12 Questions to Ask a Marketing Agency Before You Sign

The pattern: most agency relationships that go badly were predictable in the first meeting. Not because the agency lied, but because nobody asked the questions whose answers would have revealed the mismatch. These twelve are ordered by how much trouble they prevent — the first four are the ones that make a weak agency visibly uncomfortable.

The four that matter most

1. Whose ad accounts and analytics properties will the work live in?

The answer should be: yours. Campaigns built inside an agency's own ad account mean that when the relationship ends, you lose the conversion history, the audience data and the learning phase the algorithm accumulated. You start from zero with the next agency.

Some agencies present this as a convenience — "we handle all the setup" — and it is convenient, right up until it's leverage. Ask for accounts in your name with the agency granted access, and confirm the same for analytics, tag manager and any tracking property.

2. Who specifically will do the work, and what else are they on?

Pitches get delivered by senior people. Execution frequently doesn't. This isn't inherently a problem — juniors doing well-supervised work is how any agency scales — but you should know the structure before signing, not discover it when the quality shifts in month three.

Ask for names, roles, and roughly how many accounts each person carries. An account manager holding thirty clients cannot give yours real attention regardless of how good they are.

3. What happens if results don't improve in 90 days?

The useful answer isn't a guarantee — guaranteed rankings or guaranteed leads are a red flag, not reassurance. The useful answer describes a process: what gets reviewed, what changes, who decides, and at what point you can exit without penalty.

An agency that has thought about this has a real answer. One that hasn't will either promise results it can't control or get vague, and both tell you something.

4. What does the exit look like?

Notice period, what transfers to you, in what format, and how long the handover takes. Ask this in the first meeting precisely because it's awkward — the reaction is informative. An agency confident in its work treats a clean exit as normal; one that relies on lock-in gets defensive.

On scope and money

5. Is this a fixed scope or hourly?

Fixed scope with defined deliverables is easier to hold anyone to. Hourly billing without a cap means the incentive runs the wrong way — inefficiency is revenue. If it's hourly, ask what the estimate is and what happens when it's exceeded.

6. What's included in the fee and what's billed separately?

The classic surprises: ad spend (should always be separate and paid by you directly to the platform), design work, landing pages, additional creative rounds, tools and software licenses, and reporting beyond the standard monthly.

7. What's the minimum commitment, and why that length?

Three months is reasonable for paid media — less doesn't produce enough data to distinguish improvement from noise. Six months is reasonable for SEO. Twelve-month minimums for anything are worth questioning: ask what specifically requires a year that couldn't be reviewed at six.

On the actual work

8. Can I see work in my category, with outcomes?

Not a logo wall. An actual example: what the situation was, what they did, what happened. If client confidentiality prevents naming, anonymized numbers are still meaningful. An agency with no outcome it can describe has either never measured or has nothing to show.

9. How do you decide what to do first?

Listen for whether the answer starts with your business or with their services. "We'd run an audit, look at where the leads currently come from and what's already been tried" is a different answer from "we'd start with our SEO package."

10. What do you need from us, and how often?

Every engagement requires client input — product knowledge, approvals, access, subject-matter answers. Agencies that underplay this are setting up a later conversation where the lack of results is your fault. A straight answer about time commitment is a good sign.

On measurement

11. What will the monthly report actually contain?

Ask to see a sample. What you want: cost per acquisition, conversion volume, what changed this month, what's planned next. What you don't want: impressions, reach and "engagement" presented as results. If the sample report leads with impressions, that's what they consider success.

12. How do you track conversions, and what happens if tracking is broken?

This question separates operators from presenters. Tracking breaks constantly — site updates, consent changes, platform migrations. The good answer describes how they'd verify tracking before spending, and what they check when numbers look implausible.

It's also worth knowing that the most common "conversion crisis" is a measurement artifact rather than a real collapse. We've seen accounts where a supposed 89% form-abandonment rate turned out to be bot traffic from a handful of countries, while actual human visitors were converting at over 40%. An agency that knows to segment before panicking will save you from acting on a phantom.

Answers that should end the conversation

• "We guarantee first-page rankings." Nobody controls Google's ranking. What can be guaranteed is work, not position.
• "We have a special relationship with Google." Google Partner status is a real program with public criteria. It doesn't confer ranking advantages, and anyone implying otherwise is misrepresenting it.
• "You don't need to worry about the technical side." You don't need to do it, but you should be able to see it.
• "Our reporting shows we generated 2 million impressions." Impressions are an input, not a result.
• Reluctance to put accounts in your name. There is no legitimate reason for this.

One question for yourself

Before any of the above: what does success look like in numbers, and by when? An agency can only be held to a target that exists. "More leads" isn't a target. "Cost per qualified lead under $120 within 90 days, at current spend" is — and it lets both sides know quickly whether this is working.

If you're evaluating agencies right now and want a straight answer to all twelve, see how we work or read about what changes with a nearshore team.