Every agency in this city has the same case studies and the same certifications. These six questions do not appear on a website, and the answers tell you everything.
The six questions
- Is your fee separate from our media spend? If the answer is a percentage of spend, the agency earns more by spending more.
- Whose name is on the ad accounts? Yours, or you are renting your own data.
- What would you do in the first thirty days? A specific answer names something about your site. A vague one describes a process.
- Show me a real monthly report. Client name removed. If it is a dashboard screenshot with no commentary, that is what you will receive.
- Tell me about a campaign that failed. Every agency has one. How they describe it is the interview.
- What happens if we leave? Content, accounts, tracking and data should all stay with you.
Contract terms worth arguing about
Notice period. Thirty days is reasonable. Twelve months is the agency managing its risk with your money.
Ownership. Everything produced should be yours on payment, including source files and briefs.
Reporting cadence. Put the date in the contract. Reports that arrive when there is good news are not reports.
Named people. If a senior specialist sold the work, ask for their hours to be specified.
The proposal comparison that actually works
Give every shortlisted agency the same brief, the same access and the same budget range. Then compare three things and nothing else: what they identified as the main problem, what they would do first, and how they would know whether it worked.
Price is the fourth question. It is meaningless until the first three are answered, because you cannot compare two numbers attached to different work.
The warning signs
- Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed lead volumes
- A fixed monthly link count
- One proposal template with your logo dropped into it
- Unwillingness to name who will actually run the account
- Reports that only ever contain good news