How to tell if a marketing agency is any good before you hire them
Written by an agency, which you should factor in. These are the questions that make bad agencies uncomfortable.
We're an agency writing about how to evaluate agencies, so read this with appropriate suspicion. But we've cleaned up after enough bad engagements to know what the warning signs are.
Ask what they'd do before they've looked
A good answer is "I don't know yet — let me look at your numbers first."
If someone pitches you a specific package in the first conversation, they're selling what they already have rather than what you need. The recommendation was made before any diagnosis.
Ask who owns the accounts
Your domain, hosting, Google Ads account, analytics, Google Business Profile, and website should all be in your name, with you as owner.
Some agencies deliberately keep these in their own accounts. It means leaving costs you your ad history, your data, sometimes your site. Ask directly: "If we part ways, what do I keep?" Watch how quickly they answer.
Ask what they'd measure
Watch for vanity metrics. Impressions, reach, followers, and "engagement" are easy to grow and mostly disconnected from revenue.
A serious answer connects to money: qualified enquiries, cost per acquisition, close rate, return on spend. If someone can't tell you how they'd know the work succeeded, they can't fail — which means they can't be held to anything.
Ask what they'd need from you
Real work requires input. Access to your numbers, time from someone who knows the business, decisions about positioning.
"Nothing, we handle everything" sounds appealing and usually means generic work that could have been produced for anyone.
Ask about a client who didn't work out
Everyone has one. The answer tells you a lot.
Blaming the client entirely is a flag. So is claiming it's never happened. A good answer sounds like: "We misjudged the market and burned two months of their budget before we caught it. Here's what we changed."
Ask to speak to a current client
Not a testimonial — an actual conversation. Reluctance here is meaningful.
When you do speak to them, ask what's frustrating rather than what's good. Every relationship has friction, and how the agency handles it is what you're really assessing.
Ask who does the work
Common pattern: senior people pitch, junior people deliver. Not automatically bad — juniors have to learn — but you should know who's actually on your account and how much oversight they get.
Watch for these specifically
Guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls Google. Guarantees are either meaningless in the fine print or achieved with tactics that eventually cost you.
Long lock-ins up front. Twelve months before proving anything protects them, not you. Reasonable people will do a defined first piece of work and let the results argue for the next one.
Reports full of numbers with no interpretation. A forty-page PDF that never says what to do next is theatre.
Pressure and urgency. "This price is only good until Friday" is a sales tactic, not a business reason.
Nobody ever tells you no. If everything you suggest is a great idea, you're being managed rather than advised.
The question that reveals most
"What would make you tell us not to hire you?"
Anyone with judgement has an answer. They'll describe the situations where they're the wrong fit — the budget too small for the goal, the market they don't understand, the timeline that can't work.
An agency that can't name a situation where they're wrong for you will take your money regardless of whether they can help.
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