Every agency list on the internet is either paid placement or a directory scrape. This is not a list. It is the six things we would check if we were the ones hiring, written by a team that gets asked all six on almost every call.
6
questions to ask
4
types of partner
1
owner of your accounts, you
30m
to test any of it
First, the honest part
There is no single best agency, only the right shape for your stage.
A founder doing three million in e-commerce revenue and a company doing eighty million need almost opposite things. The first needs volume and someone who ships without being managed. The second needs process, governance and specialists.
We work with founders and small teams under twenty million in revenue who need marketing to actually happen every week. If you are above that, a network agency will serve you better and we will say so on the call.
Full-service retainer
One team runs content, visibility, site and pipeline together.
Best when nobody internally owns marketing and you need it to happen every week.
Specialist shop
Deep in one channel, usually paid social, SEO or GEO.
Best when you already have an in-house lead who can direct and stitch the work together.
Freelancer stack
A video editor, a writer, a developer, a media buyer, all separate.
Cheapest per hour and the most expensive in your time; you become the project manager.
Enterprise network agency
Large accounts, layered teams, quarterly planning cycles.
Best above roughly fifty million in revenue, where governance matters more than speed.
The checklist
Six things worth checking before you sign anything.
01
Somebody does the work every week
The most common failure is not bad strategy, it is nothing shipping. A deck lands, everyone agrees, and then two months pass with three posts and one landing page. Ask what leaves the building in a normal week, not what the plan looks like.
Ask them: How many assets went live for your smallest client last week?
02
The reporting comes from your accounts
If the numbers live in the agency's own dashboard and cannot be traced back to your ad manager, GA4 or CRM, they are marketing, not measurement. You should own every account and be able to log in and check any figure yourself.
Ask them: Which of my accounts does each number in the report come from?
03
They will name the failures
Content is a hit-rate business. Anyone who tells you most of what they make performs is either new or selling. A good partner will tell you the ratio of what they killed to what they scaled, and how fast they cut a loser.
Ask them: Of the last hundred assets you made, how many did you keep running?
04
AI use is disclosed, not hidden
Plenty of agencies now use AI generated creators and AI written copy. That is fine, and often the reason the volume is possible at all. What is not fine is finding out after launch. Ask what is synthetic, how it is labelled, and how they handle each platform's disclosure rules.
Ask them: Which parts of my content will be AI generated, and how are they labelled?
05
They cover the whole loop or say plainly that they do not
Content that drives traffic to a site that does not convert is wasted, and a beautiful site with no pipeline behind it is a brochure. Either one partner runs content, visibility, site and pipeline together, or you need to know exactly where their scope stops and who picks it up.
Ask them: Where does your scope end, and who owns the handoff after that?
06
You can leave without losing anything
Accounts, ad assets, creative files, domains and analytics should all be in your name from day one. Long lock-ins exist to protect the agency, not you. A partner confident in the work does not need a twelve-month cage.
Ask them: If I cancel next month, what do I keep and what breaks?
How we answer them
For what it is worth, here is where we land on our own checklist.
Weekly shipping
Content is made and posted every week across your channels, with a Friday report on what landed.
Your accounts, your numbers
Every figure traces to your ad manager, GA4 or CRM, and you own all of it.
We name the misses
Most of what we make does not perform. We show the kill rate rather than the highlight reel.
AI disclosed
Our creator videos are AI generated and labelled, per platform rules. Nothing synthetic goes out unmarked.
Whole loop covered
Content, GEO, website and lead generation run as one system, or one at a time if you prefer.
No cage
You can stop and keep every asset, account and page we built.