How to Choose a
Digital Marketing Agency
Most bad agency relationships are predictable from the sales call. This is what to ask, what to check in the contract, and the specific answers that should end the conversation.
Three things decide it
Do you own your accounts? Your Google Ads account, your Meta Business Manager, your website, your domain, your data. If the agency owns any of it, leaving costs you everything you have built.
Who actually does the work? Ask to meet them, not the salesperson. In many agencies the person who wins the account is never seen again.
Can you leave? A month-to-month agreement means the agency has to earn the relationship continuously. A twelve-month lock-in means it does not.
Questions worth asking
"Who will be working on my account day to day, and can I speak to them now?" The gap between the pitch team and the delivery team is the single most common source of disappointment.
"What happens to my accounts if we stop working together?" The right answer is that you keep everything, immediately, including historical data. Any hesitation here is disqualifying.
"What will you report on?" Leads, cost per lead, conversion quality and revenue. If the sample report leads with impressions, reach and engagement, they are planning to be judged on numbers that do not pay wages.
"What would you do in the first 30 days?" A specific answer means they have looked at your account. A generic answer means you are getting a template.
"What is your management fee, and is ad spend separate?" It should always be separate and always paid directly to the platform from your own account.
Warning signs
Guaranteed results. Nobody can guarantee a position, a lead volume or a return. Google and Meta run auctions. An agency promising a specific outcome is either inexperienced or being dishonest.
Agency-owned ad accounts. Sometimes framed as a convenience. It means your campaign history, your conversion data and your account structure stay behind when you leave.
Long lock-in contracts. Some minimum term is reasonable — campaigns need a few months of data to optimise properly — but that is an argument for a three-month recommendation, not a twelve-month contract with exit fees.
Percentage-of-spend pricing with no cap. It pays the agency more for spending more, whether or not spending more was right.
No named contact. If you cannot find out who will do the work, assume it is being outsourced.
Big agency or small agency
Large agencies bring process, specialists and capacity, and they can absorb staff turnover. The trade-off is that a small account is a small priority, and you will usually deal with an account manager rather than a practitioner.
Small agencies give you direct access to the people doing the work and tend to move faster. The trade-off is less redundancy and narrower specialisation.
Neither is correct in the abstract. What matters is honest alignment: a $2,000 a month budget is not a priority at an agency whose average client spends $50,000, no matter how good they are.
What a reasonable arrangement looks like
You own the ad accounts, the website, the domain and the data. Management fees are a clear, separate line item. Ad spend goes directly to the platform. Reporting shows leads and cost per lead. There is no lock-in, and the agency recommends a sensible minimum period rather than enforcing one. You know the name of the person doing the work.
That is how we operate, and it is a reasonable baseline to hold any agency to — including us. Our terms are on the packages page and our team is on the about page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Management fees for small and medium businesses typically run from around $1,000 to $5,000 per month depending on scope, separate from ad spend. Ours are $990, $1,990 and $3,490 per month. Fees far below that range usually mean the work is templated or outsourced.
You do not need to. Campaigns genuinely need about three months to gather enough data to optimise properly, so a three-month commitment is reasonable — but that is an argument for patience, not for a twelve-month contract with exit fees. We do not use lock-in contracts.
You should, always. Set it up under your own billing and grant the agency access. If the agency owns it, you lose your entire campaign history and conversion data if the relationship ends.
Expect meaningful signal within the first 30 days and the larger gains in months two and three, once there is enough conversion data to optimise against. Any agency promising immediate results is overselling.
Lead volume, cost per lead, conversion quality, spend, and what the agency is changing next. Impressions, reach and engagement are context at best.
Hold Us to
The Same Standard.
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