Most agency pitches sound the same. Same vocabulary, same confidence, same slides. The difference only shows three months later, once the invoice is paid. Below are the questions that surface it beforehand.
“Whose account is this?”
The ad account, the analytics and the website have to be in your name. The agency gets access, not ownership. This is the single most important question on the list.
If the relationship ends and the account belongs to the agency, you lose the entire history: conversion data, audiences, everything the platform learned. Starting again means months of collecting data from scratch.
“What do I see, and when?”
Ask whether you get access to a live dashboard or only see numbers once someone assembles them for you. The difference is large.
Ask what is in the report, too. If the answer revolves around impressions and clicks but goes vague on enquiries and sales, you already know what this work will be judged on.
“Who actually works on my account?”
The pitch is often run by someone experienced. The daily work is done by someone else. Ask directly who that is and how many accounts they handle at once.
“What happens in the first three months?”
A good answer is dull and specific: setup and data collection in month one, optimisation in month two, first conclusions in month three. A bad answer promises results immediately.
If someone promises specific results by a specific date without having seen your numbers, they will not know them after you sign either.
“How long is the contract and how does it end?”
Ask how long the commitment is and what happens if you stop. Do you keep the account? Do the automations keep running? Is documentation handed over?
A long contract is not inherently bad if the volume of work justifies it. But it has to be justified by something other than “that is how we do it”.
“Show me an account that did not go to plan”
The most revealing question on the list. Every agency has had a project that did not work. Anyone who cannot name one has either not done enough of them or is not being straight with you.
A good answer includes what they misjudged and what they do differently because of it.
What you have to bring yourself
The fair part: an agency cannot do good work if things are vague on your side. Before the call, get three things straight.
- What one customer is worth to you. Without it nobody can say whether advertising pays off.
- How fast you answer enquiries. The best campaign will not help if the reply takes three days.
- How much you are willing to spend before seeing a result. Collecting data costs money and that money does not come straight back.
If you would rather someone walked through this with you
Book a free 30-minute call. We look at what you have now and tell you honestly whether there is anything to gain here. If there is not, you hear it on the call, not three days later in a proposal.