How to Evaluate a Marketing Agency

Hiring a marketing agency often fails not because of effort or talent, but because of misalignment you don’t see until it’s too late.

The pattern is familiar.

A sales call. A sharp founder. A polished deck. Impressive case studies. A promise that feels plausible.

So a 3–6 month contract gets signed. Five figures (or more) get wired. And everyone hopes momentum finally arrives.

Six months later, the frustration sets in.

Not just with the agency, but with the creeping question of whether the problem is the agency, the offer, the market, or yourself.

This cycle repeats because too many businesses evaluate agencies on surface-level signals.

To be clear, this piece isn’t about obvious “red flags” like missed deadlines or poor communication. Those are symptoms. By the time they appear, the damage is already done.

This is about evaluating an agency before committing months of time, attention, and opportunity cost using criteria that materially increase the odds the relationship delivers.

The First Truth Most Agencies Won’t Admit

Plainly: You are almost never going to work with the person who sells you.

That charismatic founder on the call?

They probably aren’t going to run your ads, write your copy, build your funnels, or even think about your account daily.

Many of them (not all) effectively operate as salespeople — selling capacity — then drop out of day-to-day delivery unless performance slips.

Now, this isn’t inherently wrong. One person can only do so much, and that founder hopefully personally trains, manages, and oversees all of their staff and/or contractors. Misunderstanding this leads to a frustrating situation of having your expectations built around the seller, delivered by others, inside a system you never vetted.

Evaluating an agency starts not with promises, but with how work actually flows after the contract is signed.

Question #1: Who Will I Actually Work With Week-to-Week?

This is the most critical question, and most people don't ask it. 

Don’t ask:

“Will I have a dedicated account manager?”

Titles don’t execute.

Ask instead:

• Who makes decisions?

• Who touches my account?

• Who has authority to reject bad ideas?

• Who understands my business well enough to challenge assumptions?

Get names. Roles. Backgrounds. Tenure.

Vague answers—“our team,” “our specialists,” “internal collaboration”—signal abstraction, not transparency.

A strong agency will outline:

• who owns strategy,

• who executes,

• who reviews,

• who you speak to,

• how decisions escalate.

If you can’t picture the operating model, you’re buying hope instead of clarity.

Question #2: What Has This Agency Actually Done (Not Just Who They’ve Worked With)?

Logos are cheap.

Most marketing and advertising agencies flash recognizable brands. Few explain their actual role with that brand.

There’s a massive difference between:

• “We worked with Company X”

• “We rebuilt their acquisition system after channel fatigue—shifted objectives, rewrote post-click messaging, and cut CAC by 27% in 90 days.”

You’re not looking for trade secrets.

You’re looking for a sample of how they think and their causal reasoning.

Ask:

• What problem existed before you arrived?

• What specifically did you change?

• Why that approach?

• What failed initially?

• What tradeoffs were made?

Surface-level answers—“we optimized,” “we scaled”—are résumé fluff.

Real operators can explain why something worked.

Question #3: How Does This Agency Diagnose Problems?

Most engagements fail here.

Agencies pitch solutions without understanding constraints.

They default to:

• ads when the offer is weak,

• content when positioning is unclear,

• funnels when trust is absent,

• scaling when foundations are shaky.

Be skeptical of agencies that:

• prescribe channels immediately,

• guarantee outcomes without context,

• skip diagnosis and jump to execution.

Ask:

“How do you identify the true constraint in a system like mine?”

Then listen.

Do they talk about narrative health, offer truth, market demand, post-click experience, competitors, and market sophistication?

Or do they leap straight to tactics?

Great marketing is systematic.

If they can’t diagnose where it’s broken, how can they fix it?

Question #4: Do They Offer Guarantees or Performance Pricing, and Why?

This question reveals how they think.

Guarantees aren’t automatically good.
The absence of one isn’t automatically bad.

Red Flag

Unconditional guarantees. Outcomes outside their control. Vague assumptions.

Guaranteeing results without strict prerequisites often signals inexperience or desperation. 

Green Flag

Conditional structures:

• “We tie compensation to performance if X, Y, and Z are true.”

• “We offer performance-based compensation once the system is aligned which is typically after 90 days.”

• “Performance pricing only when we control the variables.”

That’s maturity. It respects uncertainty instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

Don’t ask:

“Do you guarantee results?”

Ask:

“Under what conditions would you tie your compensation to performance?”

The answer tells you everything.

Question #5: What Does Success Look Like—and What If We Miss It?

Vague success definitions are intentional:
Growth. Momentum. Improvement.

They protect the agency, not you.

Ask:

• What outcomes are realistic in 30, 60, 90 days?

• What signals tell us we’re on the wrong path?

• What gets revisited if results stall?

• When would you recommend stopping or pivoting?

Confident agencies define failure conditions.

The best will proactively tell you when:

• they’re not the right fit,

• execution is premature,

• the constraint is upstream of marketing.

That honesty is rare, and valuable.

Question #6: How Much Is Strategy vs. Execution?

This distinction is consistently underestimated.

Many agencies are high-execution, low-judgment.
Others are high-judgment, low-execution.

Neither is superior, but confusing and blurring them is expensive.

Execution buys speed and throughput.
Strategy buys prioritization and decision quality.

Problems arise when:

• execution shops sell themselves as strategic partners,

• strategists get pulled into commodity production.

Ask directly:

“What portion of this engagement is judgment-based vs. execution-based?”

If they can’t answer cleanly, you’re about to pay for confusion.

Question #7: How Do They Handle Uncertainty and Change?

Markets move. Platforms shift. Creative fatigues.

You don’t want an agency that panics, or one that blindly doubles down.

Ask:

• How do you respond to unexpected performance drops?

• How often do you reassess assumptions?

• What signals trigger a strategic pivot?

Rigid playbooks and templates mean you’re renting yesterday’s answers.

The best agencies think in systems, not formulas.

Question #8: What AI Tools Do You Use, and How Do They Change Decisions?

Basically everyone is now claiming to be “AI-powered.”
Very few can explain what that actually means.

Don’t ask:

“Do you use ChatGPT?”

Ask:

• Which workflows are augmented with AI?

• Where does AI accelerate thinking vs. replace labor?

• What decisions remain explicitly human, and why?

• How do you prevent generic output?

Red Flag #1: AI as a Gimmick

“AI for copy, creatives, targeting. Everything.”

AI doesn’t create judgment. It amplifies the judgement that's already there.

Over-automation speeds the wrong direction, ships noise, and mistakes volume for signal.

Red Flag #2: AI as a Threat

Total dismissal likely signals an outdated labor-dependent model and stagnant systems.

What You Want to Hear

• “AI explores scenarios faster; it doesn’t decide.”

• “We pressure-test ideas and surface blind spots.”

• “AI accelerates execution; strategy stays first-principles.”

• “Brand and voice are protected from flattening.”

AI should compress time—not outsource responsibility.

If they can’t explain how AI improves decision quality, you’re not seeing leverage.

You’re seeing shortcuts.

The Hidden Cost: Opportunity

The retainer isn’t the real expense.

It’s:

• market feedback you never learned from,

• momentum you didn’t build,

• trust you eroded internally,

• decisions you postponed waiting for results.

Evaluation matters because misalignment is subtle, and costly.

Not because marketing agencies are evil.
Because marketing systems often fail slowly and quietly.

The Final Filter

Ask this:

“What would you do if this were your company, your money, and your reputation?”

Then listen.

Do they slow down?
Clarify assumptions?
Surface risk?
Push back?

Or do they reassure, upsell, and simplify?

Marketing doesn’t fail from lack of effort.

It fails because the wrong work gets done confidently for too long.

Choose critical thinkers. 

That’s how you find partners, not vendors.