What questions should I ask a marketing agency?

1. What number do you report, and who counts it?

The worrying answer is leads, calls, impressions or traffic. None of those pay a truck. A lead is a stranger who filled in a form; a booked job is money.

Ask for booked jobs and cost per booked job, per source, counted from your own books rather than their dashboard. An agency that cannot point at work that got done and paid for and say where it came from cannot tell you whether the fee earned itself.

2. Does my ad budget go on my card or through your invoice?

Through theirs, with the markup unstated, is the worrying answer. When the fee and the spend sit on one invoice you cannot see which is which, and cutting the budget cuts their margin, so nobody suggests it.

Your budget on your own card, unmarked-up, with the management fee separate, is the honest structure. It is also how you keep the ad account when you leave.

3. Who owns the ad account, the pixel and the landing pages when we part?

A vague answer is the red flag, in either direction. Some agencies keep what they build and say so; some promise you own everything and mean the login. Both are workable if they are written down before you sign.

Get the ownership of what they build and what you brought to them, and the handover process, in the contract. Not at offboarding.

4. What happens in week three?

A monthly report is the worrying answer. That is a subscription, not a service. Ask who touches the account each week, what they change, and how you would know.

The honest answer names a person and a cadence. Search terms reviewed weekly, bad leads disputed inside the window, reviews replied to within a day.

5. Show me a client in my trade.

Not home services. Your trade. HVAC is not roofing is not dental, and the seasons, the ad rules and the lead economics differ in each. An agency that offers a case study from a different trade has not run one of yours, and you are the pilot.

If they have no client in your trade, that is not disqualifying. Saying so plainly is the good answer. Pretending is the bad one.

6. How long is the contract, and how do I leave?

Twelve months with a build fee you forfeit is the structure to walk away from. It exists because the agency expects you to want to leave before month twelve.

A short term with a real notice period, and a written handover, is what a confident agency offers. Ask what leaving costs before you ask what staying costs.

How to know whether marketing is working

One number, every month: cost per booked job by source, from your own books. If it is falling, it is working. If nobody can produce it, nothing anybody says about impressions matters. The calculator linked below works it out.