Most marketing agency relationships get chosen the same way: a good pitch, a nice deck, a founder who says the right things in the meeting. None of that tells you much about what the actual working relationship will look like six months in. Here’s what actually does.
- Ask for something specific and recent, not a highlight reel. A real answer names something dated and concrete — a channel paused because a number moved, a page rewritten based on what actually converted. A rehearsed answer talks in generalities (“we’re constantly optimizing”) with nothing behind it you could point to.
- Check how they define success before you sign anything. If the proposal talks about reach, impressions, or engagement more than it talks about revenue or sales, that’s worth a direct question before you commit.
- Ask what happens in your quiet season, specifically. A real plan looks different in low season than in peak. “We’ll just scale it back a bit” isn’t a plan — it’s the same plan, turned down.
- Ask what specifically changes if the numbers aren’t working after three months, and based on what. A real answer names an actual number and a timeframe. “We’d try harder” is not an answer.
None of this is about being adversarial with an agency before you’ve even started. It’s about knowing, before you sign, whether the relationship you’re about to enter actually matches the one being pitched to you. We’ve also put together a shorter, five-question version of this you can hand to any agency mid-conversation — including us — on the Revenue Engineering hub.
FAQ
Won’t asking these questions feel confrontational in a first meeting? Not if it comes from genuine curiosity rather than an interrogation — a good agency welcomes specific questions, since it’s a chance to show real answers instead of a generic pitch. If straightforward curiosity makes them uncomfortable, that’s the answer in itself.