Before you hire your fourth marketing agency, ask these questions

Many owners I talk to are on their third or fourth marketing agency. Each one started with a good pitch and ended with reports nobody could act on.

My view is simple. Fourth agency, fifth, tenth: the number does not matter. What matters is whether they can answer a few questions. When an agency answers them properly, that is the right agency.

1. Can you show me how each enquiry reached me?

Not clicks. Not "conversions". Each real enquiry, connected to the channel, campaign, keyword or page that brought it, and to what happened next.

When I asked my own agency this, they said the technology did not exist. It does. If an agency cannot do it, you will be judging them on numbers that do not connect to your deals, and so will they.

2. How will you separate real buyers from noise?

Suppliers, job seekers and spam fill in your forms too. If they are counted as leads, every report looks better than your pipeline. Ask how the agency will count them, and set them aside.

3. What will you tell me to change, and why?

An agency's job is not only to market. It should behave as if your marketing budget were its own: here is what we tracked, here are the winners, move the budget from here to there, and this is why we expect it to keep improving.

If an agency does not put itself in your business's shoes, it stays a supplier of reports. It never becomes a partner.

4. How do you balance SEO and paid search?

Paid search is a quick burst. It works, and it has its place. But the day you stop paying, your visibility drops to zero.

SEO is the longer game. Buyers who find you without an ad in the way tend to be more loyal, and the work stays in your digital footprint for years. For most B2B service firms, both together work best. Be wary of an agency that only sells one of them.

5. Will you tell me if we are not a fit?

This one tells you the most. A good agency will say no to work it cannot do well, and tell you what it would do instead. One that says yes to everything, just to win the contract, will give you a rosy picture later too.

What I hold myself to

I run a service business and a product business. The day-to-day is very different, but the fundamentals of marketing are the same: clear messaging on the website, sound SEO and technical basics, ads that speak to the right buyer, and knowing exactly who you sell to. In both, marketing has one job: to bring in revenue you can see.

So these are the same questions I answer for the companies I work with. No vanity numbers, no rosy picture, and a plain answer if we are not the right fit.

If you are about to hire your next agency, book 30 minutes with me first. Even if you hire someone else, you will know which questions to ask.