The questions to ask a performance marketing agency are rarely the ones a first call gets round to. Choosing one is mostly a problem of information. They have seen a hundred accounts like yours; you have seen one. The fix is not a longer pitch — it is a short list of questions where a vague answer is itself the answer.
Ask all fifteen. Write down which ones produced hesitation.
Questions to ask about the work
- Who specifically will run my account, and how many other accounts do they carry? You want a name and a number. "A dedicated team" is not a name. If the person who turns up on the pitch is not the person who logs into the ad account, ask why.
- What will you do in the first thirty days? A good answer is boring and specific: audit, fix tracking, rebuild structure, launch a first test. A bad answer is a strategy framework with four quadrants.
- What would make you tell me to stop spending? Every honest agency has a threshold. Listen for whether they have ever actually said it to a client.
- Show me a report you sent a client last week. Redacted is fine. You are looking for decisions and next steps, not a screenshot of the platform dashboard. What a useful report contains is a short list, and most reports fail it.
- What tracking do you need in place before you can judge anything? If they are happy to run on whatever is already there, they are not planning to measure carefully.
Questions to ask about the money
- How exactly do you charge, and what is not included? Creative production, landing pages, and extra markets are the three things that quietly become line items later.
- Do you take a percentage of ad spend? If yes, ask what happens on the day the right advice is to spend less. The incentive built into each fee model survives every good intention.
- What is the notice period, and what happens to the accounts if I leave? The answer should be that you keep everything, because you already own it.
- What is the minimum ad spend where this makes sense? An agency with no floor has not thought about whether you will succeed. Ours comes up on the first call rather than on call three, and the pricing page explains how it is set.
- Is there a setup fee? And if so, what does it buy that the retainer does not.
Questions to ask about evidence
- Show me an account that did not work and tell me why. This is the single most informative question on the list. Everyone has one. Only some will describe it.
- Can I speak to a client who left? Nobody expects a yes. The reaction tells you something anyway.
- In your case studies, what was the starting point? A number with no baseline is not a result. Reading a case study properly takes about four questions.
- What do you think is wrong with my account right now? Ask before you sign. An agency that has not looked is pitching a template. We answer this one as a free audit before any money changes hands, precisely because it is the only honest basis for a quote.
- What do you need from me, weekly, for this to work? An agency that says "nothing" is planning to work alone, and accounts run alone drift.
What a good performance marketing agency answer sounds like
You are not grading the content so much as the shape. Specific, fast, slightly uncomfortable answers are good. Smooth, general, flattering answers are the ones to worry about — they are the product of a well-rehearsed sales process, which is a different skill from media buying.
Two more signals worth noting. First, whether they asked you about margin and sales cycle before talking about channels; an agency that quotes before understanding unit economics is guessing. Second, whether they disagreed with you about anything in the first call. The ones who never do will not do it later either, when it matters.
If you want to see what these answers look like in writing rather than on a call, our process and our pricing are both published, and the overview of how we run accounts covers the rest.
Questions people ask before hiring
What are the most useful questions to ask an agency?
Ask them to describe an account that did not work and why. Every agency has one. The ones that can describe it clearly, without blaming the client, are the ones who diagnose problems rather than explain them away.
Should I ask for a guaranteed cost per lead or ROAS?
You can ask, but treat a confident number as a warning rather than reassurance. Nobody can promise a result before seeing your margins, your offer and your historical data. A guarantee given on day one is a sales device that later becomes an excuse.
How many agencies should I talk to?
Three is usually enough to calibrate. Beyond that the answers start repeating and the decision gets harder rather than clearer. Run the same fifteen questions past each one so you are comparing like with like.
Is it reasonable to ask for a free audit before signing?
Yes, and plenty of agencies will do one. What matters is whether the audit contains specific findings about your account or generic advice that would apply to anyone. The second kind is a brochure.
What if the agency will not name the person running my account?
That usually means the account will be staffed after you sign, from whoever has capacity. It is not automatically disqualifying, but you should ask for the name before the first invoice rather than after.