Every agency sounds impressive in a pitch meeting. The slides are polished, the case studies are flattering, and everyone at the table seems confident. The problem is that a pitch is a performance, and performances are rehearsed. If you want to know what working with an agency will actually feel like six months from now, you have to ask questions the deck was not built to answer. Here are twelve of them, along with the answers that should reassure you and the ones that should send you back to your car.
Why does the pitch meeting tell you so little?
Sales conversations select for the people who are good at sales conversations. The person charming you across the table is often not the person who will write your content, manage your ads, or answer your emails in month four. Case studies show the wins and bury the misses. And almost every agency, good or bad, uses the same vocabulary: data-driven, full-service, ROI-focused. Words like these cannot separate a strong partner from a weak one, so your questions have to do that work instead.
Who does the work, and what happens first?
1. Who will actually work on my account? Ask for names and roles, not departments. Find out whether the work is done in-house or subcontracted, and whether the person in the pitch will still be involved after you sign. A vague answer here usually means your account will be handed to whoever has capacity.
2. What happens in the first month? A competent agency can describe its onboarding in concrete steps: an audit, access to your analytics and Google Business Profile, a keyword or audience plan, and a baseline report you can compare against later. If month one sounds like "we hit the ground running," ask what, specifically, gets running.
3. How do you report, and how often? Ask to see a real report from a current client, with the name redacted. You are checking whether it tracks things you care about, such as calls, form fills, and booked work, or hides behind impressions and reach.
4. What do I own if we leave? This one matters more than most owners realize. Your domain, your website, your ad accounts, your analytics, and your content should belong to you, full stop. Some agencies build sites on proprietary platforms or run ads from accounts you can never access, which turns leaving into starting over.
Which questions test whether an agency is honest?
5. Why might this not work for my business? Every honest marketer has seen campaigns underperform. An agency that can name real risks, such as a competitive market, a thin budget, or a website that needs work first, is showing you how it thinks. An agency that promises smooth sailing is showing you a script.
6. Have you worked with businesses like mine? References in your industry, or at least your category of business, are worth more than a wall of logos. Ask what changed for those clients and over what period. A documented example, like our Resilience Roofing case study, should describe the starting point and the timeline, not just the ending.
7. What is realistic in the first six months? For SEO in particular, meaningful movement usually takes months rather than weeks, and any agency that suggests otherwise is negotiating with reality on your behalf. We have written a candid breakdown of how long SEO takes in the Vancouver market if you want a benchmark for what a truthful answer sounds like.
8. What does a typical client relationship look like after a year? Ask about retention. Agencies that keep clients can tell you why clients stay. Agencies that churn through clients tend to change the subject.
What should you ask about money and contracts?
9. What are your contract terms, and why? Some commitment is reasonable, since strategies need time to work. But the reason behind the term matters. "SEO needs at least a few months to show results" is a fair rationale for a defined initial term. A long lock-in with steep exit penalties is a business model, not a strategy.
10. What exactly does the monthly fee include? Get the deliverables in writing: how many pages, posts, or campaigns, what technical work is covered, and how much time is allocated to your account. Vague scopes produce vague work.
11. What costs extra, and when would I find out? Ad spend, landing pages, photography, and software fees often sit outside the retainer. None of that is wrong, but surprises are. You should be able to see pricing published openly or at least receive a complete picture before signing, because an agency that is cagey about numbers before the contract rarely becomes more transparent after it.
12. How will you decide where my budget goes? The answer should reference your goals and your data, not a standard package. If every client gets the same allocation, you are buying a template.
Which answers are red flags?
Some responses should end the conversation regardless of how good everything else sounds:
- Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed results. No one controls Google, and Google itself says so. A guarantee is either naive or dishonest, and neither is a good trait in a partner.
- Secret methods. "Proprietary techniques we cannot reveal" usually translates to nothing special, or worse, tactics that violate search guidelines and put your site at risk.
- You own nothing. If the website, content, or ad accounts stay with the agency when you leave, the low monthly price is an illusion. You are renting your own marketing.
- Pressure to sign today. Legitimate agencies expect you to compare options. Urgency is a tactic used on people who might say no after thinking.
What do green flags sound like?
Good agencies tend to share a few habits. They ask more questions about your business than they answer about theirs, because a plan built without understanding your margins and capacity is decoration. They put scope, ownership, and exit terms in plain writing. They name a realistic timeline and explain what early progress looks like before revenue shows up. They show you an unpolished report, not just a highlight reel. And they are comfortable saying "that depends" when a question genuinely depends, which is more often than pitch decks admit.
None of this requires the agency to be large, local, or expensive. It requires them to be transparent, and transparency is easy to test with the twelve questions above.
Frequently asked questions
What questions should I ask an SEO company before hiring?
Focus on ownership, method, and timeline: who does the work, what happens in the first ninety days, how results will be reported, what you keep if you leave, and what they consider realistic in six months. An SEO company that answers all five plainly is already ahead of most of the field.
How long should a marketing agency contract be?
A defined initial term of several months is common and defensible, because most strategies need time to compound. Be cautious with long lock-ins, automatic renewals with narrow cancellation windows, and exit penalties. The contract should make it easy to stay because the work is good, not hard to leave because the paperwork is.
How do I know if a marketing agency is legitimate?
Check for verifiable client references, reviews across more than one platform, real names and faces behind the business, and a willingness to show current work samples. Then confirm the ownership question in writing: your domain, site, content, and ad accounts should remain yours no matter what happens to the relationship.
Is a cheap agency ever worth it?
Sometimes, if the scope is honest about what the price buys. A small retainer that covers a focused set of tasks can be genuinely useful. The danger is a low price attached to a big promise, since that gap is usually closed with automation, thin outsourced work, or simply not doing much at all.
Interviewing agencies for your own business? Bring these questions along, and if you would like to see how we answer them, book a free strategy session. We will walk through your situation, tell you what we would do and why, and you can judge the answers for yourself.