How to choose a marketing agency: 12 questions to ask first

Most agency searches start with a price comparison and end with a gut feeling. Neither tells you whether the agency can move your numbers. We wrote the cost guide to help you read quotes. This one helps you decide who deserves to send one.

We’re an agency, so we have a stake here. The checklist below is the one we’d want a prospective client to run on us, and on everyone else they talk to.

Start with your own brief

Agencies can only be judged against a goal. Before the first call, write down three things:

• The outcome. Qualified leads, pipeline, signups, press coverage, or being named in AI answers. “More traffic” isn’t an outcome.
• The constraint. Budget range, timeline, and who on your side will approve work. Slow approvals sink more engagements than weak agencies do.
• How you’ll know it worked. The number you’ll check, and where it lives. If you can’t measure leads today, fix that first. Our GA4 setup for AI-search traffic is a reasonable starting point.

An agency that asks you for this brief in the first call is already behaving better than most.

The 12 questions

About strategy

1. “What would you do first for a business like ours, and why?” You want a specific, reasoned answer that references your market, not a menu of services. A generic “full-funnel strategy” is a template.

2. “What would you not do?” Good agencies cut things. If every channel is on the table, nobody has prioritised.

3. “How do you handle AI search?” Buyers now find vendors in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI answers as well as classic results. Ask whether the agency has a view on generative engine optimization and how it differs from classic SEO. Listen for concrete practices: structured content, third-party mentions, measurement. Be wary of anyone who dismisses it, or who sells it as a trick.

About proof

4. “Can I speak to a current client and a former one?” The former client matters more. Agencies that only offer their best-case reference are showing you marketing.

5. “What did a project like mine look like, in numbers?” Ask for the starting point, the timeframe, and what else was changing at the same time. Results without a baseline mean nothing. Be sceptical of any figure that arrives without those three.

6. “What’s a campaign that didn’t work, and what changed afterwards?” Every honest agency has one. Silence or a humblebrag (“we cared too much”) is a bad sign.

About the work

7. “Who will actually do the work, and can I meet them?” The people in the pitch aren’t always the people on your account. Ask for names, roles, and how many other clients each person handles.

8. “What will I see in the first 90 days?” Expect an audit, a plan, and early output, with dates. SEO and PR take longer to show results, but the work itself should be visible from week one.

9. “How do you use AI in your process, and who checks it?” You aren’t trying to catch them out. Most good teams use it heavily. You want to know there’s an editor and a fact-checking step between the model and your brand.

About money and control

10. “How do you report, and what do you do when numbers are bad?” Look for reporting tied to your outcome from question one, with commentary, not a dashboard dump. Impressions and follower counts alone are vanity metrics.

11. “Who owns the accounts, data, and content?” You should own your ad accounts, analytics properties, domain, and creative from day one. Anything held in the agency’s accounts is leverage over you later.

12. “What does it cost to leave?” Ask about the notice period, minimum term, and handover. A confident agency doesn’t need a lock-in. Compare any retainer against the ranges in our agency cost breakdown, and PR work against the PR pricing guide.

Red flags in proposals

Any one of these deserves a follow-up question. Three together is usually a reason to walk away.

• Guaranteed rankings or a fixed lead count. No one controls Google’s or an AI model’s output. Credible agencies promise work and process, and are specific about the targets they’re aiming for.
• A process they won’t explain. Methodology isn’t a trade secret. Secrecy usually hides thin work.
• A proposal that never mentions your business. If you swap in a competitor’s name and it still reads fine, it’s a template.
• Pressure to sign this week. Real capacity constraints exist, but a discount that expires on Friday is a sales tactic.
• Only vanity metrics in the case studies. Look for revenue, leads, or pipeline. Rankings and reach alone don’t pay anyone.
• Case studies with no client name or contact. Anonymous is sometimes legitimate (NDAs), but you should be able to verify at least a few.

How to check references properly

Most reference calls are wasted because the questions are too easy. Ask instead:

1. What did they say they’d do, and what did they actually do?
2. Where did they miss, and how did they respond?
3. Would you rehire them with the same budget today?
4. What would you tell a new client to insist on in the contract?

Then check independently: read reviews on Google and Clutch for patterns rather than star ratings, and look at the agency’s own site. An SEO agency whose own pages don’t rank or get cited is telling you something. Run a few searches for the terms they’d claim to be good at.

Run a paid pilot

For anything beyond a small retainer, ask for a defined first project: a technical audit, a content plan, or a single campaign, with a fixed fee and a clear deliverable. It costs a little more than skipping straight to a retainer. It’s far cheaper than a six-month mistake. Our technical SEO audit works this way for exactly that reason.

A simple scorecard

Score each agency from 1 to 5 on these, and weight them by what matters to you:

Price comes after this table, not before it.

What we’d ask you in return

A good agency interviews you too. We’ll ask about your goal, your sales cycle, who approves work, and what you’ve already tried. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll say so. If you’d like to run this checklist on us, start at work with us.