2026-10-13
Twelve questions to ask a marketing agency before you sign
Most agency calls are spent on their process. These are the questions that tell you what will actually happen to your money, and what a good answer sounds like.
About ownership and data
Whose name is on the ad accounts? Who owns the landing pages, the phone number and the contact list? What exactly do I keep if I leave?
A good answer is that everything is in your name from the first week and you keep all of it, including the data collected while working together. Anything else means you are renting your own marketing and will start from zero if you change supplier.
About money
Is the fee flat or a percentage of ad spend? Who pays the platforms? What is billed on top: tools, landing pages, call tracking, creative?
A percentage of spend creates an agency that benefits when your budget grows whether or not your calendar does. A flat fee with the ad budget paid by you directly removes that conflict entirely.
About what gets reported
What will the weekly report contain? Will it show booked appointments, kept visits and cost per booking, or impressions and clicks? Where do the numbers come from?
Insist on the calendar as the source of truth. Platform conversions are an estimate made by the party selling you the clicks.
About the first ninety days
When do we launch, what happens in week one, what should I expect by day thirty, and what happens if the result is nothing?
Honest answers here are specific and modest. An agency promising a number of appointments before seeing your market is guessing, and a guarantee worth having is written down with conditions you can actually read.
About the work nobody mentions
Who answers an enquiry that arrives at nine in the evening? What happens to a missed call? Who chases a no-show? Those three questions decide more of your result than the ad copy does.
If the answer is that it is your responsibility, that is acceptable, as long as you know it before signing and have a plan. The bad outcome is finding out in month two, after paying for a thousand clicks nobody answered.
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