantly improves open and click-through rates compared to generic blast emails.
Platform Expertise
These digital marketing firms typically specialize in platforms like Klaviyo, HubSpot, or Mailchimp, and often hold certifications that demonstrate advanced platform proficiency.
7. Web Design & Development-Led Agencies
Some digital marketing firms are built around web design and development first, with marketing services layered on top. This is a strong fit for businesses that need a complete website overhaul alongside ongoing marketing support.
UX-Driven Design
The best agencies in this category prioritize user experience research before jumping into visual design — understanding how visitors actually navigate a site and where friction points cause drop-off.
Speed and Technical Performance
Site speed directly impacts both SEO rankings and conversion rates, so development-led digital marketing firms typically prioritize technical performance optimization as part of every project, not as an afterthought.
8. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Firms
CRO-focused digital marketing firms specialize in turning existing website traffic into more leads and sales through systematic testing rather than driving new traffic. This is often the most overlooked but highest-leverage category on this list.
A/B Testing and Heatmaps
These firms use tools like heatmaps, session recordings, and structured A/B tests to identify exactly where visitors lose interest or abandon a conversion funnel. Small changes — a headline rewrite, a simplified checkout flow, a repositioned call-to-action — can produce outsized improvements in conversion rate.
Why CRO Complements Other Channels
Pairing a CRO-focused agency with your SEO or PPC efforts ensures that the traffic you’re already paying to acquire converts at the highest possible rate, effectively increasing the ROI of every other digital marketing firm you work with.
9. Influencer Marketing Agencies
Influencer-focused digital marketing firms manage the entire process of identifying, vetting, negotiating with, and reporting on influencer partnerships across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Micro vs. Macro Influencers
Many of these agencies now favor micro-influencers (10,000–100,000 followers) over celebrity-tier accounts, since smaller creators typically deliver stronger engagement and more authentic audience trust.
Campaign Measurement
A quality influencer agency provides clear attribution — unique discount codes, trackable links, or affiliate structures — so you can measure actual ROI rather than relying on vanity metrics like follower counts.
10. Industry-Specific Boutique Agencies
Finally, many of the most effective digital marketing firms are boutique shops that specialize in a single industry — healthcare, legal, real estate, SaaS, or e-commerce, for example.
The Advantage of Niche Expertise
An agency that has worked exclusively with law firms, for instance, already understands compliance requirements, typical client search behavior, and which messaging resonates with that audience.
This reduces onboarding time and often produces stronger results faster than a generalist agency starting from zero industry knowledge.
When to Choose a Boutique Firm
If your industry has unique regulatory, technical, or audience considerations, a specialized boutique among digital marketing firms is often worth prioritizing over a larger generalist agency, even if their team size is smaller.
How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Firm for Your Business
With so many types of digital marketing firms available, narrowing down the right fit comes down to a few key questions:
- What’s your primary goal? Brand awareness, lead generation, and e-commerce sales all call for different channel priorities.
- What’s your budget? Full-service agencies cost more but offer convenience; specialized firms often deliver deeper expertise per dollar within their niche.
- How fast do you need results? PPC and CRO tend to show impact quickly, while SEO and content marketing are longer-term investments.
- Does the agency have relevant case studies? Ask for results from businesses similar in size and industry to yours.
According to Forbes Agency Council, businesses that clearly define KPIs before engaging an agency report significantly higher satisfaction with the partnership than those who begin without measurable goals in place.
Common Mistakes When Hiring a Digital Marketing Firm
Even great digital marketing firms can underperform if the engagement isn’t set up correctly. Common mistakes include:
- Choosing based on price alone rather than expertise and fit
- Failing to align internally on goals before the agency starts work
- Expecting immediate results from long-term channels like SEO
- Not establishing clear reporting cadences and KPIs upfront
- Switching agencies too frequently before strategies have time to mature
Avoiding these pitfalls significantly increases the odds that your partnership with a digital marketing firm produces real, sustained growth rather than a short-term bump followed by stagnation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do digital marketing firms typically charge? Pricing varies widely by scope and specialization, ranging from a few hundred dollars a month for a single-channel specialist to $10,000+ monthly for full-service agencies managing multiple channels.
How long does it take to see results from a digital marketing firm? PPC and CRO can show measurable impact within weeks, while SEO and content marketing typically take 4–6 months to produce significant, compounding results.
Should I hire one full-service agency or multiple specialists? It depends on your budget and internal bandwidth. A full-service firm offers convenience and cohesion, while working with multiple specialized digital marketing firms can deliver deeper expertise in each individual channel, provided you have the internal capacity to coordinate between them.
Signs It’s Time to Switch Digital Marketing Firms
Even a strong partnership with a digital marketing firm can run its course. Recognizing the warning signs early can save your business months of wasted spend and missed opportunities.
Stagnant or Declining Results
If your key metrics — traffic, leads, conversions, or ad performance — have plateaued or declined for several consecutive reporting periods with no clear explanation or corrective plan, that’s a strong signal your current digital marketing firm may have run out of fresh ideas for your account. A good agency proactively flags underperformance and proposes new strategies rather than waiting for you to notice.
Lack of Transparency in Reporting
Reputable digital marketing firms provide clear, jargon-free reporting that ties directly back to business outcomes like revenue and cost-per-lead, not just vanity metrics like impressions or likes.
If you’re receiving reports you can’t easily interpret, or if requests for raw data or account access are met with resistance, it may indicate the agency is hiding weak performance behind confusing dashboards.
Poor Communication and Slow Turnaround
Communication breakdowns are one of the most common reasons businesses part ways with their agency. If emails go unanswered for days, strategy calls are frequently rescheduled, or campaign changes take weeks to implement, your digital marketing firm may be overextended and unable to give your account the attention it needs.
Outdated Tactics
Digital marketing evolves quickly — algorithm updates, new ad formats, and shifting consumer behavior all require agencies to adapt continuously. A digital marketing firm still relying on tactics that worked five years ago, without testing newer approaches like AI-assisted content optimization or short-form video, risks leaving performance gains on the table.
The Future of Digital Marketing Firms
Looking ahead, the most competitive digital marketing firms are already adapting to a landscape shaped by artificial intelligence, changing search behavior, and increasingly privacy-conscious consumers.
AI-Assisted Strategy and Execution
Many digital marketing firms now use AI tools to accelerate keyword research, generate first-draft content, and analyze campaign data at a scale that would be impossible manually. However, the firms delivering the best results still pair these tools with experienced strategists who refine and contextualize AI output rather than publishing it unedited.
Adapting to AI-Powered Search
As AI-driven search experiences change how people find information online, forward-thinking digital marketing firms are shifting focus toward structured content, clear entity signals, and building genuine topical authority — all factors that influence visibility across both traditional and AI-generated search results.
Privacy-First Marketing
With third-party cookies phasing out and privacy regulations tightening globally, leading digital marketing firms are investing more heavily in first-party data strategies — building owned email lists, loyalty programs, and direct customer relationships that don’t depend on third-party tracking.
Businesses that choose a digital marketing firm actively investing in these emerging capabilities today will likely be better positioned for sustained growth as the digital landscape continues to shift.
What Makes a Great Digital Marketing Firm?
Before diving into the list, it’s worth understanding what separates a mediocre agency from a genuinely great one. The best digital marketing firms share a few common traits: transparent reporting, data-driven decision-making, clear communication, and a proven track record across multiple industries.
According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, companies that prioritize data-driven marketing strategies are significantly more likely to report positive ROI than those relying on guesswork. This underscores why vetting a digital marketing firm’s analytics capabilities should be a top priority during your selection process.
A strong agency will also take time to understand your business model, target audience, and competitive landscape before proposing a strategy. If a firm jumps straight into a generic package without asking detailed questions about your goals, that’s often a red flag.
1. Full-Service Digital Marketing Agencies
Full-service digital marketing firms handle everything under one roof — SEO, PPC, social media, content, email, and web design. This is ideal for businesses that want a single point of contact managing their entire online presence rather than juggling multiple vendors.
Why Choose a Full-Service Agency
The biggest advantage of a full-service digital marketing firm is strategic cohesion. When one team manages your SEO, ads, and social content together, campaigns stay aligned instead of working in silos. This typically results in more consistent branding and messaging across every channel.
Full-service agencies are particularly valuable for mid-sized to large businesses that need scalable support across multiple channels simultaneously. They usually offer dedicated account managers, quarterly strategy reviews, and integrated reporting dashboards that pull data from every campaign into one place.
What to Expect from Pricing
Because of the breadth of services, full-service digital marketing firms tend to charge more than specialized boutiques — often starting around $3,000–$10,000+ per month depending on scope. However, many businesses find the convenience and consistency worth the premium.
2. SEO-Focused Digital Marketing Firms
Search engine optimization remains one of the highest-ROI channels in digital marketing, and specialized digital marketing firms dedicated entirely to SEO tend to deliver deeper technical expertise than generalist agencies.
Technical SEO vs. Content SEO
The best SEO-focused digital marketing firms split their work into two core areas: technical SEO (site speed, crawlability, schema markup, mobile optimization) and content SEO (keyword research, on-page optimization, topical authority building). A firm that only focuses on one half of this equation will leave results on the table.
According to Search Engine Journal, businesses that invest consistently in both technical and content SEO see compounding organic traffic growth over 12–18 months, compared to short-lived spikes from one-off optimization efforts.
Local SEO Specialists
Within this category, many digital marketing firms specialize specifically in local SEO — optimizing Google Business Profiles, managing local citations, and building location-specific landing pages. This is especially valuable for service-area businesses like law firms, dentists, HVAC companies, and restaurants that depend on “near me” search traffic.
3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Agencies
PPC-focused digital marketing firms specialize in paid search and paid social campaigns across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, and increasingly TikTok. Unlike SEO, which takes months to show results, PPC can generate leads and sales almost immediately.
Google Ads Management
A quality PPC agency will constantly test ad copy, refine keyword match types, and adjust bidding strategies to reduce cost-per-acquisition over time. Many digital marketing firms in this space are certified Google Partners, which signals a baseline level of platform expertise and access to beta features.
Paid Social Advertising
Beyond search, paid social campaigns on Meta and TikTok require a very different creative approach — native-feeling video content tends to outperform traditional banner-style ads. Agencies that specialize in paid social understand platform-specific nuances that a generalist team might miss.
4. Social Media Marketing Agencies
Social media-focused digital marketing firms manage organic content strategy, community engagement, and brand voice across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and X. This is distinct from paid social advertising, though many agencies offer both under one umbrella.
Content Calendars and Community Management
A strong social media agency builds a consistent content calendar tailored to each platform’s algorithm and audience behavior, rather than posting the same content everywhere. They also handle community management — responding to comments, DMs, and reviews in a brand-appropriate voice.
Influencer Partnerships
Many social-first digital marketing firms also facilitate micro-influencer partnerships, which tend to deliver higher engagement rates than celebrity endorsements for a fraction of the cost.
5. Content Marketing Agencies
Content marketing digital marketing firms focus on producing blog posts, whitepapers, videos, and other assets designed to attract and nurture leads over time. This category overlaps heavily with SEO but is distinguished by a stronger emphasis on storytelling and thought leadership.
Building Topical Authority
Search engines increasingly reward websites that demonstrate deep topical authority rather than isolated keyword-optimized pages. The best content-focused digital marketing firms build out comprehensive content clusters — a central pillar page supported by dozens of related articles — to signal expertise to both readers and search algorithms.
Video and Podcast Production
Many content agencies have expanded into video and podcast production as these formats continue gaining traction, particularly among B2B audiences on LinkedIn and YouTube.
6. Email Marketing Specialists
Email remains one of the highest ROI channels available, and specialized digital marketing firms in this niche focus on list segmentation, automated drip campaigns, and lifecycle marketing.
Automation and Personalization
Effective email specialists build behavior-triggered automation flows — abandoned cart sequences, post-purchase follow-ups, re-engagement campaigns — that run continuously without manual intervention. Personalization based on purchase history or browsing behavior significantly improves open and click-through rates compared to generic blast emails.
Platform Expertise
These digital marketing firms typically specialize in platforms like Klaviyo, HubSpot, or Mailchimp, and often hold certifications that demonstrate advanced platform proficiency.
7. Web Design & Development-Led Agencies
Some digital marketing firms are built around web design and development first, with marketing services layered on top. This is a strong fit for businesses that need a complete website overhaul alongside ongoing marketing support.
UX-Driven Design
The best agencies in this category prioritize user experience research before jumping into visual design — understanding how visitors actually navigate a site and where friction points cause drop-off.
Speed and Technical Performance
Site speed directly impacts both SEO rankings and conversion rates, so development-led digital marketing firms typically prioritize technical performance optimization as part of every project, not as an afterthought.
8. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Firms
CRO-focused digital marketing firms specialize in turning existing website traffic into more leads and sales through systematic testing rather than driving new traffic. This is often the most overlooked but highest-leverage category on this list.
A/B Testing and Heatmaps
These firms use tools like heatmaps, session recordings, and structured A/B tests to identify exactly where visitors lose interest or abandon a conversion funnel. Small changes — a headline rewrite, a simplified checkout flow, a repositioned call-to-action — can produce outsized improvements in conversion rate.
Why CRO Complements Other Channels
Pairing a CRO-focused agency with your SEO or PPC efforts ensures that the traffic you’re already paying to acquire converts at the highest possible rate, effectively increasing the ROI of every other digital marketing firm you work with.
9. Influencer Marketing Agencies
Influencer-focused digital marketing firms manage the entire process of identifying, vetting, negotiating with, and reporting on influencer partnerships across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Micro vs. Macro Influencers
Many of these agencies now favor micro-influencers (10,000–100,000 followers) over celebrity-tier accounts, since smaller creators typically deliver stronger engagement and more authentic audience trust.
Campaign Measurement
A quality influencer agency provides clear attribution — unique discount codes, trackable links, or affiliate structures — so you can measure actual ROI rather than relying on vanity metrics like follower counts.
10. Industry-Specific Boutique Agencies
Finally, many of the most effective digital marketing firms are boutique shops that specialize in a single industry — healthcare, legal, real estate, SaaS, or e-commerce, for example.
The Advantage of Niche Expertise
An agency that has worked exclusively with law firms, for instance, already understands compliance requirements, typical client search behavior, and which messaging resonates with that audience. This reduces onboarding time and often produces stronger results faster than a generalist agency starting from zero industry knowledge.
When to Choose a Boutique Firm
If your industry has unique regulatory, technical, or audience considerations, a specialized boutique among digital marketing firms is often worth prioritizing over a larger generalist agency, even if their team size is smaller.
How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Firm for Your Business
With so many types of digital marketing firms available, narrowing down the right fit comes down to a few key questions:
- What’s your primary goal? Brand awareness, lead generation, and e-commerce sales all call for different channel priorities.
- What’s your budget? Full-service agencies cost more but offer convenience; specialized firms often deliver deeper expertise per dollar within their niche.
- How fast do you need results? PPC and CRO tend to show impact quickly, while SEO and content marketing are longer-term investments.
- Does the agency have relevant case studies? Ask for results from businesses similar in size and industry to yours.
According to Forbes Agency Council, businesses that clearly define KPIs before engaging an agency report significantly higher satisfaction with the partnership than those who begin without measurable goals in place.
Common Mistakes When Hiring a Digital Marketing Firm
Even great digital marketing firms can underperform if the engagement isn’t set up correctly. Common mistakes include:
- Choosing based on price alone rather than expertise and fit
- Failing to align internally on goals before the agency starts work
- Expecting immediate results from long-term channels like SEO
- Not establishing clear reporting cadences and KPIs upfront
- Switching agencies too frequently before strategies have time to mature
Avoiding these pitfalls significantly increases the odds that your partnership with a digital marketing firm produces real, sustained growth rather than a short-term bump followed by stagnation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do digital marketing firms typically charge? Pricing varies widely by scope and specialization, ranging from a few hundred dollars a month for a single-channel specialist to $10,000+ monthly for full-service agencies managing multiple channels.
How long does it take to see results from a digital marketing firm? PPC and CRO can show measurable impact within weeks, while SEO and content marketing typically take 4–6 months to produce significant, compounding results.
Should I hire one full-service agency or multiple specialists? It depends on your budget and internal bandwidth. A full-service firm offers convenience and cohesion, while working with multiple specialized digital marketing firms can deliver deeper expertise in each individual channel, provided you have the internal capacity to coordinate between them.
Final Thoughts
The right digital marketing firm — or combination of firms — can transform how your business attracts, converts, and retains customers online. Rather than searching for a one-size-fits-all solution, use the categories above to identify which specific expertise your business needs most right now, and prioritize agencies with proven, relevant experience in that area. A thoughtful, well-matched partnership with one of these digital marketing firms is one of the highest-leverage investments a growing business can make.