No you didn’t read the title wrong. While you might head into a meeting with a potential new agency armed with a list of questions for them, what they ask you (or don’t ask you) can be just as revealing.
It’s natural to want to suss out if a new marketing partner is really worth their fee, but if you’re being asked about these areas, it’s a good sign:
What do you want to achieve?
I always think if I was on the other side of the relationship, I’d be less impressed by a flashy presentation about their services (which let’s be honest has probably been recycled more than a few times), than a genuine interest in trying to understand what my business was trying to achieve.
And why?
This is a crucial one. A good agency might note down that you want to appear in position one of Google’s SERPs for your chosen keywords, but a great agency will challenge you on why you want that. Together you might establish that what you actually want to achieve is more traffic to your website or better quality enquiries, and therefore what’s actually needed is a deeper understanding of the intent behind those search terms, or a review of your landing pages for example.
Your expectations
If an agency is trying to convince you they’re the right fit without yet knowing your expectations, this should be a red flag alone. Responsible marketing companies will want to feel confident you’re both on the same page when it comes to results. If a business came to us and said they wanted coverage in all the major nationals within the first month, but had never done any PR before, and wanted full control over published articles, it would be in both our interest and theirs to educate them that these goals just aren’t realistic.
Budget
When a marketing agency asks about your budget, it’s not because they’re being greedy. Far from it. They just want to make sure they can achieve meaningful results with what you’re able to spend. This goes for both their own fee, and any further budget that may be required such as research for PR, or ad spend for search or social media.
Where you sit in the market
To be able to scope out the activity and strategy that’s likely to work best for you, an agency needs to understand how you compare to competitors, where you fit in the bigger industry picture, and what your USPs are. Yes we could just read your website, but in 99% of all the new business meetings I’ve been in, what we learn in these early meetings isn’t fully reflected on the site. In fact, quite often that’s why we’re there.
Everything about your business
Literally as much as you’re willing to share. You might wonder why your marketing agency would need to understand your sales process, or which products have the highest profit margins, but they’re useful in helping your agency to understand how to drive traffic and good quality leads as efficiently as possible. They might want to know if there’s any seasonality to your business, so they can monitor progress effectively, or they may ask you how long it takes to convert a lead so they know when to begin their Google ads.
And everything about your audience
This is arguably just as important. Yes they can ‘do their research’ but a deeper understanding of who your target market is, what they care about and what might deter them is something you can only truly get from talking to sales teams and business owners, so if together you’re having conversations like this, then you’re on the right track.
How you like to work
A good agency will know from experience that it’s best to have these discussions early on. Talk about where you both expect different responsibilities to lie. What works best for you both in terms of communication patterns? Are you keen to brief content first or are you happy just to see a final version? This just prevents any misunderstandings further down the line.
What you plan to measure
Your agency needs to know what they’re being judged on as well as what you’re being judged on, so this should feature at least in a kick off session if not before.
Reporting requirements
We’ve had businesses come to us before frustrated that they didn’t receive reports from their previous agencies. And while this is alarming(!), often we find out that the conversation around reports, their frequency and what they’ll include was never actually had, so if they don’t bring it up, make sure you do!
Naturally all this depends on what marketing activity you’re doing and what channels you’re using (technical SEO companies might get a pass) but it’s a good sign an agency is invested in your success. I hope this list helps you to sort the shit-hot from the, well, just shit.