How to choose a digital marketing agency (and what to ask)

Ask who is actually in the account week to week

Get a name, a job title and a rough client load for the person who will run your day-to-day work — not just the person who ran the pitch. Ask what happens if that person leaves mid-contract. An agency with a documented handover process will answer this without hesitating.

Confirm in writing who owns the accounts and data

Ad accounts, analytics properties, tag manager containers, the domain and any content produced should be created in your own login from day one, with the agency added as a user. If leaving means rebuilding from zero, that's a lock-in, not a partnership.

Agree the success metric before you sign anything

Impressions, rankings and click-through rate are inputs, not outcomes. Put the actual commercial metric — cost per booked job, cost per qualified opportunity, blended return on ad spend — in the proposal itself, along with how and how often it's measured.

• Is reporting a live dashboard, a monthly PDF, or a call — and which one do you actually need?
• What specifically happens in month two if the agreed metric moves the wrong way?
• What counts as out of scope, and what's the hourly or project rate for extra work?

Notice what they say no to

The most useful moment in a pitch is an agency telling you a channel isn't worth your budget yet, or that a tactic you asked for won't work for your sales cycle. An agency enthusiastic about every channel on the first call is usually running a template, not a plan for your account.