The 5 Questions to Ask an Agency
Your starting point to hiring the right agency partner for your business.
So, you’re thinking about hiring an advertising agency. Congrats! Soon you’ll be sitting through meetings filled with words like “brand ecosystem,” “consumer journey,” and “omnichannel engagement” while quietly wondering, What exactly am I paying these people for?
Before you sign on the dotted line, pour yourself another cup of coffee and ask these five questions.
1. Who’s actually going to work on my business?
Ahhh, the old agency bait-and-switch. You meet the brilliant senior team during the pitch, fall in love, sign the contract…and suddenly they’ve vanished like your sock in the dryer.
Ask who will actually be doing the strategy, writing, designing and day-to-day thinking on your account. Experience matters. Make sure the people you’re hiring are the people you’re getting.
2. How are you going to make us different?
Here’s a fun (or maybe not-so-fun) exercise. Put your competitors’ websites next to yours and cover up the logos. Can you tell who’s who?
If everyone is “committed to quality,” offers “unmatched service,” and has been “putting customers first since 1978,” you might have a problem. A good agency should uncover something meaningful about your company that gives customers a reason to choose you. Then turn that difference into messaging your competition can’t slap their logo on.
3. How do you get to the big idea?
Great creative work shouldn’t materialize because someone stared thoughtfully out a window until inspiration struck. There should be a proven process for generating successful results.
Your agency should understand your business, audience, competition and goals before it starts dreaming up headlines and pretty pictures. Strategy gives creativity something to solve. Without it, you may end up with something really cool that accomplishes absolutely nothing.
4. How will we know this is working?
Awards are great, but shiny objects don't feed the bulldog, am I right? Your advertising has a job to do; move the needle for your business.
Ask your agency how they’ll define success and prove to you that the work is generating the intended result. The answer should form a direct line back to your business objectives.
5. Are you willing to tell us when we’re moving in the wrong direction?
You’re hiring an agency for its expertise, not to have someone enthusiastically agree with everything you say.
A great agency partner should listen to you. But they should also challenge assumptions, ask uncomfortable questions, push good ideas further and occasionally tell you something you don’t necessarily want to hear.
That’s not being difficult. That’s doing the job.
Because ultimately, you’re not really hiring an agency. You’re hiring the people inside it. Make sure they’re the people who are going to help make your campaigns, your company, and ultimately you, outrageously successful.
