Hiring a marketing agency is expensive and risky. You’ll depend on them for lead generation, ad spend, and your brand reputation. To avoid getting ripped off, focus on three things: verify the founder or strategist is actively doing marketing (not just managing), demand they track real business metrics like leads and customer acquisition cost (not impressions or clicks), and require detailed reports on exactly what work they completed each month. Most agencies will fail at least one of these tests.
Who’s Running the Agency
The person running the agency sets the tone for how everything operates. This is usually the founder, but whoever’s in charge matters more than you think.
The biggest issue is when the person running the agency is a business person, not a marketer. If they’re focused on operations, finance, and scaling the business instead of actually doing digital marketing, that creates problems.
You want an agency where the founder is a complete marketing nerd. Someone who’s doing digital marketing every day and is motivated by finding new ways to help businesses grow. That energy affects the entire team.
Check if the founder has hands-on marketing experience. Did they run successful campaigns themselves? Do they have certifications? Do they produce marketing content or maintain a strong personal brand? These signal someone who stays current with tactics and trends.
Ask if the founder still reviews strategies or analytics regularly. If they’ve moved entirely into operations and finance, you’re getting a generic manager instead of a strategist.
Who’s Running Your Strategy
Beyond the founder, you need to know who’s in charge of your specific campaign strategy.
In many agencies, you get handed to an account manager who follows a blueprint. These people aren’t thinking creatively about your business. They’re executing a checklist.
Talk to whoever will be running your strategy. Ask them these questions:
- What are you most excited about right now?
- What are you doing differently this year than last year?
- What experiments are you running where you don’t know the results yet?
If this person isn’t geeking out about how to get you more customers, there’s a good chance they’ll waste your money. Real marketers are constantly testing new approaches and staying on top of changes in platforms and algorithms.
Track Performance, Not Vanity Metrics
Marketing is unpredictable. No agency should promise you an exact number of customers.
But they should be able to tell you how they’ll know if the campaign is working. Ask them: “How will you know if the campaign is successful?” and “What will we do if it’s unsuccessful?”
Make sure how they measure success aligns with how you measure success.
One of the biggest mistakes is tracking success by impressions or clicks. Just because people see your ads or visit your website doesn’t mean it’s resulting in more customers.
Impressions, clicks, follower counts, likes, and page views are vanity metrics. They look good, but don’t prove business impact. An agency can inflate these numbers without delivering actual customers or revenue.
Instead, insist on tracking metrics tied to growth:
- Leads generated
- Conversion rates
- Cost per acquisition (CPA)
- Return on ad spend (ROAS) based on actual sales
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Revenue growth
Ask how many customers were truly new. Sometimes up to 70% of reported sales would have happened anyway. Only by tracking new customer acquisition can you see the real impact.
At TJ Digital, we focus on real business outcomes. Our AI SEO services are designed to increase qualified leads and customer conversions, not just traffic numbers. We track what actually matters to your bottom line.
Demand to See the Work
Tracking performance alone isn’t enough. You also need to track deliverables.
As an agency, it’s easy to do nothing and convince clients the campaign is going well. There are hundreds of metrics you can show and hundreds of ways to slice each metric. Even if you do nothing, numbers naturally go up and down.
Agencies highlight the gains and ignore the losses. When they can’t ignore the losses, they blame changes in the platform or Google’s algorithm. You have no way to know if they’re being honest.
Once you’re a few months into a campaign, it’s painful to leave. Many agencies make their money by convincing clients they’re getting something they’re not.
That’s why you should track deliverables. You should know exactly what work your agency is doing on a monthly basis.
Performance matters most. But if your agency isn’t showing you every task they completed, you should wonder why.
I talk with business owners every week who are paying an agency. When I ask what their agency is doing for them, 70 to 80% of the time, they don’t really know. They might say, “I think they’re optimizing our SEO,” but can’t explain what that means.
Most of the time, this is by design. Many agencies realize that if you counted up the actual hours they’re putting into your campaign, you’d discover you’re paying $300 or $400 per hour for work handled by a junior team member.
From the start, document exactly what they promised. Create a list of campaign launches, creative assets, tests, blog posts, and other deliverables. Require updates on each item. Compare this list against invoices and status reports.
Ask for logs of hours or detailed task reports. Request information about who on the team is doing each task and how many hours it takes.
Transparent agencies welcome letting clients see progress. If an agency resists showing you their work, that’s a red flag.
At TJ Digital, we provide complete transparency. You have access to our task management system, where you can see exactly what we’re working on and track all team conversations. We believe you deserve to know where every dollar goes.
Ask About Failure Upfront
Good marketers don’t assume every initiative will succeed. They plan for what happens when something doesn’t work.
Ask these questions upfront:
- How will we know if this campaign is failing?
- What contingency plan do you have if we don’t meet our goals?
This forces both sides to align on success criteria. For example: “If leads per month fall below X by month 3, we’ll change strategy.”
Make sure the campaign’s KPIs and timelines are spelled out. A transparent agency should have benchmarks and alternative tactics ready if initial results fall short.
If the agency can’t tell you how they’ll react when a test underperforms, that’s a red flag.
Know Who’s Actually Doing the Work
High agency fees only make sense if senior experts handle the work.
A common issue is being quoted senior-level rates while the actual work is done by junior staff. An agency might use a senior team member for the pitch but assign a junior member to do the work.
You could be paying top dollar for entry-level execution.
To protect yourself, clarify who will do the work and at what rates. Request a breakdown of the team and their rates.
Ask about team composition. Who will do daily tasks like ad optimization or content creation? Junior or senior specialists?
Check if rates match roles. Are you paying $300 to $400 per hour for tasks that a $75 per hour junior could do?
Require time estimates. Have the agency forecast how many hours each team member will spend on your account.
Review deliverable quality. If the work is basic despite a high price tag, it suggests a junior handled it, or no one did.
Demand transparency in staffing and pricing. This helps you spot cases where you’re subsidizing the agency’s training program.
Verify They’re Not Taking Credit for Nothing
Agencies sometimes take credit for improvements that would have happened anyway.
They might attribute normal market growth or seasonal increases to their efforts. Without proper testing, an agency might just be taking credit for conversions that would have occurred without them.
To check if they earned the credit:
- Verify claimed gains. If conversions jumped, ask how they measured it. Were there holdout tests or attribution checks?
- Request task logs showing completed work and team hours
- Ask for data exports from ad accounts or analytics to verify results with raw data
- Compare timelines. Natural fluctuations like holiday spikes should match past periods
Don’t just accept monthly reports at face value. Cross-check against your own data and agreed deliverables.
Work With an Agency That Gets It
There are great agencies out there. The problem is that too many agencies rip people off, which makes it harder for everyone.
At TJ Digital, we built our entire business around transparency. You’ll know exactly what we’re doing and why. We don’t lock you into long-term contracts. We ask for a three-month commitment, but if you’re unhappy in the first month, we’ll refund your payment.
We’re a founder-led agency. I’m actively involved in strategy for every client. My team and I are marketing nerds who stay on top of AI optimization, algorithm changes, and what’s working right now.
We track real metrics that matter to your business. And we show you every task we complete.
If you want to see how we work, get a free digital marketing audit. We’ll review your website and current marketing efforts. You’ll get a detailed video and report showing what we’d do to get you more customers. No credit card required. No obligation.
If you have a marketing budget of at least $750 per month, we can probably help. And if we can’t, we’ll tell you upfront.