Questions to ask a marketing agency before you sign anything

Aug 18
3 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

Introduction

Agency pitches are designed to be persuasive, which makes them poor sources of information. The useful signal comes from questions whose answers are difficult to prepare and easy to compare.

These are the ones worth asking, roughly in order of how much they reveal.

1. The questions to ask a marketing agency about ownership

Start here, because the answers vary enormously and almost nobody asks.

Whose accounts will the work be built in? Yours or theirs. If the ad account, analytics and customer list sit under the agency's roof, you do not own your own audience.

What do I keep if we stop? Push for specifics. "The results" is not an answer. You want the account access, the customer data, the creative files, the documentation.

Will my team be able to run this afterwards? If the honest answer is no, you are buying a dependency. That may be acceptable — but know that you are.

Vague answers here are the strongest warning available in the whole process.

2. Questions about the work itself

What exactly will be delivered, and by when? A credible provider commits to process even when they cannot commit to outcomes.

Which problem do you think I have? Ask before telling them your diagnosis. Whether they identify acquisition, transaction value or retention — and whether they ask enough to know — tells you if they diagnose or simply deliver whatever they prefer.

What would you do first, and why that? The reasoning matters more than the answer.

3. Questions about the people

Who will actually do the work day to day? Pitch teams are frequently not account teams.

How experienced are they, and how many other clients do they handle? Reasonable to ask, and the reaction is informative in itself.

Who is my point of contact when something goes wrong? Not who manages the relationship when it is going well.

4. Questions about measurement

Can I see a real report from a current client, with confidential parts removed?

You are checking whether reporting connects to business outcomes — customers, cost per customer, revenue — or stops at impressions and engagement. Reporting that never reaches money is designed to be hard to judge.

Will I have direct access to the underlying accounts? You should, always.

What will you tell me if it is not working? Ask how and when bad news arrives.

5. Questions about money

What is the total cost, and what is excluded? Media spend should be separate from fees. Any bundling makes it impossible to see what the work costs.

What ongoing costs will I have after we finish? Tool subscriptions in particular. A system built on software you can only access through them is not really yours.

How are you paid — retainer, project, or performance? And what happens if you want to stop early.

6. The question about failure

Tell me about an engagement that did not go well, and what you changed afterwards.

Everyone has them. An agency that cannot name one is either inexperienced or not being straightforward. The quality of the answer — analysis versus blaming the client — predicts how they will behave when something goes wrong for you.

7. What to notice beyond the answers

How much did they ask you before proposing? A provider who arrives with a solution before understanding the problem will sell you that solution regardless of fit.

Did they tell you anything you did not want to hear? Willingness to say a piece of work is unnecessary is a stronger indicator than any case study.

Were they comfortable with a small first project? Pressure toward a long commitment before either side has worked together is worth treating as information.

Conclusion

Ask about ownership first, then about the work, the people, the reporting and the money — and always ask about a failure.

Then notice how much they asked you, whether they were willing to disagree, and how they reacted to a small starting scope. The right partner is comfortable with every one of these questions; discomfort is precisely the signal you came for.