Choosing an agency well is half the battle - holding the relationship accountable is the other half. Agencies do their best work for clients who ask informed questions consistently, and their worst for clients who just receive the monthly PDF. (Still at the selection stage? Start with questions to ask before hiring.)
Every month
- "What did you change this month, and why?" Retainers quietly become maintenance. Specific answers - tests run, budgets shifted, pages improved - evidence active management; vagueness evidences autopilot.
- "What worked, what didn't, and what are you doing about it?" Good agencies volunteer failures with fixes attached. An agency that only ever reports wins is editing reality.
- "How does this connect to leads and revenue?" Keep dragging the conversation from impressions and rankings back to business outcomes - the discipline in how to measure marketing success. If they cannot make the connection, your tracking or their strategy needs work.
- "Where exactly did the budget go?" Spend by channel and campaign, fees versus media, any tool costs. You should never be guessing.
Every quarter
- "What are we learning about our customers?" Beyond campaign metrics, an agency sees search terms, ad responses and audience data - insight your product and sales teams can use. Extract it.
- "What would you do with 20% more budget - or 20% less?" The answer reveals whether they think strategically about your business or just administer the current setup.
- "What's changing on the platforms, and how are we adapting?" Algorithm shifts, privacy changes and new formats should reach you from your agency, not from headlines.
- "Are we still on the right channels?" Sunk-cost momentum keeps money in tired channels; make continuation a decision, not a default (choosing the right channels).
When results dip
Ask for the diagnosis in writing: what changed (market, tracking, competition, creative fatigue), the evidence for that explanation, and the recovery plan with a timeframe. Reasonable dips happen; what separates good agencies is the quality of their explanation and response. Repeated excuses without plans belong on our agency red flags list.
Informed clients get better work
Every question above lands harder when you understand the fundamentals yourself. The Digital Marketing in Practice course at London School of Business UK turns managers into the kind of client agencies do their best work for. Enquire today.