Before you hire a marketing agency, ask these 12 questions.
If an agency can't answer most of these clearly, more marketing won't fix what's actually wrong. Ask them. Ask us.
The questions are simple. The answers usually aren't.
None of these need a marketing degree to ask. They just need someone willing to sit through the silence that follows a few of them. Under each one is why it's on the list.
- Can you say what my business does in one sentence a stranger would understand?
If they can't, everything that follows is built on a guess. Clarity comes before creative, and an agency that skips it will sell you the creative anyway.
- Do you know who my best customers are, and why they actually buy?
Reach is cheap; the right reach isn't. An agency that hasn't asked who pays you, stays and refers will optimise for whoever is easiest to find.
- Is my problem really marketing, or is it clarity, sales, pricing or systems?
Most growth problems arrive dressed as marketing problems. If the only tool on offer is more marketing, that's the diagnosis you'll get.
- What happens to a lead in the 48 hours after it arrives?
This is where most of the money leaks. A campaign that doubles leads into a process that ignores half of them has doubled the waste, not the revenue.
- What makes my business genuinely different from the alternatives my customers are considering?
If the answer is “quality” and “service”, you don't have one yet, and no amount of content will invent it. The difference has to be found before it can be said.
- How will we know the marketing is actually moving the business forward?
Impressions, followers and engagement are activity, not outcomes. Agree on the business number that should move, and by when, before the first post goes out.
- What would you recommend if the honest answer is “spend nothing yet”?
Sometimes the right move is to fix the offer, the pricing or the follow-up first. Listen for whether they've ever told a client that — and whether they still got the work afterwards.
- Who will actually do the work, and will I get to speak to them?
The people in the pitch are rarely the people in the work. Ask, because the thinking gets thinner every time it's handed down a floor.
- Are we building a campaign that spikes, or a system that compounds?
A spike looks great in the monthly report and leaves nothing behind. A system — a positioning, a pipeline, a referral loop — keeps working when the budget stops.
- Where could AI save my team real hours, and where is it just hype?
The honest answer is specific: this task, this many hours, this risk. Anyone selling AI as a strategy rather than a tool hasn't looked closely at your work.
- What are you choosing not to do, and why?
A plan that includes everything hasn't been thought through. The things left out tell you more about the thinking than the things kept in.
- Six months in, how will we both know this was worth it?
If neither side can answer this now, you'll argue about it later. Decide what “worth it” means in numbers and in plain words, and write it down.
If most of these get a clear answer, hire them. If most of them get a pause, keep asking.
Ask them. Then ask us.
We put this list together because we'd want to be asked these questions ourselves. We won't answer all twelve perfectly either — but you'll hear us say “we don't know yet” rather than fill the silence with a deck.
If you'd like a first read of where your business stands before any of these conversations, the growth diagnosis takes fifteen questions and under five minutes. It's free, and it doesn't put you on a list.
The term, defined — and how it differs from an agency, a consultant and a fractional CMO.