What should you ask before hiring a marketing agency?

Before hiring a marketing agency, get plain answers to five things: who will do the work, what happens in the first month, how results will be measured and reported, what you own if you leave, and what the exit terms are. If an agency dodges any of them, take that more seriously than anything in the pitch.

We're an agency, so read this knowing where it comes from. It's still written from your side of the table. You should ask us every question here too, and a few of them are uncomfortable for any agency to answer well.

Why do agency relationships go wrong?

It's rarely because anyone lied. More often, nobody defined the deal precisely enough for a lie to even be possible: the buyer expected outcomes, the agency sold activity, and both sides signed happily.

The pattern usually has one of three roots. The people who pitched aren't the people who deliver, so the quality you bought isn't the quality you get. Success was never defined in numbers, so every monthly report can be accurate without telling you anything useful. Or nobody discussed the exit, so by the time you want to leave, the agency holds your accounts and your files.

The questions in this guide expose those problems while walking away is still cheap. Ask them before signing, in writing where you can, and keep the answers. A year from now, nobody will remember exactly what was promised in the sales process.

Who will actually work on my account?

The pitch team and the delivery team are often different people. That's not a scandal, since senior people can't sit on every account, but you're entitled to know exactly what you're buying before you commit.

Ask these, and ask to meet the people rather than hear about them:

• Who, by name, works on my account day to day, and how senior are they?
• How many other clients does that person carry at the same time?
• Who makes the creative and strategic decisions, and who executes them?
• What happens to my account when the lead goes on leave or resigns?

The client-load question makes agencies shift in their seats, ours included, because the honest answer is never 'just you'. Listen for a quick, specific answer. An agency that knows its own capacity answers in seconds. An overstretched one tends to change the subject.

If a founder or director leads the pitch, ask how many hours of their time your account gets after signing.

What do I own if we part ways?

The most expensive surprise often comes on the way out, when you discover the accounts, the ad platform history, the raw footage or the working files were never yours.

Ownership questions feel awkward while everyone is being friendly. Ask them anyway:

• Are the ad accounts, social accounts and analytics set up under my business or yours?
• Do I receive finished files only, or working files and raw footage too, and at what cost?
• Who owns the strategy documents, audience research and creative concepts if we separate?
• If I leave in six months, what walks out with me and what stays with you?

The answers vary, sometimes for good reason. Raw footage, for instance, is often licensed rather than handed over. That can be a fair arrangement if it's written into the agreement at the start rather than discovered in the offboarding email.

One more worth asking early: which subscriptions and licences sit in the agency's name, such as fonts, stock libraries, plugins and software. You lose access to those the day you leave.

How will I know whether it's working?

Ask to see a real monthly report, anonymised, before you sign. It's the most revealing document an agency can show you. If it's ten pages of impressions and engagement with no line connecting the work to enquiries or revenue, expect your reports to look the same.

Then ask the harder ones:

• Which numbers will we judge this engagement on, and when should they start moving?
• What do the first ninety days look like if it's going well, and if it isn't?
• Tell me about a client where the work didn't perform. What did you change?

The failure question is the squirm test. Every agency has let a client down, and one that claims otherwise is either brand new or not being straight with you. A good agency tells you what it learned and what it would do differently now, while an evasive one hands you a case study instead of an answer.

Also ask who writes the report. If the person reporting is also the person whose work is being judged, expect gentle numbers, so agree the metrics upfront.

What does the money actually buy?

'Retainer' can mean a defined set of deliverables, a bucket of hours or a vague promise of attention, and the invoice looks identical in all three cases. Pin it down before you sign:

• What exactly ships in a normal month, in deliverables I can count?
• What's excluded, and what does the excluded work cost when I need it?
• How many revision rounds are included before changes bill separately?
• Is ad spend inside the fee or on top of it, and is it marked up?

If an agency can't list last month's deliverables for an existing client, be cautious about its promises for your next month. We've explained production pricing in what content production actually costs and retainer structures in the marketing retainer guide.

Which answers should make you walk away?

Some answers should end the conversation, however good the showreel looks:

• Guaranteed rankings, leads or virality. Nobody controls the platforms, so anyone guaranteeing results is pricing in your inexperience.
• A vague answer on ownership. If 'who owns the accounts?' can't be answered in one sentence, assume the answer is 'not you'.
• No client you can call. If all you get is a logo slide and a few polished quotes, ask for a phone number.
• Pressure to sign this week, such as a discount that expires on Friday. An agency with a healthy pipeline doesn't need to corner you.
• Contempt for your current setup. An agency that opens by trashing everything you've done is selling a rebuild before it understands the business. The good ones find what's working and say so before they touch what isn't.

You don't need marketing expertise to spot any of these. You're judging how the agency behaves, and you'll be dealing with that behaviour long after the pitch strategy has changed.