Partway through a proposal review at my agency, a buyer asked us how we had failed our customers. They wanted a real project where the client ended up frustrated, and what we did about it. I told them about a hard one, where we and the client disagreed about the design, and how we handled it.
Then they told us why they’d asked. The agencies they’d hired before had designed for what a firm in their industry is supposed to look like, not for them. What they were really testing was whether we’d listen.
That’s most of choosing an agency. Every agency can run a good meeting, so the work on your side is checking. The short answer to how you choose a marketing agency, digital or otherwise:
- decide whether you need an agency at all
- work out what a customer is worth to you before the first call
- talk to about three agencies whose relevant work you can see
- ask all of them the same questions, and know what a good answer sounds like
- check what they tell you, especially what their numbers are tied to
- compare proposals line by line, starting with the diagnosis
- own your accounts, and make the first commitment one you can undo
This is for owners, CEOs and the marketing and sales leaders who’ll have to live with the choice.
Do you need an agency at all?
An agency is the right answer when you need several skills at once, at a volume you can’t justify hiring for, and you want someone else to manage the people doing the work. It’s often the wrong answer when:
- The work is one narrow specialty. A good freelance specialist or a small boutique may do it better and for less.
- Marketing is central to how you grow and the volume is steady. An in-house hire, with outside help for the specialist pieces, may serve you better over time.
- Nobody has decided what marketing should achieve. Then you need the thinking before the hands. That’s a strategist, a fractional CMO or an advisor, not a production team.
- The budget can’t support the goal. Then the right move may be a smaller goal, or waiting.
Whoever you hire, someone on your side still has to steer. Part of my job at some of the companies whose marketing I’ve led was managing their vendors. One was a paid-search specialist running very large ad budgets. They knew the tools well, but they had blinders on: they saw their own channel and not much of the business around it. Specialists are worth hiring. Somebody who thinks like an owner has to point them at the business. If you’re weighing one agency or several specialists, who owns the strategy is most of that decision.
What should you know before the first call?
If the goal is winning customers, know the most you can afford to spend to win one. You know your margins and what a customer is worth over time; the agency doesn’t, and if you don’t bring that number, the agency ends up setting the target for you. I’ve worked through how to estimate it, with a calculator, in how much you can afford to spend to win a customer. For a brand or website project, the equivalent is writing down what the business should get from it and how you’ll judge whether it was worth the money.
Bring a few other things too:
- A budget range you can commit to for at least a few months.
- What you’ve already tried, and what happened.
- Who on your side owns the relationship and can make decisions quickly.
- What you can measure today. If you can’t tell where your good customers come from now, fixing that may be the first job.
What kind of agency fits the problem?
Most agencies fall into a few shapes, and the right one depends on what you’re trying to fix.
| Type | Good fit when | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Specialist (SEO, paid search, social, PR) | You know which channel matters and need depth in it | Optimizing their channel without looking at the rest of the business |
| Creative or brand agency | Your positioning, identity or messaging needs work | Good-looking work that nobody connected to sales |
| Web design and development | You need a new site or a serious rebuild | Who owns the site afterward, and who can change it |
| Integrated or “growth” agency | You need several channels working from one plan | Your account spread thin across junior staff |
| Freelancer or small boutique | The scope is narrow, or the budget is tight | Capacity, and what happens when that one person is unavailable |
On price, when quotes are far apart, my first guess is that they describe different amounts of work. Ask every agency what drives its price and what the extra money buys, and a good one will explain the trade-offs plainly. For what a retainer should cost and what each pricing model rewards, see what a marketing agency retainer should cost. If it’s a website, how much a website should cost walks through comparing quotes.
Is a smaller or cheaper agency worth it?
It can be. Size matters less than whether your account will matter to them and who will actually do the work. A small agency is often the better choice when the scope is narrow and the senior person you met is the one doing it. The risk is capacity: one person out sick, or one bigger client, and your work waits. A larger agency gives you more depth and coverage, but a small account there can end up with the most junior people.
Cheaper works the same way. A lower price is fine when it buys the same work done by capable people. It’s a false economy when the gap comes from work that’s been left out, like the discovery, the strategy or the reporting, and you only find out after you’ve signed. That’s why the proposal comparison further down matters more than the headline number. I wouldn’t pick the cheapest agency, and I wouldn’t assume the most expensive is better. I’d pick the least expensive one I believed could solve the problem, counting what it would cost me in time to manage them.
How do you build a short list?
Three serious candidates is usually enough to show you real differences without turning the search into a procurement exercise. Four can make sense if their approaches are very different. I wouldn’t add agencies just to reach a number.
Start with referrals from people whose results you trust, then agencies whose work you’ve actually seen in your industry or at your scale. Directories and award lists are fine for finding names, but they say little about fit. Before you invest time, ask each one whether it can start when you need it, and who would be on your account.
Then send each of them the same short brief: the business, the problem, the goal, your numbers, a budget range, what you’ve tried, who decides and when. Share the budget range, or you’ll get proposals sized to guesses that you can’t compare. I’ve put a template in how to brief a marketing agency, including when a formal RFP makes sense.
A focused search takes a few weeks. A bigger engagement, with procurement or several decision-makers involved, takes longer. Rushing it is how you end up choosing on the pitch.
What should you ask, and what do good answers sound like?
Ask every agency the same questions so you can compare the answers. What matters is how specific they are, and whether you can check them.
| Question | A good answer | A warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| How have you failed a client, and what did you change afterward? | A real project: what went wrong, how disagreement got handled, whether they heard the client, and what they do differently now | “That doesn’t really happen to us” |
| What would you need to see in the first few months to know this is working, and what would tell you it isn’t? | Named measures, a rough timeline, and the assumptions behind them | A confident promise of rankings, leads or revenue by a date, or “we’ll keep optimizing” |
| Who will actually do the work, how many other accounts do they have, and who covers when they’re out? | Names and roles you can meet, and a realistic answer about workload and backup | “Our team,” with no names |
| Who is accountable for our results and the quality of the work, and how involved will they be in six months? | A name, a role and a realistic answer about their time | The founder in the pitch, then never again |
| Has the person who’ll deliver this seen what’s being promised? | Yes, and you can talk to that person before you sign | Surprise at the question |
| What’s not included, and how are changes priced? | A clear list and a clear change process | “We’re flexible” |
| Have you ever told a company not to hire you? | Yes, with an example and the reason | A pause, then a pitch |
| What will you need from us, and how fast? | Specific asks, approvals and turnaround times | “Not much, we handle everything” |
| What does month one look like? | A concrete plan: access, a baseline, first priorities | A long list of tactics |
| How does this end, if it ends? | Notice period, handover and what you keep | Silence, or a long lock-in |
The first half of that question is the one that buyer asked us, and they were listening for whether we’d heard our client, not only for what went wrong. An agency that can tell you about a project that went badly, and what it does differently because of it, is telling you how it’ll behave when yours hits a rough patch.
How do you check what they tell you?
A capable salesperson can pass every question in that table. The step that’s easiest to skip is checking the answers against evidence.
- Relevant work. Ask for two or three examples close to your situation, and what the agency did versus what the client’s team or other vendors did.
- References. Every reference an agency hands you will like them, so “are they good?” won’t tell you much. Ask what they’re worse at than you expected, when you have to manage them, who on their team matters most, and what kind of company shouldn’t hire them. If they’ll give you a former client, take it.
- A sample report, with the client’s details removed. It shows you what they think matters.
- Their own marketing. If they sell SEO, look at how they show up in search. It isn’t everything, but it’s evidence.
- Your sales lead, in the room. Bring whoever runs sales to at least one meeting. How an agency answers questions about lead quality tells you whether it thinks past the click.
The check I’d add to that list is what their numbers are tied to. An ad account learns from whatever it’s told counts as a result. About a year after a company stopped working with us, their new in-house marketer showed us their ad account on a call. A contact form was being counted as a conversion worth about $3,000 instead of about $50, and the conversion actions that mattered had been demoted to secondary, so they no longer guided the bidding. I emailed the owner, made clear I wasn’t trying to win the business back, and explained how those settings were steering the account and why I thought their lead quality had suffered. Who fixed it was their decision.
An account set up like that can look healthy in a report, with plenty of conversions worth plenty of money. So ask every agency what each conversion in their reports is, what value it carries, and whether real sales results from your side ever flow back into the accounts. Then ask to see it.
What should rule an agency out?
Some findings are worth negotiating, like a gap in scope or a reporting format you’d change. Others should end the conversation however good the pitch was:
- you can’t meet the people who’ll do the work before you sign
- no comparable work they can walk you through in detail
- a promise of results by a date, with nothing behind it
- accounts that would sit in their name, not yours
- a staffing plan that doesn’t add up at the price quoted
Once you’ve ruled those out, the agencies left are all capable. The choice between them comes down to the diagnosis, the evidence, the people and the terms.
Does their evidence match your problem?
Once you know an agency is competent, the harder question is whether it can solve your particular problem. I’d weigh the evidence roughly in this order:
- The same business problem matters more than the same industry.
- The same economics and way of selling. A six-month sale with a sales team and a same-day online purchase are different jobs.
- The same channel, when one channel carries most of the weight.
- A similar company size, because budgets, approvals and internal teams change what’s possible.
A logo in a portfolio tells you very little until you know what the agency actually did for it. If you sell to other businesses through a six-month sales cycle, an ecommerce traffic win doesn’t tell you much, even if that company is in your industry.
How do you compare proposals that look nothing alike?
Every agency packages its work differently. Put the proposals side by side: one column per agency, one row per thing that matters.
| Compare | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Diagnosis | Did they understand your business, or could this proposal go to anyone? |
| Deliverables | What you get, how many, how often |
| Exclusions | What’s out of scope, and what it costs to add |
| Staffing | Named people, their roles, and how much of their time you get |
| Your responsibilities | What you have to supply, approve or attend, and how quickly |
| Measures and review dates | What success looks like, and when you’ll check |
| Total cost | Fees, plus ad spend, software and other outside costs, and the time your own team will spend on it |
| Exit | Notice period, handover, and what you keep |
If I could only read one row, it would be the diagnosis. A proposal that could have gone to any company usually means the thinking hasn’t happened yet. When one proposal costs far more, the grid shows you where the money goes, and you can decide whether you need that part.
What should you settle before you sign?
Confirm these in writing while everyone is still friendly. They’re much harder to sort out later.
- You own your accounts. Ad accounts, analytics, your domain, your hosting and your social profiles in your company’s name, with the agency given access.
- You own the work. Which files, designs, code and content you receive, when, and what rights come with them.
- What doesn’t transfer. Licensed images, fonts, plugins and third-party tools may not come with you, and some keep costing money after the relationship ends.
- The term and the way out. How long you’re committed, how much notice ends it, and what handover looks like.
- How changes are priced. The process for anything outside the agreed scope.
- Who gets access to what. Which of their people and contractors can get into your systems and customer data, and how that access is removed when someone leaves.
- Who approves what. On your side and theirs, and how quickly. An agency can only move as fast as your approvals.
- How sales results reach them. If your sales team knows which leads turned into customers, agree how that gets back to the agency and into the accounts.
The one I’d never give up is the first. I’ve seen companies held hostage by a vendor who owned their hosting. Own your own stuff, and give the agency access to it. For the contract itself, have someone qualified review it.
How do you limit what you can’t undo?
If you’re unsure, reduce how much you commit before you have evidence: a paid discovery phase, a shorter first term, a defined first milestone, or a review at 90 days with a way out. Making the first commitment reversible matters more than making it small. Some work, like SEO or a full website, doesn’t split neatly into a three-month trial, and a polished audit doesn’t prove an agency can execute.
If an agency requires a long first commitment, ask why. There can be a good reason. What matters is what they have to invest before results can fairly be judged, and what protects you if delivery falls short.
How will you judge it once it starts?
Agree on a review date before the work starts, and on what you’ll look at when it comes. Separate early signals from business results: paid search can produce leads in the first weeks, and still take months to show whether those leads become customers worth having. Be clear about which numbers belong to whom. A paid-search agency controls targeting, bids, ads and tracking, and influences how many qualified leads you get. It usually doesn’t control whether your sales team calls those leads back. Hold an agency to a number it can’t move and everyone ends up arguing about attribution. Agree up front on what they own, what you own, and what you’re moving together.
When the date comes, decide against what you agreed at the start: keep going, change course or stop. Some things shouldn’t wait for it: work that’s plainly wrong, broken tracking, commitments that keep slipping, or a business that’s changed underneath the plan. And watch for the slower signs: communication that fades after the contract is signed, and reports that get longer while results stay the same.
If you’re replacing an agency you already have, get administrator access to every account before you give notice, ask for the campaign history and tracking setup while the relationship still works, and overlap the old and new agencies for a few weeks if you can.
Common questions
How long before an agency shows results?
It depends on the channel. Paid search can show early signals within weeks. SEO, content and brand work usually take months. Anyone promising specific results by a specific date is probably overpromising.
Should I hire a marketing agency or someone in-house?
An agency gives you several skills at once without hiring for each. An in-house hire makes more sense when marketing is central to how you grow and the work is steady. Plenty of companies do both: a strong internal lead and outside help for the specialist work.
Do I need an RFP to hire a marketing agency?
Usually not. For most searches I’d use a one-page brief instead. A formal RFP makes sense when procurement requires one, the spend is large or you’re coordinating several vendors. The brief template covers both.
A last word on choosing
If I were spending my own money, I’d rank it this way. Do I believe their diagnosis? Have they shown evidence they can solve a problem like mine? Do I trust the people who’ll actually do the work? Can we agree on how success gets measured? Only then scope and price.
If you’d like someone on your side of the table while you do it, I help companies run agency searches: the brief, the questions, the reference checks and a side-by-side read of the proposals. I don’t take referral fees or commissions from any agency. I also run one, Connective, and it’s on the list only if you want it there. If it is, weigh my opinion of it accordingly: it goes through the same questions as everyone else, and you make the decision. You can see how it works on the agency hiring advisor page, or start a conversation on Work With Me.
