What questions should I ask a digital marketing agency?
- Six. Show me three case studies in my industry from the last 18 months with analytics screenshots. Who specifically would be on my account? What does month one, three, and six look like? How will we measure success and how often will you report? What contract length do you require and why? And what happens if we are unhappy in 90 days?
What agency answers should make me walk away?
- Five. We cannot share specifics due to client confidentiality, when screenshots with names blurred are always shareable. Vague timelines, since every engagement is different is a dodge. Guaranteed rankings on specific keywords, which are not possible. Mandatory twelve-month contracts with no exit. And pricing far below market, which means a content mill.
Why do agencies say they cannot share case studies?
- Sometimes because a client genuinely asked for discretion, but far more often because the results are not there. Analytics screenshots with the client name blurred prove the work without breaching anything. An agency that cannot produce even one of those for your industry is asking you to take the results on faith.
Should I sign a twelve-month marketing contract?
- Only with an exit clause, and preferably not at all. Confidence in the work does not require a twelve-month lock-in, and a long minimum term with no way out shifts all the risk onto you. A reasonable initial term followed by month-to-month is standard among agencies that expect to earn the renewal.
How do I check an agency's references properly?
- Talk to both a current client and a former one. The current client tells you what working with them is actually like day to day. The former client tells you why they left, which is the more informative conversation. An agency unwilling to connect you with either is telling you something about both.
Why does asking who will work on my account matter?
- Because the people who sell the engagement are frequently not the people who deliver it. Ask for names, roles, and examples of their work, and ask how many accounts each of them carries. A senior strategist across forty accounts is a name on a slide rather than someone thinking about your business.
Is cheap agency pricing always a red flag?
- When it sits far below the market range, yes, because the arithmetic does not work. Real practitioner hours cost what they cost, so a price well under the band means the hours are not there and software output has replaced them. Cheaper than market is a different product wearing the same name.
How much does a bad agency hire cost?
- Six figures over a year for many small businesses once fees, lost ground, and the time to recover are counted. The fee itself is often the smaller half. The larger cost is a year in which your competitors compounded real work while you accumulated reports, and re-entering that market costs more than it would have.
What should an agency's month one look like?
- Discovery and foundations rather than immediate publishing. Audits of the site, the analytics, the competitive set, and the current rankings, followed by the fixes those audits surface. An agency that starts producing content on day one without having looked at what is broken is running a subscription rather than an engagement.
How should agency success be measured?
- Against leads and revenue, with rankings and traffic as supporting indicators rather than the headline. Agree the specific numbers and the reporting cadence before signing. If the proposal only promises rankings and impressions, you are agreeing to be measured on the means rather than the outcome you are buying.
What happens if I am unhappy after 90 days?
- Ask before you sign, because the answer reveals how the agency thinks about risk. Good answers involve a defined review point, a documented remediation plan, and a way out that does not require a dispute. No answer, or a reference to the contract term, tells you the exit was designed to be difficult.
Do I need a specialist agency for my industry?
- Not necessarily, but you do need evidence they can move a metric in a market like yours. Industry experience shortens the learning curve, particularly where compliance rules apply, such as healthcare or legal. Outside those, a generalist who can show real results in comparable markets is usually a better bet than a specialist who cannot.
