SmartSites vs Straight North for a local business

Late January is when owners finish going through last year’s numbers and decide who is going to run the ads and rebuild the website. This year a lot of them have a deadline attached. Google has now told businesses that built a website inside their Google Business Profile that those free sites are due to shut down on March 1. If that little site is your only website, you need a real one this quarter, and most owners would rather hire someone than learn a site builder in February.

Two names turn up on a lot of the shortlists we see: SmartSites and Straight North. Both offer paid search management, search engine optimization and website design, and both explain their approach openly on their own sites. They are also pitched at noticeably different buyers, which is the useful thing to understand before you take either sales call.

What decides this choice

Before comparing agencies, write down four answers. They will do more of the choosing than any proposal will.

• Who buys from you. A homeowner calling about a leaking water heater and a purchasing manager requesting a quote for machined parts need very different marketing. One decides in an afternoon, the other over months, with several people involved.
• What you need first. A new site, more leads from paid search, or both at once. Agencies that do both still tend to be stronger at one.
• What you count as a result. Calls and booked appointments, form fills, qualified sales conversations or signed contracts. Pick the agency whose reporting speaks in the same unit you do.
• Who will own the accounts. The Google Ads account, the analytics property, the domain and the site files. Settle that on paper before anything is built.

SmartSites: design and paid media for smaller companies

SmartSites is a digital marketing agency based in Paramus, New Jersey, that leads with website design and search marketing, meaning paid advertising and search engine optimization. Around those sit social media advertising and related services. It presents itself as an agency for businesses across many industries rather than a specialist in one.

What that means for an owner is one agency that can design and build the site and then run the Google Ads that send people to it. When the same firm owns both halves, the landing page and the ad are more likely to say the same thing, and there is one team to call when leads drop. Look through its design work for businesses in your own industry before the first call.

Straight North: lead generation with a business-to-business lean

Straight North is a Chicago-area agency that positions itself around lead generation, and much of what it publishes is written with business-to-business and industrial companies in mind. Its core services are SEO, pay-per-click management and web design, all pointed at producing sales inquiries.

An idea it writes about often is lead validation: reviewing incoming forms and calls and separating real sales leads from job applicants, vendor pitches, spam and customer service requests. That discipline is useful to any business, because a report that counts every form fill as a lead flatters the campaign. For a company with a long sales cycle and a sales team that follows up on each inquiry, an agency that organizes its reporting around that question is a sensible fit. Ask to see how the sorting works on an account like yours.

SmartSites and Straight North side by side

	SmartSites	Straight North
Best suited to	Small and midsized businesses selling to consumers or other businesses	Business-to-business and industrial companies with a sales process
What stands out	Website design and paid advertising under one roof	Lead generation with a strong focus on validating which inquiries are real
How the work gets done	Agency team runs design, ads and SEO for you	Agency team runs SEO, paid search and web projects for you
Reporting to ask about	Calls and forms by campaign, not only clicks and traffic	How leads are sorted and what counts as a sales lead
Ownership questions	Who holds the ad account, the domain and the site files	The same, plus who keeps the lead records and call recordings
Ask before signing	Term, cancellation and what happens to the site if you leave, in writing	Term, cancellation and handover of accounts and data, in writing

Pros and cons

SmartSites

Pros

• Design and ad management from one team, which keeps the site and the campaigns aligned
• A broad service menu, so the site, the ads and the SEO can sit with one firm
• A useful choice when the website is the most urgent project

Cons

• Working across many industries means you should ask for examples from your own trade
• Owners who mainly need map pack visibility and reviews should ask how much of the program covers them
• As with any agency, account and site ownership need to be spelled out in the agreement

Straight North

Pros

• A clear focus on lead quality rather than lead volume
• An approach shaped around longer sales cycles and business buyers
• Reporting built around the question a sales team actually asks: was that a real inquiry

Cons

• A business-to-business emphasis may be more than a small consumer-facing company needs
• Businesses whose customers find them on the map and call within minutes may want an agency centered on that behavior
• Confirm who owns the accounts and how call data is handed over if you part ways

Four businesses, four answers

A commercial cleaning company selling contracts to property managers. Decisions take weeks, several people sign off, and one contract is worth a season of residential jobs. Straight North’s lead-quality approach suits this kind of sale.

A med spa or boutique fitness studio that needs a new site and ads for it. The site has to look the part, and the ads have to land on pages that book consults. SmartSites’ mix of design and paid media matches this brief.

A distributor or manufacturer with a sales team. Straight North again, because it speaks the language of qualified inquiries and pipeline.

A plumbing company with two trucks and a Google Business Profile doing most of the work. Neither is an obvious first pick. This business lives on the map pack, reviews and a phone that gets answered, and it needs an agency that treats those as the main job.

A third option worth a look

That last business is the one we are built for. Beyaoshy has worked with local businesses since 2015, and one team runs the parts that usually get split across vendors: the Google Business Profile, local SEO, Google Ads, reviews, the website and the CRM that catches the leads.

Three things shape how we work. You own the ad accounts, the site and the data from the first day, so there is nothing to negotiate if you ever leave. The monthly report is built from calls and booked appointments rather than impressions. And the scope is sized for a business with one location and a careful budget. Other marketing agencies also hand us their own clients to look after under their name, which is a fair test of whether the work holds up.

Before you sign with anyone

Whichever agency you choose, get the answers in writing: who owns each account, how leads are counted, what the report will show, and what happens to the site if you move on. If the free profile website on your listing is going away in March, start the replacement now rather than in the last week of February.

If your business lives on calls from people nearby, see how we handle Google Ads and websites for local companies, or start with the overview written for business owners.