What to ask before you sign with a marketing agency

Before you sign with a marketing agency, ask them seven things: who does the actual work, who will I speak to, what exactly do I get each month, how do you report it, what does it cost in full, what happens if it is not working, and can I leave. If any answer is vague, that vagueness is your first result. Good agencies answer all seven plainly, because they have nothing to hide.

I run Clixoni, so I am on the other side of these questions every week. I would far rather a prospective client grilled me than signed on a nice feeling and regretted it in month three. Here is what each question is really testing.

Who actually does the work, and who will I talk to?

Ask this first, because it separates the person who sold you from the person who serves you. Plenty of agencies win you over with a senior, confident pitch, then hand your account to a junior you never meet, behind a rotating support inbox. You want to know the name of the person responsible for your marketing and how you reach them. If the honest answer is a shifting team and a ticket queue, expect your business to feel like a number, because it is. With me, you deal with Mark direct, and that is the whole point.

What exactly do I get every month, and how will I see it?

Get the deliverables in plain English and a number against them. How many pieces of content, what happens with your Google Business Profile, is social included, are backlinks part of it, and what actually lands in a given month. Then ask how they report. You should get a clear, regular account of what was done and what it is doing, not a wall of numbers designed to look busy. If they cannot tell you what a normal month contains, they do not have a system, they have a retainer.

What does it really cost, all in?

Ask for the full figure, including setup, and ask what is not included. The trap is a tempting monthly fee that quietly needs add-ons for the things you assumed were standard. A straight answer sounds like a single monthly price with a clear list of what it covers. Mine is £350 a month for a professional website plus the full marketing system run daily, with no tools for you to buy and no one for you to hire. You should be able to get a sentence that clear from anyone you are about to pay. If pricing takes three emails to pin down, that is a preview of the relationship.

What happens if it is not working, and can I leave?

Ask how they define working, when you should expect to see it, and what they do if you do not. Honest marketing takes a few months to build momentum, so be suspicious of anyone promising leads by Friday, and equally suspicious of anyone who cannot say what good looks like at all. Then ask about the exit. Long lock-in contracts exist to protect the agency from its own results. A provider confident in the work does not need to trap you into staying.

The honest tradeoff

No agency can promise a specific number of enquiries, and any that does is guessing or lying. What a good one can promise is that the work will actually get done, consistently, by someone accountable, with results you can see building. If you want a guarantee of exact leads by an exact date, no honest provider can give you that, myself included. What I can give you is a clear system and a straight answer to every one of these questions.

What a bad answer sounds like

A shopfitter told me how he got burned by skipping these questions. The pitch was slick, the monthly fee looked fair, and he signed on a good feeling. Three months in he had never spoken to the person doing the work, the reports were a page of graphs that said nothing about enquiries, and the fee had grown because social and reviews turned out to be add-ons he assumed were included. When he asked to leave, there was another nine months on the contract. Every one of those problems was hiding in plain sight in the answers he never asked for.

So keep the seven in your pocket and treat them as a single checklist: who does the work, who you speak to, what lands each month, how it is reported, the full price with nothing hidden, what happens if it stalls, and how you get out. Ask them out loud and watch the body language. The provider who answers all seven without flinching is the one worth paying. The one who reaches for jargon on the third question is telling you exactly how the next year will feel.

How to use this list

Take these seven questions to every agency you consider, including me, and watch how comfortable each one is answering. Confidence and plain speaking are a good sign. Hedging, jargon and pressure are not. I go further on choosing between your options in agency, freelancer or managed system, which fits a small business.

If you would like to put these questions to me directly, book a short call with Mark and I will answer every one on the spot. You can also read exactly what is included and what it costs on the pricing page before we even speak.