How do you choose a marketing agency that best matches the specifics of your needs? Choosing the right partner is crucial to your business's success. It's a question every business owner or marketing manager asks themselves when facing the decision to start working with an external team.
The agency market in Poland is large and varied. You'll find small studios offering a comprehensive range of services, as well as large media houses handling hundreds of clients at once. Some will talk about likes, others about ROAS and business goals. Some work on your own ad account, others on theirs, giving you no insight into what's happening with your budget. How do you assess real competence in all this and make a good decision?
We've prepared 10 key points for you to check before signing a contract. Treat them as a checklist: the more questions you ask before starting the partnership, the fewer surprises await you along the way.
The Client's Ad Account or the Agency's? A Key Choice Before You Start Working Together
Will advertising activities be run on your company's ad accounts, or the agency's?
In our view, working on clients' own ad accounts is a duty. The practice where an interactive agency creates an ad account for the client, manages it without giving the client access, and often doesn't even disclose what budgets are being spent on ads, is a practice that rules such an agency out. With this approach to access, it becomes hard to audit the agency's work, you don't have full control over what happens on the accounts, and if you switch agencies you lose all the historical data, events and audiences you've built up.
When choosing an agency, pay close attention to who will own the ad accounts.
Analytics Ecosystem and Advertising Campaign Performance Metrics
Does the agency plan, before starting activities, to review your existing analytics ecosystem, or build a new, correctly set up one, for measuring the micro and macro conversions that matter?
Before spending even a single euro on advertising, you need to make sure the right analytics ecosystem is in place, one that allows you to verify the effectiveness of your activities as fully as possible. A good marketing agency always audits the current state of your analytics before launching a campaign, and proposes key performance indicators (KPIs) matched to your company's business profile.
When choosing an agency, it's worth asking how they see this for your business specifically: which analytics tools they'll use, which micro and macro conversions will be set up, and how they'll carry out the configuration.
Marketing Agency Reviews: How to Verify Them
Does the agency have genuine reviews online from the clients it serves?
It's not a 100% reliable way to vet an agency, but it's definitely a factor worth considering. When choosing an agency, check its reviews on its Google Business Profile and look elsewhere online too. Ask the agency for case studies or recommendations from clients in your industry: experience working with companies of a similar profile is a big plus.
If there are no reviews, they look fake, or there are plenty of negative ones among them, think twice about whether this is an agency you want to work with.
Business Goals Instead of Vanity Metrics: What to Expect From a Good Agency
Does the agency talk to you about how it plans to achieve your main business goals (e.g. e-commerce sales), or does it focus on campaigns for page/post likes or simply gathering clicks?
Sure, page likes, post likes on social media and the number of clicks are meaningful metrics that should be measured. But at the end of the day, are likes really what matters most to you? You probably care more about achieving business goals, such as e-commerce sales or generating valuable leads. A marketing agency that focuses on marketing strategy and business goals, rather than vanity metrics, is a partner worth building a long-term relationship with.
Pay attention to whether the agency you're talking to discusses achieving the goals that matter to you, or stays wrapped up in its own world, talking about Facebook likes or building your image.
Terms for Ending Your Partnership With a Marketing Agency
How can you end the partnership with the agency if needed, and are there any restrictions that are hard to meet?
In our view, tying a partnership down with long contract terms, penalties for terminating the agreement, or notice periods of several months, is an unfair and pointless practice. No contract can hold a partnership together as well as simply effective activities and visible growth.
Ask what ending the partnership looks like with the agency you're talking to.
Ad Creatives and the Scope of a Marketing Agency's Services
As part of the service, will you have access to the agency's designers, who'll work together with the marketing team to prepare ad creatives?
In most cases, to run advertising campaigns you'll also need creatives that catch the eye, stay consistent with your brand's visual identity and content marketing strategy, and have the potential to achieve your business goals. A good number of these visuals should be produced, so you can test different kinds of messaging.
Access to a dedicated agency designer, working alongside a dedicated marketing specialist on optimising your ads, will certainly translate into better advertising results.
A Dedicated Specialist: The Foundation of a Good Agency Partnership
Will you get a dedicated specialist, responsible for delivering results on your account, right from the start of the partnership?
OK, so you're talking to the agency, and the meetings probably include a department manager, a New Business Manager and maybe a few other people. But ask about the person who'll ultimately be responsible for delivering your results. The person you can praise for a job well done, or “tell off” for a worse month. It's very important that such a dedicated person is actually assigned to you. That way, no one at the agency can dodge responsibility.
It's also worth asking how many projects this dedicated person is responsible for. If you'd be just one of 30 or 50 clients for that person, they're unlikely to be able to give you enough attention.
Transparency and Reporting on Marketing Results
What does reporting on the agency's results and work look like?
This is an important part of the partnership, and it's best settled before you start working together, so you don't end up not knowing what to expect. In our view, there's no single perfect way to report results, and it's a good idea to work out a system together. From experience, we know that sometimes an in-depth report in the form of a presentation with analysis is needed, but often a more interesting approach is to arrange a joint screen-share review of the accounts. With the second option, everything is more transparent, and it's harder for the agency to hide any declines or show only the results that are convenient for it.
A lot depends on your own preferences here, so we encourage you to agree on the reporting format before starting the partnership.
Matching Campaigns and Tools to Your Business
Are tools and types of campaigns individually chosen to match your established business goals?
When running marketing activities, you can use many different tools and types of campaigns. These include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Allegro Ads (advertising on Allegro, Poland's largest online marketplace), LinkedIn Ads, TikTok Ads, social media campaigns, SEO activities, content marketing and many others. Each of these tools often has many types of campaigns. Often, certain types of campaigns, or even entire tools, simply have little chance of achieving business goals in specific industries from the outset. A good marketing agency matches the scope of its services and the types of ad campaigns to the specifics of your business and e-commerce, not the other way round.
When choosing an agency, work out whether all the tools and types of campaigns being proposed actually make sense for you.
Communication With a Marketing Agency: Why It Matters
What's your contact like with this agency?
Finally, something obvious but also very important. How well you get on talking to the people at a given agency is a very important part of the partnership. After all, you don't want to work with someone you struggle to communicate with. Communication needs to be quick, efficient and to the point.
It would be good for you to feel that you're an important partner to this agency, and that you'll grow your businesses together, rather than just another client they offer services to.
Ready to Work With a Marketing Agency That Delivers Results?
That's about it. As you can see, there are quite a few things worth paying attention to, and the ones listed above are probably not even all of them. Choosing a marketing agency is one of the more important business decisions you'll make: it can determine the effectiveness of your advertising activities, the pace of your sales growth, and whether your marketing budget is actually working for your business.
Before you sign a contract with any agency, come back to these 10 points and treat them as a checklist. Ask the hard questions. A good marketing agency won't be afraid of them: quite the opposite, it will appreciate that you know what you're looking for.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions About Choosing a Marketing Agency
How Do I Find the Best Marketing Agency for My Business?
Choosing the right marketing agency is crucial, so don't be guided solely by price or promises. Ask for case studies from an industry similar to yours, check recommendations from current clients and verify reviews on Google. A good marketing agency will happily show you real results, not just slides full of reach figures. If you run an online store, make sure the agency has e-commerce experience and understands the specifics of selling online.
What Should I Look Out for Before Signing a Contract With a Marketing Agency?
Choosing an agency is one of the more important decisions for your company. Before signing a contract, above all check: who will own the ad accounts, what access to data and reporting looks like, and what the terms for ending the partnership are. Choosing the right marketing agency is crucial for how effectively your budget is spent, so don't sign a contract under time pressure.
Will a Marketing Agency Work for a Small Business?
Yes. A good marketing agency can match the scope of its activities and the budget to the capabilities of any company, regardless of its size. What matters is that the agency understands your business goals and doesn't propose tools that don't make sense for how your business operates. Marketing isn't a privilege reserved for large companies, it's a growth tool available to any business.
How Do I Check a Marketing Agency's Recommendations?
Ask the agency for contact details of current or former clients in an industry similar to yours. Check reviews on its Google Business Profile, on LinkedIn and in other independent sources. Pay attention not only to the ratings, but also to how the agency responds to negative reviews: that says a lot about its work culture and approach to clients. A first-hand recommendation is always more valuable than a folder full of case studies.
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