Best Marketing Agencies in Minneapolis (2026)

Introduction

Minneapolis has a strong bench of marketing agencies for its size, and the 12 below cover performance media, B2B, CPG shopper marketing, customer experience and PR-led programmes. They were chosen for recent work, 2025 and 2026 recognition, and the clients they name.

The Twin Cities market rests on large regional headquarters such as Target, Best Buy, General Mills, 3M, Medtronic and Cargill, along with a long list of food, medtech, outdoor and retail brands. Independents have done well from that base. Adweek’s 2025 Fastest Growing Agencies list for the Midwest included five Minneapolis firms, among them Rise and Shine and Partners, Bold Orange and Ovative Group, and Ad Age gave Rise and Shine its Midwest Small Agency of the Year gold that same year. The Periscope name is gone: Quad rolled it into a new agency, Betty, in 2024.

Every agency here has an active office in the Twin Cities in 2026, confirmed on a page of its own site. The list runs in no fixed order of merit, because the right choice depends on your channel mix, sector and budget.

The best marketing agencies in Minneapolis

1. Ovative

Independent · North Loop · ovative.com

Ovative is an independent, privately owned media, measurement and creative firm, with further offices in New York and Chicago. It lists a win with Aerie for Adweek’s Media Plan of the Year, two categories at Meta’s 2026 Agency Awards, a ninth straight year on the Inc. 5000 and a five-year run on Adweek’s Fastest Growing Agencies list.

Its client logos include General Mills, Polaris, UnitedHealth Group, The Home Depot, Patagonia and Domino’s. Services span search, social, retail media and creator marketing, and measurement sits on its own EMRge platform. It suits brands with large media budgets that want one team accountable for spend and reporting.

2. Rise and Shine and Partners

Independent · North Loop · riseandshineandpartners.com

Rise and Shine and Partners calls itself a brand navigation agency and combines brand, media and digital work. Ad Age named it Small Agency of the Year, Midwest, Gold for 2025, reporting that revenue nearly doubled to $13.6 million in 2024 and that it bought Adventure Creative Group that year with no outside investors. Adweek’s 2025 Midwest list recorded growth of 116%.

Ad Age cited work for AB InBev, Best Buy, the Minnesota Twins, Supercuts and Lunds & Byerlys. Its site also names the Minnesota Zoo, PING and Original Louisiana Hot Sauce. “Žanis’ Story: Hidden No More”, a VR experience for the Žanis Lipke Memorial in Rīga, was Campaign of the Year: Experiential at the 2026 Ad Age Small Agency Awards.

3. broadhead

Independent · North Loop · broadheadco.com

broadhead has been independent since 2001, is headquartered on Washington Avenue North and also has offices in Charlotte and in Delafield, Wisconsin. Its site says Ad Age named it a 2026 Small Agency of the Year, and it appeared on Inc.’s 2025 Best in Business list for AI implementation.

The agency’s pitch centres on mapping where buying decisions are made and who influences them, and it has named practices in agriculture and in transportation and B2B. Clients include Cargill, CHS, Purina, Boehringer Ingelheim, Thomas Built Buses and Norfolk Southern, with consumer work for Sunkist. Strategy, creative, media, PR, data science and environmental design are all on its service list.

4. Betty

Quad · Northeast · bettyagency.com

Betty is the creative agency Quad formed in 2024 by combining its creative business lines, including Periscope, the Minneapolis agency it bought in 2018. It covers strategy, creative, design and content studios, and keeps a Minneapolis office in Northeast alongside a growing presence in Chicago.

Group creative director Nicole Meyer, who joined Periscope in 2011, was working on the Minnesota Lottery, Kemps and Meet Minneapolis in 2025. Case studies cover Gorilla Glue, Natrol, CLR Brands and Nielsen-Massey Vanillas, and the services include retail and adaptive design, which suits CPG brands with a lot of packaging and in-store work.

5. Bold Orange

Independent · Downtown Minneapolis · boldorange.com

Bold Orange describes itself as an independent, AI-enabled customer experience company, with practices in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail and ecommerce. It took silver in Advertising and Marketing at Twin Cities Business’s 2026 Best of Business, and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal named it a 2026 Best Place to Work. Adweek’s 2025 Midwest list recorded 36% growth.

Case studies feature Polaris, Intuit TurboTax, Boston Scientific and Great Clips. It works with Snowflake, Salesforce and Braze, so it fits teams whose marketing problem sits in lifecycle data and customer journeys more than in campaign ideas.

6. Media Bridge

Independent, woman-owned · North Loop · agencymb.com

Media Bridge is an advertising and media agency founded by Tracy Call in 2010, and it says it has never been part of a holding company. It holds WBENC and NGLCC certifications, and Lauren Young of the agency was a 2026 Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal Women in Business honouree.

Media planning and buying sits at the centre, covering TV, radio, out-of-home, print, CTV, audio, social and search. Clients include Caribou Coffee, Twin Cities Orthopedics and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Its MB Health practice works with med-tech and healthcare names including Inspire, Axonics, Allina and Delta Dental, which is useful in a market with this much medtech.

7. Modern Climate

Owner-led · North Loop · modernclimate.com

Modern Climate is a Minneapolis agency built around brand, creative, demand generation and technology, led by owner and CEO John Hyduke. Its services are organised as strategy, creative, lead nurture, paid media, and UX and technology, and it has a chief experience and AI officer on its leadership team.

Featured work includes Family Dollar, Zebco, Utepils, First Editions and MicroEssentials. The range from a craft brewer to a crop nutrition brand makes it a reasonable fit for mid-sized B2B and consumer companies that need lead generation and brand handled by one team.

8. Bellmont Partners

Independent · Edina · bellmontpartners.com

Bellmont Partners is a PR-led communications and marketing firm founded in 1996 and owned by Brian and Jen Bellmont. O’Dwyer’s ranked it in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and its site lists Minnesota PRSA Classics awards, a Silver Stevie and a Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal Fast 50 honour.

Practices cover health and medtech, horticulture, agriculture and food, manufacturing, technology and tourism, with crisis communications, thought leadership, content and events on the service list. Award entries cite work for the City of Duluth and Visit Duluth. Its site names few clients, so ask for examples in your sector.

9. Padilla

AVENIR GLOBAL · Minneapolis · padillaco.com

Padilla is a PR and strategic communications agency, part of Montreal-based AVENIR GLOBAL, with Minneapolis listed first among its seven US offices. Julie Batliner is president, having succeeded Matt Kucharski in a planned transition, and Kucharski remains as executive counselor.

The firm is organised around food, beverage and nutrition, health, agriculture, consumer, technology and financial services, with specialist groups including FoodMinds. That depth in food science and agriculture matches the local client base. The site leads with sector practices over client names, so ask for relevant case studies early.

10. Risdall

Independent · Northeast · risdall.com

Risdall is an independent Minneapolis marketing agency based on Broadway Street Northeast, working from strategy through execution, with paid search and website design prominent among its services. Its roster leans towards B2B and technical companies.

Case studies include Infinity Credit Union, First Advisors and Canon Medical Informatics. The partners shown on its site include Cargill, Ecolab, Daikin, Hitachi, Tolomatic and Turck, which points to industrial and manufacturing experience.

11. Augurian

Private company · St Paul · augurian.com

Augurian is a digital marketing specialist focused on paid media, organic search, analytics, website development and email automation, based on Vandalia Street in St Paul. It describes its founding idea as marketing that is measurable and tied directly to business growth.

Clients include Coborn’s, Children’s Minnesota, Theisen’s, Edina Realty, MADD, Nilfisk and Uponor. It offers a free diagnostic, a second-opinion review of an existing programme, which is a low-risk way to test the fit before moving an account.

12. Agency Squid

Independent · Minneapolis · agencysquid.com

Agency Squid is an independent brand and integrated campaign agency with a strong line in food, drink and CPG. It won gold in Advertising and Marketing at Twin Cities Business’s 2026 Best of Business, ahead of Bold Orange and Colle McVoy.

Clients include White Claw, Mike’s Hard, Silver Oak, Zesty Paws, Costa Farms, Schwan’s, Summit Brewing and Sun Country Airlines. It publishes on shopper marketing for CPG brand managers, and its services cover brand identity, integrated campaigns, content production and creative operations.

What to look for in a Minneapolis marketing agency

Start with the channel you need to move. Minneapolis agencies tend to specialise: Ovative and Media Bridge are built around media, Augurian and Risdall around search and paid programmes, Bold Orange around lifecycle and customer data, and Padilla and Bellmont Partners around earned media. A full-funnel claim is worth testing by asking which channels the agency runs in-house and which it hands to partners.

Ask for proof in your sector. The local client base is heavy in food, agriculture, medtech and manufacturing, each with long sales cycles or regulatory review. An agency that has worked through a medical legal review or a distributor channel will plan timelines differently from one that has mainly run direct-to-consumer campaigns. Any regulated claims still need sign-off from your own legal and compliance teams.

Agree how results will be measured before the first brief. Performance shops often report on attributed revenue, while PR-led firms may report on reach and message pick-up. Ask who owns the ad accounts, analytics and data if the relationship ends, and how fees change as spend grows.

Look at how the agency runs a high-volume programme day to day. Full-funnel work produces a lot of variants across paid, social, email and retail, and each one may need review by brand, legal and sales. A clear place for the latest files, one review thread per asset and a visible list of open comments will save time on every campaign.

How Fabric helps marketing agency teams

Fabric gives an agency one workspace for its files, client feedback and team knowledge, with AI search across all of it. The agency setup keeps a space per client, and there is a setup for content marketing teams, who tend to have many briefs, drafts and assets moving at once.

Search works by meaning across documents, images, PDFs and transcribed recordings, as well as connected apps such as Google Drive, Notion and Gmail. That helps when an account lead needs last year’s messaging or a past campaign result. Campaign calendars can run on Kanban, where any folder becomes a board and the cards are the files themselves.

Review works through sharing. Share a file or folder with the client as a commenter, and they can join from the link without signing up. With annotations they can highlight and comment on copy and PDFs, leave timestamped comments on video and audio, draw on a video frame or an image and attach a comment to the drawing. The team marks each comment completed, so a round of feedback works like a checklist.

For final delivery, any file or folder can be published as a web page, which is view-only and updates when the source changes. Link analytics shows when each named recipient opened a tracked link and how long they spent with it, which is useful for reports and pitch decks.

On Team plans, self-writing docs can maintain a page for each client from meetings, Slack and the workspace, covering decisions, deliverables and open items.

Link analytics is included on Pro and Team plans, and self-writing docs on Team plans. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best marketing agency in Minneapolis?

The right agency depends on the channel and sector. On recent recognition, Rise and Shine and Partners won Ad Age’s Midwest Small Agency of the Year gold for 2025, broadhead reports a 2026 Ad Age Small Agency of the Year award, and Ovative and Aerie won Adweek’s Media Plan of the Year.

What happened to Periscope in Minneapolis?

Quad, which bought Periscope in 2018, retired the name in 2024 and moved its leadership and staff into a new agency called Betty. Betty still has a Minneapolis office, in Northeast.

Which Minneapolis agencies suit B2B marketing?

broadhead has named practices in agriculture and in transportation and B2B. Risdall leans towards industrial and technical companies, and Modern Climate offers lead nurture and demand generation alongside brand work.

Which Minneapolis agencies work on CPG and shopper marketing?

Agency Squid and Betty both have substantial CPG rosters, and Rise and Shine and Partners has worked with AB InBev and Lunds & Byerlys. Padilla adds food and nutrition communications through FoodMinds. For agencies focused on campaign ideas and network resources, see the best advertising agencies in Minneapolis.

Should I choose a performance agency or a full-service one?

A performance specialist usually suits a company with a settled brand and a clear conversion goal, while a full-service agency makes more sense when positioning, creative and media all need work together. Several firms here cover both, so ask which team would lead on your account and who sets the budget split.

Related lists

Marketing agencies in other cities: New York · London · Los Angeles · Chicago · Toronto

More in Minneapolis: Creative agencies · Advertising agencies · Branding agencies · Social media agencies · Content studios · UX design agencies

Run your agency on Fabric: Fabric for agencies · Content planning · Best client portal tools