How do you choose a marketing agency (and what should you ask)?
The short answer
The questions that actually reveal an agency's quality are about structure, not results: who works on your account daily, how many accounts that person manages, and what happens to the fee when performance drops. Agencies commonly staff pitches with senior people and then move junior staff onto the account once it's won, a structural pattern of headcount-scaled agencies rather than a reflection on any one firm's intentions. The average client relationship in the industry runs around 6 months, which is itself worth asking a prospective agency about directly.
The questions that actually reveal an agency’s quality are about structure, not about the pitch. Anyone can present a strong deck and a few sharp case studies. What’s harder to fake is who does the daily work, how many other accounts that person is juggling, and what happens when performance dips. Ask about structure and the polish stops mattering.
Why the pitch and the reality can differ
Most agencies staff their pitch meetings with their most senior people, because that’s who’s best at selling. Once the contract is signed, the account often moves to whoever has open capacity, which tends to be someone more junior. That pattern is closer to arithmetic than to any individual agency’s intentions: the more accounts a firm adds, the more of the daily work has to shift to newer hires, because the senior people who won the business can’t personally run every account too. Client relationships across the industry run roughly 6 months on average, and staff turnover on the agency side is a real part of why.
Nine questions that expose structure
| Question | What a weak answer sounds like | What a strong answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Who actually works on my account day to day? | A vague reference to “the team” | A specific name and title, and how long they’ve been with the firm |
| How many other accounts does that person manage? | Deflection, or a number that sounds impossibly high | A number they’re willing to state plainly |
| Who was in this pitch, and will they still be involved in month six? | “Our senior team is always available,” without specifics | A direct answer about who stays hands-on and who doesn’t |
| Can you show me the actual system you run accounts on, not just the deck? | A generic slide about “proprietary process” | A real dashboard, checklist, or workflow they can walk you through live |
| How do you report a bad week? | Only good news makes it into the report | A specific example of a real miss and what they did about it |
| What happens to your fee when performance drops? | The fee stays flat no matter what | A structure that ties part of the fee to outcomes, or a clear plan for addressing a decline |
| What’s your average client tenure, and why do clients leave? | No number, or a number they can’t explain | A real figure with an honest reason attached |
| How many accounts does each account manager handle? | Unclear or evasive | A specific ratio they’re comfortable defending |
| What’s staffed in-house versus subcontracted out? | Unclear who’s actually doing the work | A clear map of what’s handled internally and what isn’t |
What these questions are actually testing
None of these questions ask about results, on purpose. Case studies are easy to cherry-pick and hard to verify on a first call. Structure is harder to fake: an agency that can’t tell you who’s on your account, or won’t share a tenure number, is usually telling you something true even in the way it avoids the question.
Where we fit
We’re a two-person team that has chosen to stay that size on purpose rather than scale by adding staff, which is also why our average client relationship runs 23 months against that roughly 6-month industry pattern. If you’re asking these questions of us, the answer to “who works on my account” is one of the two people you’re already talking to. More on how that model works is here.