The Buyer's Guide
How to choose a personal branding agency you can trust.
The same seven checks this directory runs before any agency is listed, written as a checklist you can use on any practice, listed here or not. If an agency cannot answer these plainly, that is your answer.
The checks
Seven questions to ask before you sign.
- 01
Code of Ethics
A signed commitment to the PBA Code of Ethics: a standing pledge against the manipulative tactics saturating this industry. Breaking it, or disagreeing with any part of it, ends a listing.
Ask them: Will you sign a written commitment against bought followers, fabricated press, and invented credentials, and can I read it?
- 02
AI Disclosure
A published position on how the practice uses artificial intelligence. Using AI is not disqualifying. Concealing it is, and so is using it to manufacture a perception a client has not earned. The disclosure is published on the listing.
Ask them: How do you use AI in client work, and will you put that in writing before we start?
- 03
Primary Focus: Personal Branding
Personal branding must account for at least 70 percent of the practice's work: at least seven of every ten clients served are personal brand engagements, not incidental to a different business line. Many listed practices also take on B2B or unrelated work, and that is fine. What is not fine is a practice for which personal branding is a minor offering, listed here on the strength of unrelated work, since this remains a small, specific niche and the directory exists to represent it, not general marketing or business consulting.
Ask them: What share of your clients are personal brand engagements, as opposed to general marketing or business work?
- 04
Specialization
A defined lane, stated plainly. Practices claiming to serve everyone are asked what they actually do best.
Ask them: Who do you serve best, and who would you turn away?
- 05
Verifiable Website
A live site that plainly identifies the business and what it does.
Ask them: Does your website plainly identify the business and what it does?
- 06
Verifiable Social Media Footprint
At least one active, public professional profile that can be independently confirmed to belong to the practice.
Ask them: Which public professional profile can I check to confirm it is really yours?
- 07
Legitimate Legal Filing
A registered business entity, or a properly filed sole practice. Whatever form the practice takes, it must exist on the record somewhere we can check.
Ask them: Under what name and where is the business registered?
Red flags
What the Code of Ethics rules out.
Every listed agency has signed a commitment to each of these. Any practice that will not make the same commitment is telling you something.
Organic growth comes first
We do not buy followers, engagement, or manufactured social proof, for our clients or ourselves. Paid amplification is a legitimate tool and we use it, but it supports earned effort rather than substituting for it.
AI is disclosed, not concealed
Artificial intelligence is a tool, and we use it openly where it helps. We do not let it do the heavy lifting of a client's intellectual property or speaking voice, we do not present generated work as human craft, and we do not use it to build a perception the client has not earned.
Earned press, honestly earned
We do not fabricate media features, pay for disguised advertorials presented as earned coverage, or invent credentials.
Truth in results
We do not promise outcomes we cannot control, and we report client results without inflation.
Identity before image
We build brands on who the client actually is, never on a persona designed to deceive their audience.
Transparent pricing
Our fees, deliverables, and terms are stated before engagement. No bait pricing, no surprise upsells mid-contract.
The client owns the brand
Accounts, audiences, and assets built during an engagement belong to the client, always.
Choose the shape of help, not the size of the firm.
Agencies, consultancies, and independent consultants are listed here on identical terms. What matters more is how the work is done: Done For You, where the practice executes on your behalf; Done With You, where you do the work under their direction; or a mixture. Every listing states which, along with a price tier from $ to $$$$, so you can compare before you make contact.
Then check the record. Reviews here are verified as coming from real clients, the PBA Power Ranking cannot be bought, and anyone can report an agency that breaks the Code.
Every agency here already passed.
Skip the checklist. Every listing in the directory has been checked against all seven and signed to the Code of Ethics.