How to choose a marketing agency (and the questions that expose the snake oil)

Yes, we see the irony: a marketing agency writing a guide on how to choose a marketing agency. It’s a bit like asking your barber whether you need a haircut. The elephant is in the room, and we’ve gone ahead and poured it a coffee. But here’s the thing: because we work inside this industry, we know exactly what hides behind the pretty slide decks and the big promises. So if you’ve ever typed “how to choose a marketing agency” into Google and gotten back a wall of generic advice, this is the checklist we wish every client walked in with. Including the ones who end up choosing someone else.

Red flags: spotting the snake oil in the first 15 minutes

Some signals should set off alarms no matter how convincing the rest of the conversation sounds:

“We guarantee virality.” Nobody can guarantee virality. The platforms themselves can’t, and they own the algorithm. Anyone promising results they don’t control is selling you a lottery ticket with a logo on it.
“We have a secret formula.” There are no secret formulas in marketing. There is systematic work, testing, and decisions made on data. The “secret” is usually a template recycled across 40 clients.
You don’t get access to your own ad accounts. This is the most serious one. Your Google Ads and Meta accounts are yours: your history, your data, funded with your money. An agency that holds them hostage is telling you it doesn’t want you to see what happens inside. Or that it wants leaving to hurt.
Reports you can’t understand. If the monthly report is a slide full of “reach” and “engagement” with no number tied to money, it’s not a report. It’s fog. A good report answers one question: how much went in, and what came out.

The questions that separate the pros from the pitch decks

On the first call, ask these and watch not just the answer, but how quickly it arrives:

“Who actually works on my account?” At many agencies, the senior does the pitch and the junior hired last month does the execution. You want the name of the person who looks at your account daily, not an org chart.
“How do you measure success?” The right answer includes words like ROAS (return on ad spend: how much comes back for every unit you put in), cost per acquisition, leads, sales. The wrong answer includes “awareness” with no number attached.
“Show me a before and after on the same account.” Not a case study about one lucky client. An account they took over from someone else, with the numbers from before and after. More on this in a second.
“If we part ways, what do I keep?” The right answer: everything. Accounts, data, audiences, campaign history. Anything else is a hostage situation with a smile.

Why a before/after on the same account is the most honest proof

Every agency has one star client with beautiful numbers. The problem: you can’t tell how much is skill and how much is context. Great product, growing market, generous budget. An account takeover removes the excuses. Same business, same product, same market. The only variable that changes is who’s driving.

A concrete example from our own portfolio: MINA, the immersive art museum in Iași. We took over an account that was already running, which means there was a measurable “before”. Within 4 months, ROAS doubled and the cost per ticket sold dropped by roughly 70%. Same institution, same city, different way of working. That’s the one comparison you can’t put makeup on.

When you evaluate an agency, ask for exactly this kind of proof. A young team might not have it yet, and that alone isn’t disqualifying. But if they dodge the question, add another alarm to the pile.

Why the cheapest offer is usually the most expensive

Let’s do the math nobody does on the sales call. Say you have 3,000 euros a month in ad budget. Agency A charges 300 euros and burns your budget on campaigns set up in 20 minutes and checked once a month. Agency B charges 800 euros and gets twice as much out of the same budget.

With Agency A you “save” 500 euros in fees and lose thousands in results that never arrive. The fee is the small part of the equation; the media budget is the big part. A bad pilot in a cheap plane is still a crash.

That doesn’t mean expensive automatically equals good. It means price should be your last filter, not your first. Verify the proof, then negotiate the number.

How to choose a marketing agency, the short version

The fridge-magnet edition:

Run from guaranteed virality and secret formulas.
Your accounts stay yours, with full access, from day one.
Get the name of the person actually working on your account.
Ask for a before/after on the same account, with numbers.
Reports must connect money in to money out.
Compare offers on expected results, not on fees.

And one final test, maybe the best one: how they behave on that first call. If they talk more about their awards than about your business, you already have your answer.

Want a straight answer before you sign with anyone? Let’s talk - the first call is an hour of honest diagnosis, not a pitch.