Questions to ask before hiring a marketing agency

Choosing a marketing agency is one of those decisions you make rarely, spend a lot on, and can't easily undo. Most business owners walk into it having no idea what to ask, so they end up judging on the pitch — which is exactly the thing agencies are best at.

The pitch tells you how good they are at pitching. These questions tell you what it'll actually be like to work with them. We've put ourselves on the receiving end of every one of them, so nothing here is a gotcha — it's just what a fair, honest agency should be glad to answer.

If you've not yet decided whether you even need an agency, start with the timing question first, then come back to this once you're sure.

1. "Who will actually do my work?"

The single most useful question. The person charming you in the pitch is often not the person who'll touch your account. Ask for the name and role of whoever does the day-to-day, and whether you'll deal with them directly or through an account manager relaying messages.

There's no wrong answer here — juniors do great work under good supervision — but there is a wrong situation, which is being sold a senior and handed a junior without being told.

2. "Can I see results from a business like mine?"

Not a showreel of their flashiest logos. A real example of a business your size, in a comparable situation, and what changed. Ask what the starting point was, not just the end number — "we tripled their enquiries" means something very different from three to nine than from three hundred to nine hundred.

3. "What happens in the first 90 days?"

A vague answer here is a bad sign. A good agency has a clear early rhythm — audit, quick wins, foundations, then the slower compounding work. If the plan is "we'll get started and see", you're funding their improvisation.

The best answer to "what will you do first?" is usually unglamorous — fix the tracking, clean up the profile, sort the basics. Anyone who leads with a big creative campaign before the plumbing works is selling excitement, not results.

4. "How and when will you report to me?"

You want to know two things: how often you'll hear from them, and whether the report will be in plain English or a wall of metrics designed to look busy. Ask them to describe a typical monthly update. If it's all impressions and reach and no mention of enquiries or sales, that's a report built to impress rather than inform.

5. "What do you need from me?"

Good marketing is a two-way job. An agency that says "nothing, leave it all to us" is either overpromising or about to produce generic work with no input from the person who actually knows the business. The honest answer involves your time — photos, feedback, answering questions, the occasional quick approval.

6. "Who owns the accounts and the work?"

Critical, and easy to forget in the excitement. Your website, domain, Google Ads account, analytics, social profiles and all the work produced should be yours, in your name, full stop. Some agencies keep ownership so that leaving them means losing everything. Ask plainly, and get it in writing.

7. "What's the contract, and how do I leave?"

Look for the exit before you sign. Is there a lock-in? What notice do you give? A confident agency doesn't need to trap you — they keep you because the work's good. Long lock-ins with painful exit terms usually mean they expect you'll want to leave.

8. "How do you charge, and what's not included?"

Get clear on the line between the fee and the extras. Does ad spend come out of the fee or on top? Are revisions capped? What triggers an additional cost? The nasty surprises in agency relationships are almost always the things nobody spelled out at the start.

9. "What would you not do for my business?"

A revealing one. An agency that's genuinely on your side will happily tell you a channel isn't worth it for you, or that you should fix your website before spending on ads — the sort of honesty we bang on about in what actually makes a website convert. An agency that wants to sell you everything will find a reason you need all of it.

10. "How will we know if this is working?"

Agree what success looks like before you start, in numbers you both understand. "More brand awareness" can't be judged. "Twelve qualified enquiries a month by quarter three" can. If they're cagey about being measured, ask yourself why.

11. "Can I talk to a client who left?"

The boldest ask, and the most telling. Current clients are happy by definition. A past client — even one who simply outgrew them — will tell you what the relationship was really like when things got hard. An agency with nothing to hide can usually point you to one.

A quick reference

Ask about	Good sign	Walk away if
Who does the work	A named person you'll deal with	They dodge the question
Results	A comparable business, with context	Only big-brand logos
Reporting	Plain English, tied to enquiries	Vanity metrics only
Ownership	Everything stays in your name	They keep the accounts
Guarantees	Realistic, evidence-based	Guaranteed rankings or leads
The contract	Fair notice, no trap	Long lock-in, hard exit

You don't need to fire all eleven at once like an interrogation. Work them into a normal conversation and watch how the answers land. The right agency will relax when you ask good questions — it means you're the kind of client who'll be a pleasure to get results for. And once you've chosen well, the work still needs your input to be any good.