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What should a small business look for in a digital marketing agency?

Eight things to check before you sign, from reporting cadence to who owns your ad accounts.

Check eight things before you sign: account ownership, who does the work, published pricing, named deliverable counts, written exclusions, reporting that names leads and revenue, verified conversion tracking, and whether they will tell you no. Use this list on us too.

The eight

  • Who owns the accounts. The Google Ads account, the Meta account, the analytics property, the CRM, the domain and the content should all be in your name. If the agency owns them, leaving costs you your history.
  • Who actually does the work. You will meet senior people in the sale. Ask who runs the account in month three, and whether any of it is white labeled to another vendor.
  • Published pricing. A rate card you can read without a call is a signal about how the rest of the relationship will go.
  • Named deliverable counts. Six articles a month. Three posts a week. Twenty hours. Numbers, not adjectives.
  • Written exclusions. Is ad spend separate? Who buys the software? What happens past the included video count? Get it in writing before, not after.
  • Reporting that names leads and revenue. Impressions and reach are not results. Ask to see a real monthly report with the client details removed.
  • Conversion tracking they verify. Ask how they check that a form fill actually reaches the CRM. If the answer is vague, the reporting will be too.
  • Willingness to push back. Ask what they would refuse to do. An agency with no answer is an order taker.

Two things that matter less than people think

Awards, and being local. Awards are mostly submitted and paid for. Being in your city is nice but almost nothing about digital work requires proximity. LevelUp is based in Irving, Texas and works with clients nationwide, mostly remote, and that has never been the constraint.

One thing that matters more

Whether they understand how your business actually makes money. An agency that cannot explain your sales cycle back to you will optimize toward the wrong thing, efficiently.

Related: How to choose the right digital marketing agency, What makes LevelUp different?, What industries do you work with?, Talk to us