Questions to ask a marketing agency
Choosing a marketing agency is not like choosing a software vendor. You are not buying a product, you are buying people and the way they work. Below are ten questions to ask a marketing agency before you sign, three red flags you can spot on the first call, and an honest section on when you should not hire an agency at all.
Key takeaways
- Write down what the agency is supposed to achieve before you contact anyone. Without it, every agency will sell you whatever it happens to be best at.
- According to the 2025 report by the ANA and the 4As, the average client agency relationship now lasts seven years, more than double the figure reported in 2016. You are picking a partner for years, not a vendor for one project.
- Ask who will actually do the work and for how many hours, not who shows up to the pitch.
- Three red flags: a guaranteed result, zero questions about your business, and refusing to give you ownership of your ad accounts.
- Set up the first three months as a trial with one measurable outcome and two checkpoints.
- If nobody inside your company can steer the agency weekly, an agency will not help you yet.
When do you actually need a marketing agency?
When you know what you want to achieve and you have neither the people nor the time to do it. That is the whole condition, and most bad partnerships fail on the first half of it.
We see it constantly. A company writes that it needs "more content for social media". When we ask what is supposed to happen once that content exists, the room goes quiet. The agency then fills in the brief for you, in the way that suits it: an SEO shop proposes SEO, a performance shop proposes campaigns, and we propose video. Nobody is lying. Everyone just sees their own hammer.
So before the first call, answer three things: which number should move within a year, how much money you have for it, and who inside your company will talk to the agency every week. If the third answer is missing, fix that first. We wrote about how to build that frame in our piece on marketing strategy for small businesses.
Which ten questions should you ask a marketing agency?
These ten. Send them to every agency in identical wording and comparing suddenly gets easy.
- Who exactly will work on our account, and for how many hours a month?
- Which of your projects is closest to ours, and what went wrong in it?
- What do the first thirty days look like, day by day?
- What do you need from us to do your job well?
- Who owns the ad accounts, the data and the source files when we part ways?
- How is out of scope work billed, and who approves it?
- What is the notice period, and what happens to work in progress?
- What exactly will you report, and how often?
- Which request of ours would you refuse, and why?
- Which of your clients can we call?
Question nine is the interesting one. An agency that answers "anything is possible" has just told you it has no point of view. A client once walked away from us because we refused to shoot a commercial in three days including casting. It was the right call for both sides: that deadline would have produced something we would not put our name on.
Question ten is the litmus test. Anyone can write testimonials on a website. A phone number to a happy client is harder to fake.
How do you spot a bad agency?
By what it promises before it knows your numbers. Three signals repeat so often that you can use them as a filter on the very first call.
A guaranteed result. "You will rank first within three months" or "we guarantee a hundred leads" are sentences a serious agency does not say. The result also depends on your product, your price and your competitors, none of which the agency controls. Work can be guaranteed. Outcomes cannot.
Zero questions. If they present themselves for thirty minutes and never ask how you make money, who your customers are and what you have already tried, you will get a template. A good first meeting leaves you tired, not them.
Accounts in their name. The ad account, the domain, the analytics and the business profile all have to be yours, with the agency given access. When it is the other way round, a breakup costs you your entire data history. For the wider picture on how long these relationships really last, the 4As and ANA published a client agency relationship tenure report in 2025.
How should an agency charge you?
In one of three common models, and each has its own trap.
- Monthly retainer. Predictable, but without a written scope it turns into a subscription to meetings. Insist on an annex that states what is included and what is not.
- Hourly rate. Fair for occasional work, uncomfortable on long projects, because it makes you count minutes instead of results.
- Project fee. Cleanest where the deliverable is obvious, a video or a website. It only works with a precise brief.
Whichever you pick, the contract needs a sentence about what happens when the brief changes. That is where arguments start. In our production work the brief and the budget are one document, so when one moves, the other opens too. How to write that brief is in our text on the video production brief and in the glossary entry for creative brief.
When is hiring an agency a bad idea?
When nobody inside your company can say yes or no within two days. We write this reluctantly, because it argues against our own business, but it is true.
An agency is not a substitute for decisions. It needs approved copy, delivered materials, access to people inside the company and someone who says which version goes live. Without that the project drags, both sides get frustrated, and six months later it ends with "it did not work". What did not work was the brief.
The second case is a budget of a few hundred euros a month. That does not buy strategy, it buys a handful of posts. It is more honest to pay once for a proper setup and run it yourself for a year. The third case: you want someone to execute what you have already decided. A good freelancer is cheaper and faster for that.
How do you structure the first three months?
As a trial with one measurable outcome and two checkpoints, not as a "ramp up".
In month one the agency should deliver its understanding of your business on paper: goals, audiences and the metrics you will both watch. Month two brings the first real deliverables. Month three brings numbers and a decision. Write down in advance which number will prove it was worth it, whether that is inbound enquiries, cost per enquiry, or finished content pieces. Without it you will spend month three arguing about feelings.
If you are choosing a production partner specifically, the criteria shift a little and we listed them in how to choose a video production company. What we do is on our services page.
Frequently asked questions
How many agencies should you approach?
Three or four. Fewer gives you no comparison, more buries you in decks you will forget within a week. Send everyone the same brief in the same wording and compare the answers, not the slide design.
Should you ask for free creative work as part of the pitch?
No. Concepts get paid for, even when they are only a proposal. An agency that gives creative away either rushes it or has its existing clients paying for it. If you want to see how a team thinks, buy a short paid workshop. It costs less than a bad year together.
How long before an agency produces results?
Paid campaigns give usable data within four weeks. Content and search take about six months. If someone promises search results in three months, ask exactly what they will be measuring.
Can you work with several agencies at once?
Yes, but you need clear ownership of each channel and one person on your side holding it together. Without that, agencies will pass responsibility for the numbers between themselves.
If you want to check whether we fit your situation, write to us through our contact page. We will also tell you when we think you do not need us yet.
