Questions owners ask
What should I ask before hiring a marketing agency?
Eleven questions about the work, the money and what happens after you sign. Most unhappy clients were sold activity, not outcomes.
The GullySales team · Updated 15 Sept 2026 · 6 min read
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Ask eleven questions, in three groups: about the work, about the money, and about what happens when the engagement ends. Most owners who feel let down by an agency were not cheated. They were sold activity, in the form of posts, calls and reports, when what they were buying was outcomes, in the form of enquiries and orders. The proposal is where that gap either gets closed or gets hidden, so ask before you sign.
About the work
1. What will exist at the end of the month that does not exist now? Push for artefacts, not activity. A page, an enquiry register, a follow-up sequence, a dealer list, a report format. "Social media management" is not an artefact. Twelve service pages and a written follow-up routine are.
2. Who is actually doing the work, by name, and what else are they on? In a small agency you will get a senior person in the pitch and a junior on the account. That can be fine, provided you know it and know who reviews the work.
3. What is not included? A good proposal has an exclusions list. Photography, a website rebuild, CRM licences and translation are the usual ones. An agency that has thought about the job knows what it is not doing.
4. What do you need from us, and what happens if we are slow? Every engagement needs approvals, product information, access to accounts and somebody answering the phone when an enquiry comes in. If your side is late, the timeline moves. Have that written down before it happens.
5. Show me one piece of work for a business our size in our industry. Not a client list. One page, one campaign, one report. Then ask what it produced.
About the money
6. Split the fee into three. Their time, your media spend, and production costs such as pages, video and creatives. The three behave completely differently, and an agency that cannot separate them has not planned the work. We split ours this way for the same reason.
7. What happens to your fee if the right answer is to spend less? Agencies paid a percentage of media spend have a reason to recommend a bigger budget. Ask the question directly and watch the answer.
8. What will we need to buy that is not in this proposal? Photography, a site repair, a CRM subscription, a call tracking number. These arrive later as surprises unless you ask now.
About what happens after
9. Who owns the accounts, the content and the data when we stop? The ad accounts, the analytics property, the Google Business Profile, the written pages, the lead database. The correct answer is that you do, and the accounts should be created in your name from the start.
10. Show me a report from a month when nothing improved. Every programme has one. An agency that cannot produce such a report either has not been in business long or does not write honest ones.
11. What would make you tell us to stop? A firm with judgement can name the conditions under which the work is not worth your money. That answer tells you more than the whole pitch deck.
The eleven questions as a checklist
Take this into the meeting and tick them off.
- What artefacts will exist that do not exist now
- Who does the work, by name, and who reviews it
- What the proposal explicitly excludes
- What you must provide, and the effect if you are late
- One example of work for a business your size in your industry
- The fee split three ways: their time, media spend, production
- What happens to the fee if the right budget is smaller
- What you will have to buy that is not in the proposal
- Who owns the accounts, content and data at the end
- A sample report from a month with no improvement
- What would make them recommend stopping
For example, a builder in Bengaluru showed us three proposals for the same brief. Two quoted a single monthly figure with a list of activities. The third split the fee, named the person on the account and listed four things it would not do. It was not the cheapest. It was the only one that could be compared to anything.
What to do next
Send these eleven questions to every agency you are talking to, in an email, before the next call. The replies will separate the firms that have planned the work from the firms that have planned the pitch.
If you would like a view of what your business actually needs before you brief anyone else, tell us what you need.
