50 questions to ask before you hire a marketing agency.

01.Who specifically will work on our account, by name and role?

02.Will those same people be doing the day-to-day work, or will it be juniors after kickoff? This is the #1 question. Watch how they answer it.

03.How many other clients does each person on our account have at any given time?

04.Can we speak directly with the people doing the work, or only through an account manager?

05.What is the average tenure of your senior staff? Under 2 years means churn. Churn means we get bait-and-switched.

06.Who covers when key people are out, on vacation, or sick?

07.Do you use contractors or in-house staff, and how is that disclosed to us?

08.Have any of the people on our account worked in-house at a company like ours?

09.What is your team turnover rate?

10.Can we meet the actual people who will be on our account before we sign?

11.Walk us through three case studies where the work didn't move the needle. What did you learn? If they can't name any, they're editing reality.

12.What is your process for taking creative from concept to launch?

13.How do you handle creative disagreements between your team and the client?

14.What does "approval" mean, and exactly how many revision rounds are included before extra fees?

15.Show us the worst piece of work you've ever shipped. Tell us why it shipped anyway.

16.How do you know if a campaign is working before the data is final?

17.What is your point of view on [a specific topic relevant to your business]?

18.Walk us through a real engagement timeline, week by week, for the first 90 days.

19.After reading our brief, what part of it do you disagree with? Asked AFTER they've read it. The right answer is never "all of it sounds great."

20.What kind of client gets the most value from working with you?

21.Can you show us a sample contract?

22.What is the minimum engagement length, and why that length?

23.How do you handle scope changes? Give us two real examples from past clients.

24.What does billing look like: retainer, hourly, project, performance-based, or hybrid?

25.What happens if we want to add work mid-quarter?

26.What is included in "support" between deliverables?

27.What is the offboarding process: what do we own at the end? Get this answer in writing.

28.Do we have to use your tools and platforms, or can you work in ours?

29.Will we have direct access to accounts, dashboards, and source files, or only through you?

30.What is the kill clause? Can we leave with 30 days notice if it isn't working?

31.What KPI will we report against, and how was that KPI chosen?

32.Show us a real client report. Hide names if needed.

33.What is your reporting cadence: weekly, monthly, ad hoc?

34.How do you tie attribution to actual revenue, not lead volume?

35.If a campaign is failing, when and how do you tell us?

36.What is the accountability mechanism for misses: what happens if we don't hit targets?

37.Can we see the analytics setup before we sign?

38.Do you run post-mortems on campaigns? Can we see one?

39.What is your benchmark for "good" performance in our category?

40.What do you NOT take credit for that other agencies typically would? The good ones love this question.

41.What is your average client tenure? Below 2 years is a red flag.

42.What is your win/loss rate on RFPs you respond to?

43.Why did your last three clients leave, exactly?

44.Can we talk to two clients you have parted with, including on bad terms? If they say no, that's the answer.

45.What is your busiest month, and how would that affect our work?

46.What would make you fire us as a client?

47.How fast do you reply to emails outside of meetings?

48.What counts as an emergency, and how do we reach you on a Saturday if we need to?

49.What is the worst client meeting you have ever had, and what did you learn from it?

50.If we hired you, what would you push back on in our first month? Their answer here is the most predictive of the entire relationship.