12 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Growth Agency

Before hiring a growth agency, ask how its fee works, who will do the work, and how it will measure progress. You also need to know what happens in the first month and what you keep if the engagement ends.

Ask for names, examples, and written terms so you can compare answers across candidates. The 12 questions below cover pricing, process, measurement, and access, with strong and weak answers for each.

Still deciding whether an agency is the right kind of support? Read growth agency vs in-house hire first. If that decision is settled, use these questions to evaluate the proposals.

The short version: Ask every growth agency how pricing works, who will own the account, what happens in the first month, and how results will be measured. Request names, examples, and written terms rather than accepting broad promises. The 12 questions below help you compare proposals and make clear what access, work, and information you keep if the relationship ends.

Which 5 Questions Tell You the Most?

Use one call to ask 5 things: how the agency prices, what happens in the first 30 days, how quickly it stops losing work, which metric leads reports, and who owns the accounts and data. Those answers reveal incentives, speed, and working habits faster than a case study.

Question	Green flag	Red flag
How do you price, and why?	Flat fee, model defended openly	Percentage of spend, no alternative
What happens in the first 30 days?	Diagnostic before scaling spend	"We launch campaigns week 1"
How fast do you kill losing work?	Written thresholds, acted on in days	"We give everything a full quarter"
What metric do you report on?	CAC, revenue, pipeline	Impressions, reach, engagement
Do I own my accounts and data?	Yes, full admin from day 1	Agency-owned accounts you'd migrate off

Use a marketing agency RFP to give each finalist the same scope and evaluation criteria.

The theme sections below include the remaining 7 questions. You do not need specialist knowledge to ask them, but the agency needs specific answers. Start with how it earns its fee.

What Should You Ask About Incentives and Pricing?

Ask 3 things here: how the agency prices and why that model, what happens to the fee if your spend doubles, and what the exit looks like. You are testing one thing: whether the agency makes more money when you get results or simply when you spend more.

Question 1: How do you price, and why that model? Percentage-of-spend agencies typically charge 10 to 20% of your ad budget, according to Feedbird. That model pays the agency more every time your budget goes up. A good answer defends the model out loud and offers a flat-fee alternative. A bad answer treats the percentage as a law of nature.

Question 2: What happens to your fee if my spend doubles? The good answer is “nothing, unless the workload changes, and here is how we would scope that.” The bad answer is a fee that scales automatically with budget, because at that point your wins and their invoice point in different directions.

Question 3: How long is the contract, and what does leaving look like? Good: a short initial term, month-to-month after that, and 30-day notice. Bad: 12-month lock-in, 90-day notice, auto-renew buried on page 6. Confident agencies keep the door unlocked. We wrote a channel-specific version of this screening in how to choose a paid media agency.

What Should You Ask About Process and Cadence?

Ask what happens in the first 30 days, who makes decisions between calls, and how quickly the agency stops underperforming work. Once the fees are clear, these questions show what the money buys day to day. Without a regular decision schedule, problems can drift until the budget is gone.

Question 4: What happens in the first 30 days? A real answer describes an audit, a diagnosis, and a prioritized plan before spend scales. A weak answer jumps straight to launching, which means they plan to learn on your budget.

Question 5: How often do we talk, and who decides what between calls? You want a weekly rhythm plus a named owner for decisions that cannot wait. If everything queues for a monthly check-in, your account moves at 1/4 the speed of the market.

Question 6: How fast do you kill something that is not working? The good answer includes actual thresholds and a window measured in days. “We like to give things time to mature” sounds patient. In practice it is a slow drain with a friendly face.

What Should You Ask About Measurement?

Ask what metric the reporting centers on, how they handle attribution when sources disagree, and what failure would look like. Measurement is where weak agencies hide. Roughly a third of marketing leaders say they can show the short-term impact of spend quantitatively, according to The CMO Survey, so an agency claiming perfect clarity is overselling certainty.

Question 7: What metric will your reports center on, and what will they leave out? Good: cost per acquisition, revenue, pipeline, stated up front. Bad: impressions and engagement, which measure activity rather than outcomes. The second half of the question matters too; a serious agency names what it cannot measure.

Question 8: How do you handle attribution when the numbers disagree? Disagreement is normal. A good answer compares platform data with blended results and explains the gaps. “Our dashboard handles it” avoids the question rather than explaining how the team makes a decision.

Question 9: What does failure look like, and when would you tell me? This one rattles weak agencies. Strong ones answer with checkpoints: “if the core thesis has not shown signal by day 60, we tell you and change the plan.” If they claim no client has ever churned unhappy, end the call politely.

What Should You Ask About Team and Access?

Ask who works on your account by name, whether you own your accounts and data outright, and how many clients your lead carries. The gap between the pitch team and the delivery team is the most common bait and switch in this industry, and it is fully preventable with 3 questions.

Question 10: Who runs my account day to day, by name and seniority? Good: the people on the sales call are the people on the work, named before signing. Bad: “you will be assigned a pod after kickoff.” Pods are where senior pitches go to become junior execution.

Question 11: Do I own my ad accounts, data, and creative? The only acceptable answer is yes, with full admin access from day 1. Agency-owned accounts create switching costs you pay for monthly. If you leave, you start from zero history.

Question 12: How many clients does my account lead carry? You want a specific, single-digit number. An account lead spread across 15 clients gives you about 2 focused hours a week. The dodge (“it varies by scope”) is the data point.

How Do We Answer These Ourselves?

We charge a flat monthly fee that changes only when the scope changes, never a percentage of spend. Apply the same questions to us. After the initial engagement, contracts run month-to-month with 30 days notice. Clients hold full admin on every ad account, data source, and creative asset from day 1.

Our first 30 days are diagnostic: audit, growth model, prioritized plan, then scaled spend. The cadence is weekly, with written kill thresholds agreed before launch. Reporting centers on CAC and revenue, and the senior people who managed $50M+ in paid media are the ones in your Slack, not a pitch-only cast. The full scope of what we run is on our services page.

These answers get tested hardest on paid accounts, so judge our paid media practice by the same list.

Before the contract stage, review agency contract terms to negotiate and the red flags that show up in the sales process. Use the answers to identify anything that still needs to be written into the scope.

We can help you think through which questions matter most for your situation. Bring your growth goal, budget, and the work your team cannot currently cover. We’ll discuss the support you need and answer the same questions about our own approach.

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