How to Vet a Marketing Agency: 9 Questions to Ask

Ask an agency who owns the ad account, what they would tell you not to do, and what happened to their last client who left. Those three answers tell you more than any pitch deck. Below are all nine, and what a good answer sounds like.

Most people hire an agency after one call and a proposal. Then eight months later they're paying for reports nobody reads. The questions below take twenty minutes and save you a year.

1. Do I own the ad account?

Listen for: an immediate yes.

Your Google Ads and Meta accounts should be in your business name, with the agency added as a user. When you leave, you keep the account, the history, the audiences and the conversion data.

Some agencies run everything through their own account. It means when you go, you start from zero. Years of learning, gone. They will explain this is simpler. It is simpler for them.

If the answer is anything other than yes, that is your answer about the whole relationship.

2. What would you tell me not to do?

Listen for: a real example.

Anyone who says yes to every idea either hasn't thought about your business or doesn't want to risk the sale. A good agency will tell you a channel is wrong for you, or that your budget is too low to bother, or that the problem is your offer rather than your marketing.

This is the question that separates people who want a client from people who want a result.

3. Who actually does the work?

Listen for: a name, and whether that person is in the room.

The most common complaint we hear from businesses leaving an agency is that they were sold by someone senior and handed to someone junior. That's not always a problem, plenty of good work is done by juniors with good oversight. It is a problem when nobody tells you it's happening.

Ask who you'll speak to monthly. Ask whether the person on the call will be building the campaigns.

4. What happened to the last client who left?

Listen for: an honest answer, not a deflection.

Every agency loses clients. Some outgrow you, some run out of budget, some were never a fit. An agency that can talk about one plainly is an agency that's thought about why.

"We've never lost a client" is either untrue or means they haven't been doing this long.

5. How do you report, and what's in it?

Listen for: business numbers, not platform metrics.

Impressions, reach and click-through rate describe what the platform did. Leads, cost per lead, bookings and revenue describe what happened to your business. You want the second kind, with the first available if you ask.

Ask to see a real report from another client with the name removed. If they can't produce one, they may not be making them.

6. What does it cost, all in?

Listen for: a clean split between management and ad spend.

Management is what the agency charges. Ad spend goes to Google and Meta. A quote of "$2,000 a month" means very different things depending on the split. We set out our own pricing rather than making you ask.

Also ask about setup. One-off build work, landing pages, tracking. An agency quoting $900 with $600 of hidden setup in month one costs more than one quoting $1,200 flat.

7. What happens in the first thirty days?

Listen for: specifics, and some of it being unglamorous.

The honest version usually includes auditing what's there, fixing tracking, and finding out what's actually broken before spending anything. If month one is all campaign launches and no diagnosis, they're guessing.

Tracking is the one people skip. If conversions aren't firing properly, every number after that is fiction.

8. What results should I expect, and when?

Listen for: ranges and caveats, not promises.

Google Ads can produce leads in the first few weeks, though the first month is mostly learning. SEO takes three to six months for meaningful movement, longer in competitive markets. Meta depends heavily on your offer and creative.

Anyone guaranteeing a position on page one is either misunderstanding how Google works or hoping you do. Nobody controls rankings.

9. Can I speak to a client like me?

Listen for: yes, with an actual introduction.

Testimonials on a website are selected. A conversation is not. Ask for someone in a similar business, or at least a similar size, and ask them what the first three months were like. Ours are in the portfolio, and we will introduce you to one.

If the agency hesitates, that's information.

The things that don't matter as much as you think

Awards. Most are paid for or voted on by other agencies.

Certifications. Google Partner status mostly means you spend enough and pass a test. It's a floor, not a signal.

Office size. A ten-person agency isn't better than a two-person one. It just has more overhead in your fee.

How impressive the deck is. The best agency we know sends a one-page proposal.

What to do with the answers

You're not looking for perfect scores. You're looking for whether they answer directly.

An agency that says "honestly, our reporting isn't great, here's what we're doing about it" is more trustworthy than one with a polished answer to everything. Directness under a hard question is the thing you're actually buying, because that's what you'll get when something goes wrong.

And something will go wrong. Ads get rejected, costs climb, a campaign that worked stops working. What matters is whether the person on the other end tells you early.

Frequently asked questions

How do I choose a marketing agency?

Ask who owns the ad account, what they would tell you not to do, and who actually does the work day to day. Direct answers to uncomfortable questions matter more than the pitch. Also ask to speak to a current client in a similar business, and pay attention to whether they hesitate.

Should I hire a local agency or a national one?

Local matters if your customers are local, because Google Business Profile and map pack work benefit from someone who knows the market. For ads and SEO more broadly, location is largely irrelevant. What matters is whether you can get hold of them and whether they understand your business.

What are red flags when hiring a marketing agency?

Guaranteed rankings. Refusing to give you ownership of your ad account. No clear split between management fee and ad spend. Reporting built on impressions rather than leads. And an inability to name anything they would advise you against.

How much should I pay a marketing agency?

We asked six Halifax agencies in 2026 what they charge and five shared. Most sit between $750 and $3,000 a month for management, separate from ad spend, with the lower end around $1,000. Below that you are usually buying someone's spare hours. What matters more than the number is what is included and whether setup costs are hidden inside month one.

How long should I give an agency before judging results?

Three months for ads, six for SEO. Less than that and you are judging noise. But you should see evidence of work in the first month: an audit, tracking fixed, a clear plan. Absence of that in month one is a fair reason to stop early.