How to Choose a Growth Marketing Agency: Eight Questions to Ask Before You Sign

Before you start

An agency is the right hire when your offer works and the gap is demand: not enough of the right enquiries. If you are still unsure who your best customers are or whether your pricing works, start with a diagnosis. We compare the two in business growth consultant or growth marketing agency.

Then put the same brief to two or three agencies and ask each the same eight questions.

The eight questions

1. What number will you be judged on?

Listen for: qualified leads at or above your minimum deal size, new customers, or revenue, agreed in writing. Warning sign: impressions, clicks, reach or "leads" with no definition.

2. How will you track a lead through to a sale?

Listen for: every lead recorded in your CRM with its source, and sales results sent back to the ad platforms so bidding learns what a good lead looks like. Warning sign: reporting only what the platforms say they converted.

3. Who owns the accounts, the data and the website?

Listen for: you do. Ad accounts, analytics, CRM, domain and content in your name. Warning sign: ad accounts in the agency's name, which you lose when you leave.

4. Who will actually do the work?

Listen for: named people, and a chance to meet them. Warning sign: a senior team in the pitch and nobody you have met on the account.

5. What happens in the first 90 days?

Listen for: a baseline measured before anything changes, the first fixes, and when you should expect to see a result. Warning sign: a long strategy phase with no measurable milestone.

6. How do you charge?

Listen for: a fee for the work, with media spend shown separately and any margin on it disclosed. Warning sign: pay-per-lead pricing, which pays the agency for volume rather than customers. We explain why in our guide to B2B lead generation agencies.

7. What contract will I sign?

Listen for: a short initial term, then month to month with reasonable notice. Good agencies keep clients by results. For Clinic to Cloud, the retainer renewed month on month for 18 consecutive months. Our own small business packages have no minimum term and 30 days' notice. Warning sign: a long lock-in signed before anyone has measured a baseline.

8. Can you show results credited to the campaign that produced them?

Listen for: case studies that name the client or describe them honestly, the channels, the period and the measure. Warning sign: a multi-channel result presented as a win for one service, or figures with no date and no source.

The answer that matters most

Ask what the agency does when something is not working. The right answer is that it says so and moves the money. For a specialist strata insurer, display produced four quotes and no policies, and remarketing showed no measurable contribution, so we paused both inside eight weeks and put the budget into search, where the economics were working.

Red flags at a glance

• No agreed definition of a qualified lead.
• Pay-per-lead pricing or guaranteed lead counts.
• Accounts or data held in the agency's name.
• Long lock-ins before a baseline exists.
• Reports full of activity and empty of sales.

How we run growth engagements: business growth at Involve Digital. If enquiries are the immediate gap, see lead generation.