How to Hire a Marketing Agency, Part 3: The Questions to Ask Before Signing

Why the order matters

The first answer decides whether the rest of the conversation is worth having, so these are asked in order, and the first one can be checked tonight without calling anyone.

• Who owns the website address, the site itself, the account that keeps it online, and the Google Business Profile, and does the business get the top-level login on day one? Check it tonight at wherever the address was bought (GoDaddy is the common one) and at business.google.com.
• What does the monthly report count? Calls and web requests by source, booked jobs, cost per booked job, and the review count. Not how many people saw something.
• Who does the work, by name, and has that person run marketing for a service business in a market the size of Lucas County?
• Which two current clients are this size, in a market this size, and can they be called? A wall of national logos says nothing about a $3 million plumber in Maumee.
• What is the contract term, what does it cost to leave, and does it renew on its own? Month-to-month with thirty days’ notice exists, so a twelve-month lock-in is a choice, and the owner can ask why.
• What will not happen in the first ninety days? Showing up on Google will not, no matter who is working on it, and an honest agency says so.
• What did the agency ask before quoting? No questions about sales, capacity, service area, seasons, or where the last twenty jobs came from means the quote was written before the call.

How to read the proposal

A proposal is a list of activities with a price under it, and the owner’s job is to translate each activity into the number it is supposed to move and the month it is supposed to move it. “Monthly SEO” (the industry word for showing up on Google) means nothing on its own. “Two town pages published per month, the Google listing’s categories corrected in month one, and a review request sent to every closed job, reported as reviews per month and booked jobs from search” means something, and it can be checked.

The proposal should also say what the agency will not do and why, and what it needs from the owner each month (photos, job data, a signature on a page) to deliver at all. An agency that needs nothing from the client is either doing generic work or has not thought about it yet. Where the proposal names a result, ask which number it changes and by when. Where it names an activity, ask what the activity is for. Where it names a software subscription, ask whose name is on the account and what happens to the data on the way out.

Walk away when

The first three end the conversation on their own. The rest belong on the list, though none is as decisive.

• A guaranteed result, whether calls, rankings, or sales. Nobody controls Google’s results page or the weather.
• Refusing to hand over the top-level logins, or offering to “handle all that” so the owner never needs one.
• A website built on a system only that agency can edit, usually presented as a convenience.
• Reports built on how many people saw something rather than on booked jobs.
• A plan that reads identically to the one shown to the shop down the road.
• A quote delivered before any questions were asked.
• A sales rep who cannot place Holland, Sylvania, or Perrysburg on a map without looking.

One thing cannot be claimed cleanly. There is no published benchmark for what a marketing agency should cost a $3 million service company in Lucas County, and anyone who quotes one, including the author of this guide, is guessing. What can be known is the shop’s own cost of marketing and its own cost per booked job by source, and those two figures will judge any vendor more fairly than an industry average.