Hiring a digital marketing agency comes with many benefits, but it's not without its challenges. There are a lot of details that need to be clarified, specified, and explained to ensure a productive partnership.
We've put together a list of key questions you should ask a digital marketing agency before you work with them. Of course, you probably won't need to ask all of them, so pick the most relevant ones for your business.
Doing so will help both sides get on the same page and avoid any misunderstandings right from the beginning.
Questions about experience and expertise
Questions about an agency's experience and expertise can help you understand the agency's background and capabilities.
Asking these questions will help you gauge if the agency has the necessary skills and knowledge to handle your marketing needs. It will also give you an idea of their track record and reliability.
A common misconception here is that a longer-established agency is always more effective.
While experience matters, newer digital marketing agencies can also bring many fresh ideas.
Ask questions that can help you understand if the marketing agency has delivered results for others in your situation.
Probe for industry experience and expertise in your specific field. Look for a relevant history of successful outcomes that you can benefit from.
Questions to ask your agency about experience and expertise:
- How long have you been in the marketing industry?
- What are your areas of expertise?
- Can you share some examples of your past work?
- What types of clients do you typically work with?
- Have you worked with businesses in our industry before?
- What are your core values?
- Can you tell me more about your team's structure and experience?
- How do you handle new challenges in the marketing landscape?
- What is your agency's unique selling proposition?
- Why should I choose your agency for converting customers?
Questions about services
Does the agency offer the services that you are looking for?
Knowing the marketing agency's service offerings enables you to determine whether or not they meet your marketing needs. You'll also find out how these services can be integrated into a comprehensive marketing plan.
The number of services does not automatically indicate a more competent agency.
It’s more important that the agency can successfully deliver services that are most relevant to your business.
Questions you can ask your agency about their services:
- What search engine optimization services do you offer?
- In what way do these services work together?
- Can you provide examples of how successful these services were?
- Do you offer customized service packages based on our needs?
- How do you adapt your services to different industries or business types?
- How do you measure the success of social posts?
- What is your process for implementing long form and short form content?
- Can you handle our current and future marketing needs with these services?
- How do you ensure quality in the delivery of content?
- Can we scale up or down on the services?
Questions about strategy
Strategy development questions are about how the digital agency works on and implements marketing strategies.
Getting to know the agency's strategic process allows you to understand how they may tackle your project.
You will be able to assess their ability to think both strategically and creatively.
A solid strategy is based on data and a deep understanding of your business and market.
Make sure your marketing partner is aware of this.
Strategy related questions to ask your agency:
- How do you develop a marketing strategy for a new client?
- What steps do you take to ensure the strategy aligns with our business objectives?
- Can you provide an example of a social strategy you've developed for a similar client?
- How do you handle SEO strategy adjustments if the initial plan isn't working?
- In what ways do you incorporate market research and data analysis into your strategy development?
- How do you balance short-term and long-term goals in your strategies?
- In your strategic planning, how do you foster creativity and innovation?
- How do you measure the success of your strategies?
- When do you review and adjust our brand strategy?
- Do you prioritize responsive design in your strategy adjustments?
Questions about communication and collaboration
Communication questions relate to how the agency interacts and collaborates, both internally and externally.
Partnering with a digital marketing agency requires good communication on both sides. It takes more than just feeling good about their company's culture or core values.
Ask these questions early on to determine how the marketing agency will keep you informed and involved in the process.
Make sure their communication methods go well with yours.
You can invite them to your Slack channel, for example. Or ask your agency's account manager to join your meetings.
Marketing requires the client and their potential marketing agency to work together on an ongoing basis. Both parties need to be proactive and come up with their own ideas.
Questions to ask your agency about communication:
- How often will we have online meetings or updates?
- Who will be our main point of contact?
- How do you handle feedback and revisions when writing content?
- When communicating with your clients, how do you ensure that it is clear and effective?
- How do you involve clients in the decision-making process?
- What do you do when you disagree with or have a conflict with a client?
- How do you keep clients informed about changes or developments in their paid advertisements?
- What communication tools do you use?
- Do you have a plan for dealing with urgent issues or crises?
- How do you maintain a good client-agency relationship?
Questions about processes
Project management questions examine the agency's project and processes.
Asking these questions is critical to understanding their approach to deliverables and timelines. These can have a significant impact on your relationship and the overall success of the project.
Process related questions to ask your agency:
- How do you manage timelines and deadlines?
- What project management tools do you use?
- How do you deal with unexpected delays when you write content?
- What is your process for setting and managing expectations with clients?
- How do you ensure that projects stay within budget?
- Can you handle multiple projects—e.g., creating video scripts and preparing webinars—at once?
- What is your process for quality control and ensuring deliverables meet client expectations?
- How do you address scope creep or changes to the project scope?
- What is your process for managing risk in projects?
- To what extent do you ensure that clients are satisfied with the results of a project?
Questions about their team
Team-related questions are about the agency’s team that will be operating on your account, their qualifications, and their working style.
This might actually be the deciding factor for you in choosing a marketing agency.
Knowing who will work on your project and how skilled they are can give you confidence in the agency's ability to deliver.
It will also show you who your marketing partners are on a daily basis.
Is it better to have a bigger team here?
Not necessarily.
The size of the team isn’t directly proportional to the quality of work in digital agencies.
A smaller, well-coordinated team can often be more agile than a larger, less cohesive team.
Bigger digital marketing agencies might have more skills and capacity to offer, though.
The choice is down to your individual needs.
Questions to ask about an agency's team:
- Will any art director be working on our account?
- What are their qualifications and areas of expertise?
- What is the team's collaborative process to address our pain points?
- How do you ensure continuity if a team member leaves or is unavailable?
- Is there a way for your team to handle long form blog posts?
- When conflicts or disagreements arise within your team, what are your methods for resolving them?
- How does the team stay updated with new ideas?
- What is the team's approach to feedback and criticism?
- How does the team balance creativity and strategy in their work?
- Is the team able to handle high-pressure or high-stakes projects?
Questions about pricing
Questions about costs involve the agency's pricing structure, the fees they charge, and the terms of their agreements.
When you ask a marketing agency all these questions, you can briefly check whether their services are within your budget. Pricing information can also help you avoid unexpected costs down the line.
For example, if you want your new agency to manage your paid campaigns, you can ask about their fees.
It might be a fixed fee, a percentage of ad spend, or a mix of both.
There is no guarantee that the most expensive agency will provide the best service. There's no rule that says the cheapest offer has to be the worst either.
Cost does not always correlate with quality, so you simply have to find a marketing agency that provides good value for your investment.
Questions you can ask your agency about costs:
- How do you structure your pricing?
- What is included in your fees?
- Are there any additional costs that we should be aware of?
- How do you handle payments and invoicing?
- What are the terms of your contracts?
- Is there a minimum contract period?
- How do you deal with contract renewals?
- What is your cancellation policy?
- How do you handle pricing for extra changes to the project scope?
- Can you provide a detailed quote for our specific content marketing project?
Questions about case studies and references
Questions on case studies and testimonials are about the past work of a particular digital agency, including success stories and references from previous clients.
And case studies speak more clearly than other marketing assets.
Review success stories and actual results to get a better sense of the agency’s work. As a result, you'll also gain insight into how most agencies work with clients and navigate projects.
It provides some sort of reassurance, but also proof of their reliability. Customer references and testimonials can further support this.
There is no need to examine each testimonial or case study, but the more specific they are, the better the work is.
Although the agency may have had successful results in your industry, this doesn't guarantee similar results for you. The success of each campaign depends on many factors that may be beyond your agency's control.
Questions you can ask agencies about their past successes:
- Can you provide some case studies of your past work?
- Would you be able to provide references from former or current clients?
- How have you achieved results for clients in our industry?
- In the past, how have you dealt with challenges or setbacks?
- How have you adapted your strategies based on the results of past campaigns?
- What is your process for ensuring client satisfaction?
- Which project are you most proud of?
- How have you improved your services based on past experiences?
- Can you provide examples of innovative solutions you've implemented for clients?
- What was the timeline for you to achieve tangible results in our industry?
Questions about technology and tools
Questions about technology are about the solutions and tools that an agency uses, such as proprietary software and platforms.
A prospective digital marketing agency's toolkit can have a significant impact on its capacity to meet your marketing objectives. If the agency uses a lot of tools to speed up its work, it may be able to do a good job on your project.
By asking questions about their tools and technology, you will get a sense of how the marketing agency operates and their approach to clients.
Don't get blinded here, though. Instead of having a lot of tools that don't do anything, it should use its technology well.
Questions you can ask your agency about their tools:
- What technology and tools do you use in your work?
- Do you use any proprietary software or platforms?
- How does AI fit into your toolbox?
- Do you use any tools for generating leads or creating landing pages?
- Do these tools keep our data private and secure?
- How do these tools support the buyer’s journey?
- Are you open to testing new marketing software?
- How do you adapt to new technologies and tools on the market?
- How can these tools ramp up the process of content creation?
- Are there going to be any technical issues with these tools that will affect our work?
Questions about reporting and analytics
Questions related to reporting and analytics focus on how a digital agency measures and reports on its results.
You can track your progress by monitoring analytics on a regular basis.
It makes sense, then, to choose a marketing agency that aligns with your reporting requirements.
These questions help you determine whether your marketing efforts are effective.
It’s not enough to just analyze the data. The agency should be able to analyze it in a way to draw actionable conclusions, make recommendations, and implement them afterwards.
More data is not always better. You don’t need vanity metrics.
You just need measures that accurately assess progress in the proper direction.
Questions for agencies about reports:
- How often do you provide reports?
- What metrics or KPIs do you focus on in your reporting for social media ads?
- What measures do you use to ensure that you get quality backlinks?
- How do you use data to inform your paid social campaigns?
- Can you provide an example of a report you've provided to a similar client?
- What tools do you use for reporting and website analytics in your marketing agency?
- What are your strategies to track progress and measure success?
- How do you handle disappointing results in your reporting?
- In what ways do you use analytics to identify growth or improvement opportunities for inbound marketing?
- Is your reporting clear and easy to understand for clients?
Choose your questions wisely
Keep in mind that your digital marketing agency may not have all the answers immediately. This may be because they’re still learning about your industry and are in the middle of research. Or you could have a unique situation that requires them to dive deeper.
If you fire off these questions and they don't answer right away, don't hit the panic button.
Before responding, prospective agencies may need to check their resources or gather more data.
So, don't rush to conclusions or judge their capabilities based on this alone.
After all, a little patience goes a long way in the agency-client relationship.
Conclusion
The right marketing agency should never be chosen solely based on gut feelings. There are many factors to consider when hiring a digital marketing agency. Fortunately, many of them can be addressed with the relevant answers to the questions we outlined.
Select a few questions and ask a marketing agency that you have shortlisted. The answers might be a good indication of how well you and they will work together. And help you make the right choice.
