The right content marketing agency plays a huge role in how people see your brand and how far your message goes. You want someone in your corner who gets what you’re trying to accomplish and creates work that helps you grow. If you’re on the hunt for the right agency, two names that often come up: Column Five and Siege Media. Both have solid reputations and bring a lot to the table, but they use pretty different playbooks.
This guide dives into the differences between Column Five vs. Siege Media, including the details that matter most: what each team is good at, how long they’ve been at it, how deep they go with strategy, their creative chops, what their clients actually get, how they handle sharing content, what it’ll cost, and how fast they work. This should help you easily figure out which one fits your unique needs.
Quick Intro: Column Five vs. Siege Media
Column Five
Back in 2009, Ross Crooks, Josh Ritchie, and Jason Lankow started Column Five with a knack for data visualization and infographics. Over time, they took on much more—think brand strategy, video work, and content strategy. Now, they help B2B tech companies tell stories that stand out, spark interest, earn trust, and pull in leads through smart SEO/AEO-focused content marketing strategies.
The team is distributed across the country, and their clients are often companies in SaaS, finance, and education. Their biggest strengths are brand building, content strategy, content production (video, motion graphics, static content, data visualization, etc.), and distribution to get your brand in front of the right people.
Siege Media
In 2012, Ross Hudgens set up Siege Media with a focus on SEO-driven content and link-building. The company is fully remote, working across the U.S., and got its start in San Diego.
Siege works mostly with SaaS, e-commerce, and enterprise software companies that really care about organic growth. They handle SEO-optimized articles, digital PR for SaaS, technical SEO, and GEO (generative engine optimization). Their team even built Rise, a WordPress tool for on-page SEO fixes and managing links within a site.
How Long They’ve Been Doing This
Column Five has been around since 2009, so they bring more than 15 years of experience. Early on, they got noticed for pioneering infographics, as well as big creative projects like the “Child of the 90s” Internet Explorer ad with 50 million views and a spot on AdWeek’s Top 10 Viral Ads list. (Their team’s podcast series for SAP also earned them Content Marketing Project of the Year at the Content Marketing Institute Awards.)
Over the last 15 years, they’ve continued to grow both their offerings and their culture (including winning the 2025 Breakthrough Culture Award), and their decade-plus of experience helps them bring unique insight to each project.
Siege Media has also grown quickly since 2012. They’ve appeared more than once on the Inc. 5000 list and made Inc.’s Best Workplaces. Founder Ross Hudgens continues to shape how the agency works, including which clients they take on and how they strategize.
Digging Into Strategy vs. Rolling Up Sleeves
Both agencies say they do strategy—but their styles are easy to tell apart once you ask a few questions.
Column Five kicks off by figuring out who you’re trying to reach, what makes them tick, and how they move from curious to committed. Their process rarely starts without an audit, which helps identify your brand’s strengths and weaknesses. From there, they map out what stories to tell and how to share them, building custom content plans tailored to your audience. Beyond just handing off ideas, they actually work closely with teams through research, creative builds, and distribution. This type of holistic approach helps them achieve more success. (For example, they helped increase Dropbox’s brand perception 19% with this approach.)
Siege Media, on the other hand, centers every plan on the SEO playbook. They run technical SEO audits, plan how content should show up over the year, and map out link-building efforts. Their goal is to help sites climb higher in Google searches. Siege likes structure. They sell annual retainers, help build the groundwork for long-term search success, and have a team that lives and breathes SEO, content, and links.
- Column Five digs deep on brand, insights into the people you’re trying to reach, and creative approaches.
- Siege focuses on SEO performance, site fixes, and getting high-quality links.
Creative Work and What’s in Their Portfolios
Column Five stands out for big creative projects and campaigns—animated videos, interactive websites, or eye-catching data visuals. Their campaign for SAP’s podcast picked up top industry awards. Their work with VideoAmp increased MQLs 850% in one month.
They work with huge names and find ways to blend brand stories with strong visuals. Case studies cover everything from infographics to video series. If you flip through past projects, you’ll see how they make companies like Instacart or Microsoft look memorable.
Siege Media’s creative style puts SEO front and center. They produce content like calculators, interactive tools, and data-driven graphics, all meant to bring in links and boost stats. Their videos and interactive pieces work for search but don’t lose sight of the company’s message. Reading through their case studies, you’ll see things like a 117% traffic boost for Uscreen after just eight months, or Secureframe seeing their organic traffic value double.
- Column Five tells bigger brand stories and plays up creative production.
- Siege builds content with SEO and performance as the north star, showing results in increased traffic and site value.
Who They’ve Helped and What’s Happened
Column Five’s client list reads like a who’s who of SaaS, tech, consumer products, and nonprofits. They’ve partnered with Instacart, Dropbox, Coinbase, Netflix, Amazon, Teach for America, and Girls Who Code. Their case studies focus on brand-building and go-to-market campaigns that scale. (For example, they helped Instacart produce 115 assets in two weeks.)
Siege Media works with companies focused on e-commerce and software, like Airbnb, TripAdvisor, and Shutterfly. Their stories often come down to the numbers: traffic lifts, increased site value, or jumps in leads. Uscreen doubled their results in under a year through an ongoing content push, while Casper added hundreds of thousands in monthly traffic value with Siege’s guidance.
The big takeaway:
- Column Five showcases creative and brand-focused wins.
- Siege measures success in terms of search engine growth and revenue.
How Content Gets Out There—and How It’s Measured
Column Five offers distribution help using paid social, targeted outreach, media buys, and planning so the right people actually see the work. They use Google Analytics, SEMrush, Moz, HubSpot, Tableau, and more for tracking—covering impressions, organic visits, leads, and sales. Measurement isn’t cookie-cutter; KPIs always match what each client actually wants.
Siege Media focuses on owned and earned channels, with digital PR and link-building at the core. They’re heavy users of SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush, plus their own platforms, for tracking links, site authority, and value per visit. Siege’s reporting is all about SEO: if organic numbers grow, they did their job. Their proprietary tools help speed up finding and boosting content inside WordPress sites, too.
- Both teams track content with top tools and care about results.
- Column Five thinks about the big picture—paid and organic combined.
- Siege zeroes in on SEO, links, and ranking positions.
Partnership Models and What It Costs
Column Five gives clients a few ways to team up:
- Brand Studio — Starts at $10,000 monthly and gets you a creative squad ready for ongoing design without hiring in-house.
- Iris AI — Starts at $15,000 monthly, covering audit, strategy, creative, and ways to get noticed via SEO and AEO.
- Individual projects — Priced by what you need, from brand foundations to video production or content campaigns.
Column Five usually kicks things off in about 30 days, with deep discovery time before locking in the details. They aim to build real partnerships, not just deliverables.
Siege Media lays out pricing clearly: packages typically begin at $11,000 a month, most clients sign annual contracts, and they do custom deals when ROI is clear. Their retainer structure covers steady content and link-building over a full year, but they’ll take on specific one-time projects too.
- Siege sets clear monthly rates and contract lengths upfront.
- Column Five adapts to different scopes and needs as they go.
How Fast They Deliver
Column Five is upfront about timelines:
- Brand development: 4–12 weeks
- Content strategy: 5–6 weeks
- Infographics: about 4 weeks
- Motion graphics: 4–8 weeks
- Interactive projects: 5–10 weeks
- E-books: 4–6 weeks
- Live-action video: 6–12 weeks
They put quality first, but they are adept at scaling production. Clients often mention how the agency responds quickly—Zendesk shared a testimonial about fast turnarounds.
Siege Media gives rough timeframes through how they package work: blog posts run 2–4 weeks, with full campaigns spanning 8–12 weeks. Their teams stay lean (about 4–6 people) so execution moves faster and scales easily.
- Column Five’s timelines line up with complex creative work.
- Siege rolls out SEO content on a predictable schedule, with quick production for fast-growing sites.
Choosing Between Column Five and Siege Media
So, who’s going to be best for your company? It all depends on the kind of results you want most.
- Pick Column Five if you care most about brand storytelling, multimedia projects, and standing out with creative work. They’re especially good for SaaS clients needing a trusted partner who can handle content from ideas to big campaigns.
- Pick Siege Media if you need to scale organic visitors, boost SEO, or earn links that matter to search. Their systems help sites climb fast and with impact, making them a go-to for companies hungry for measurable growth in Google.
Both can handle nearly any content task, but Column Five leads with creativity and big-picture thinking, while Siege focuses on results in search and performance marketing. Sometimes, the best answer is a mix—use each for what they’re best at.
Your Next Move for Content
The Column Five vs. Siege Media comparison paints a picture of two teams with different strengths. Column Five shines in multimedia, storytelling, and campaigns that turn heads. Siege Media gets results by boosting organic growth and building content that Google loves.
Your perfect fit depends on your goals. Want your brand remembered for its story and creativity? Column Five fits that need. Want bigger search numbers and steady revenue growth from organic traffic? Siege Media specializes there.
Both agencies have proof that what they do works. The most important step? Match your goals to what each one does best.
To see how Column Five can help shape your next move, check out their case studies for more examples and ideas.
