15 Questions to Ask a Marketing Agency Before You Hire

Agency selection tends to play out the same way. Three firms present, all three decks look competent, everyone in the room is likeable, and the call comes down to price or to whoever seemed keenest. Six months later the reporting is stuffed with activity and nobody can point to a deal that came out of it.

I'm Sky Jordan, a consultant at Moriah, a LinkedIn Certified Marketing Partner. We are a LinkedIn marketing agency running personal branding, targeted outreach, and LinkedIn Ads together as one business engine for established B2B companies, which means I spend a good chunk of my week on the other side of this conversation, answering these questions rather than asking them. I also sit in on accounts that companies are moving to us from somewhere else, and those cases rhyme. The problem was hardly ever a bad agency. It was a badly scoped engagement that nobody pushed on at the start.

So, the questions to ask a marketing agency before hiring one. For each I've written down what it's actually testing and what a weak answer sounds like, because reading a list aloud gets you nowhere. You're listening for the difference between a firm that has done this before and a firm describing an intention.

Start by naming the business objective

Before the first meeting, write one sentence: what do you want this agency to produce? Qualified leads from a specific buyer segment. Visibility with private equity firms ahead of a process. Entry into a new market. Partnerships with a defined category of company. Recruitment for a role you keep failing to fill.

That sentence matters more than any question below, because an agency can only be judged against an objective. "More marketing" isn't one, and an agency asked to deliver it will deliver activity, which is what lands on your invoice. Vague brief in, vague proposals out, and you end up choosing on chemistry.

Questions about scope and what they actually do

1. Which of these services do you execute in-house, and which do you subcontract?

Plenty of agencies present a full-service offer and then hand the content to a freelance writer, the paid media to a specialist shop, and the outreach to an offshore team. Not automatically wrong. It becomes wrong when nobody tells you, because coordinating all those parties is the thing you thought you were paying for.

What a weak answer sounds like: "We have a network of trusted partners." Ask who writes the words, who presses publish, and who logs into the ad account. Names and roles.

2. If I only bought one part of this, would it work?

A trap, on purpose, and I mean that kindly. A firm that cheerfully says yes to any combination you name is selling à la carte, and on most channels the individual pieces underperform badly on their own.

Our answer is that we don't sell the pillars separately. Personal branding, targeted outreach, and LinkedIn Ads run together against one business objective, because that's how the channel performs. Content published with nothing activated around it buys attention and no business. Targeted outreach sent by someone with no content behind them lands on a profile that gives the prospect no reason to reply. We've watched both failure modes up close often enough to stop offering them.

You don't have to agree with that answer. You do want to hear the agency have one, instead of reshaping the offer around whatever budget you happened to mention.

3. What would you refuse to do for us?

A good agency has a scope it declines. It should be able to name the channels it doesn't run, the promises it won't make, and the kinds of client it turns down. We turn away companies whose buyers aren't genuinely active on LinkedIn, since there's nothing there for us to do well, and we don't work with very early-stage businesses that haven't settled what they sell.

What a weak answer sounds like: "We can do anything you need." A firm with no edges has no expertise, just capacity.

4. Do you sell training or done-for-you execution?

Quietly, this one sets your internal cost. "Enablement" and "workshops" often mean your team does the work after all, with guidance. Sometimes that's the right model. It's a very different draw on your people's time than a done-for-you retainer, and the price should reflect the difference.

Questions about the team and how the work runs

5. Who is on my account day to day, and did I meet them today?

The gap between the pitch team and the delivery team is one of the most common complaints in agency relationships. Ask to meet the people who will do the work, not just the partner who wins it. Then ask how many other accounts they carry.

6. What do you need from us every week, and from whom?

Every real engagement has a client-side cost. Someone has to supply subject-matter input, approve messaging, and, for personal branding, agree to publish from an executive's own profile. An agency that claims to need nothing from you is either about to produce generic content or about to stall in month two, waiting on an approval nobody scheduled.

Be honest with yourself here. If your CEO won't put their name on a post, say so in the first meeting. It changes what's possible, and any competent agency will tell you that plainly.

7. How does this actually start? Walk me through the first thirty days.

Listen for a real sequence: discovery of the business and the objective, target definition, message and content strategy, then execution. If the first thirty days get described entirely as "onboarding," ask what gets produced in that window and when the first output goes live.

8. Show me an account in our situation that did not work, and tell me why.

Case studies are curated. Failure teaches you more. An agency that has run enough accounts to hold a real point of view can describe the conditions under which its model underperforms. One that has never had a disappointing quarter either hasn't been doing this long or isn't being straight with you.

Questions about measurement

9. What will you report, and which of those numbers is a business outcome?

Impressions, reach, follower growth, engagement rate: all diagnostic. They tell you the machine is running. They aren't results. Ask which figures on the report connect to pipeline, and how the agency traces the path from the first piece of content a prospect saw to the meeting that eventually got booked.

10. What are the realistic benchmarks for our channel, and where do they come from?

Ask for the numbers the agency works to, and where it got them. Specificity here separates people who have run the channel from people who have read about it. So you know what a concrete answer sounds like, here's ours: cold email typically returns around 1 to 3 percent replies, LinkedIn messaging tends to land in the 10 to 15 percent range, and content published from an executive's personal profile performs roughly 5 to 10 times better than the same content from a company page. Those figures shape the strategy we propose. An agency that can't produce equivalent numbers for its own channel is guessing at your plan.

11. When will we know if this is working, and what will we look at?

Every channel has a lag. Personal branding compounds over months. Targeted outreach produces conversations within weeks. Ads produce data almost immediately and business outcomes more slowly. You want the agency to tell you which signal arrives when, so you're not judging a personal branding program on month one and cancelling something that was on track.

12. What happens if the numbers are bad at the review?

The answer you want describes a diagnosis, not a promise. Which variable gets changed first: targeting, message, or offer. Who makes that call. How long the next read takes. An agency that responds by guaranteeing outcomes is telling you it hasn't thought about the mechanics of being wrong.

Questions about commercials and commitment

13. What is the full price, and what is not included in it?

Ask for the retainer, then ask separately about ad spend, tooling, licences, production costs, and anything billed per asset. Comparing two proposals is meaningless until both are stated the same way.

For reference, our model is one monthly retainer covering all three pillars run together and executed in-house: $4,000 per month in the United States, £3,000 in the United Kingdom, and €3,000 in France. No per-post pricing, no separate tooling line.

14. What is the minimum term, and how do I leave?

Most buyers skip this one, and most of them regret skipping it. Find out the notice period, whether the term auto-renews, and what happens to your accounts, content, and audience data on exit.

We run with no commitment: no minimum term, no lock-in, cancel whenever you want. I'm not raising that to sell you anything. It's a useful reference point when the proposal in front of you asks for twelve months signed up front. Long terms are sometimes justified. They should always be explained.

15. Who owns what we make together?

Content, ad accounts, audience lists, creative assets. Settle ownership before the engagement, not during the offboarding call. If the agency's account structure means you can't take the advertising history with you, better to find that out while you still have leverage.

The questions a good agency should ask you

Evaluation runs both ways, and this is the most reliable signal in the whole process. Listen to what the agency asks in that first meeting.

• What business objective are you actually trying to hit this year?
• Who specifically buys from you, and what triggers them to start looking?
• What has already been tried here, and what happened?
• How long is your sales cycle, and who signs?
• Which executives are willing to be visible, and to what degree?
• Are your buyers genuinely present and active on this channel?

If the first meeting is mostly the agency presenting, you have your answer. A firm that arrives ready to scope before it understands your objective will sell you its standard package and call it a strategy.

Red flags in the answers

A few responses should end the conversation, or at least send you back to the shortlist.

• Guaranteed results. Nobody controls your market, your offer, or your sales team's follow-up. Guarantees are either heavily caveated in the contract or dishonest.
• A proposal delivered before any discovery. The plan was written for someone else.
• Vanity metrics presented as outcomes. If the case study leads with impressions, ask what it produced.
• Named clients they won't let you speak to. Logos are cheap. A reference call isn't.
• A scope that expands to match whatever you asked for. Enthusiasm is not capability.
• No point of view. An agency that agrees with everything you say about your own market has nothing to add to it.

How we answer these at Moriah

Since this is our list, here's ours. We run one offer. Personal branding, targeted outreach, and LinkedIn Ads operate in parallel against a single business objective you define with us during discovery. Everything is executed in-house. We're a LinkedIn Certified Marketing Partner, the retainer is one number with nothing hidden behind it, and there's no commitment.

We'll also tell you when we're not the right call. If your buyers aren't meaningfully active on LinkedIn, or your leadership won't publish under their own names, we'll say so in the first conversation rather than sell you a year of work that was never going to land. That's the standard I'd hold any agency on your shortlist to, us included.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most important questions to ask a marketing agency? Three reveal the most: what they execute in-house versus subcontract, what the full price includes and excludes, and what the minimum term is. Those answers tell you who actually does your work, what it truly costs, and how easily you can walk away.

How many agencies should I evaluate before hiring? Three is usually right for a B2B services engagement. Fewer leaves you no basis for comparison, and more turns the process into months of meetings while the objective you were trying to hit sits untouched.

What questions should I ask before hiring a marketing agency for LinkedIn specifically? Ask whether they run personal branding, targeted outreach, and ads together or only one of the three, what reply rates they work to, whether content publishes from executive profiles or the company page, and who writes in your leadership's voice.

Should I ask a marketing agency for references? Yes, and ask for a client in a comparable situation rather than the best-performing account. Ask that reference what the first ninety days felt like and what they'd change about how the engagement was set up.

What is a reasonable monthly retainer for a B2B marketing agency? It depends on scope and on whether execution is in-house. One concrete reference point: Moriah charges $4,000 per month in the US, £3,000 in the UK, and €3,000 in France for all three LinkedIn pillars run together and delivered in-house.

How do I tell if an agency actually specializes or just claims to? Ask what they refuse to do and which clients they turn away. Genuine specialists have clear edges and can describe the conditions under which their model doesn't work. Generalists tend to answer that they can handle whatever you need.

Should I sign a long-term contract with a marketing agency? Only if the agency can explain why the term is necessary for the work rather than for its own revenue forecasting. Ask whether a no-commitment arrangement is available, since some firms, ours included, run without a minimum term.

What questions should I ask about reporting? Ask which numbers on the report are business outcomes rather than activity, how often you receive it, who presents it, and what specifically changes if the figures come in below plan at the first review.

How long before a marketing agency delivers results? It varies by channel. Targeted outreach produces conversations within weeks, paid campaigns produce usable data almost immediately, and personal branding compounds over several months. Agree in advance which signal you'll judge at which point.

What should I ask about who owns the work? Confirm in writing who owns the content, the advertising accounts, the audience and targeting data, and the creative assets, and establish what transfers to you if the engagement ends. Settle it before signing, not during offboarding.