How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency: 7 Questions to Ask Before You Sign

Choosing a digital marketing agency is one of the decisions that most directly affects a business's revenue. A good agency turns your ad budget into customers. The wrong one burns budget and leaves you with reports that are hard to understand. In this guide we've gathered 7 questions to ask before choosing an agency, warning signs, and what should happen in the first months.

Before you start: what do you need?

Before talking to agencies, it helps to know three things:

• The goal: leads, online sales, calls, store visits, or brand awareness.
• Which channels: Google, Meta or both.
• The total budget: media budget and management fees. For a first estimate, try the budget calculator.

The clearer your picture, the easier it is to compare offers.

1. Who will manage my account day to day?

Sometimes the person selling you the service isn't the one who'll actually do the work. Ask who your contact will be, who does the work in the campaigns, and whether you can talk to them directly. A good answer: a dedicated contact who knows your business and is available when needed.

2. How do you measure success?

Clicks and impressions aren't a goal. A good answer talks about business metrics: cost per inquiry or sale, lead quality, and return on investment. And it also explains how all of these are actually measured.

A good follow-up question: "How will you know whether a lead became a customer?" A good agency will want to know that, because it's what lets you truly improve the campaigns.

3. What will you check before launching a campaign?

A serious agency starts with an audit: whether measurement works, whether pixels and conversions are set up correctly, whether the landing page fits, and what happened in previous campaigns. A campaign launched on broken measurement wastes money from day one, because you can't know what works.

4. What will I get in reports, and how often?

Ask to see a sample report. A good report is:

• Clear and written in plain language.
• Focused on business metrics, not a list of every possible number.
• Explains not only what happened, but why, and what happens now.

Also ask what communication looks like between reports: is there an update when something unusual happens, and who initiates it?

5. Do you have experience in my field?

Experience in your field helps understand the audience, seasonality and competitors. But it's just as important to ask how the agency learns a new business: what questions it asks, what it checks, and how it builds a strategy. An agency that listens and asks a lot of questions at the start is usually a good sign. It's also worth asking for reviews and examples from current clients, like our client reviews.

6. Which account runs the ads, and what happens with the data?

Make sure you understand which account the ads run in, who pays Google and Meta, and who has access. Also ask what happens to the accounts, data and audiences if you decide to part ways. Better to know in advance, while everything's good. We covered this in detail in the guide on owning your ad accounts.

7. What happens in the first months?

Campaigns need time: to collect data, refine audiences and messages, and find the combination that works. So ask:

• What's the plan for the first month, and for the months after.
• When to expect first results, and when stable results.
• Whether there's a commitment period, and why.

A serious agency will explain what happens at each stage, and won't promise results from week one.

Warning signs

• Guaranteed results, or "first place on Google within a week".
• Reports full of numbers, with no explanation of what they mean or what to do.
• No talk of measurement at all, or measurement based only on clicks.
• Hard to reach a contact, or to get clear answers.
• The same strategy for every client, without understanding your business.

What we believe in

At Herzel we work with a dedicated account manager, start every engagement with a measurement check, and report in plain language: what we did, why, and what it brought. Here you can read about our services, and here about what clients write about us.

The bottom line

A good ad agency doesn't just launch campaigns. It understands your business, measures what matters, and explains in plain language what's happening and where you're heading. The questions in this guide will help you spot it. And if you like, we'd be happy to answer them for you too.