How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency: 10 Questions to Ask

Choosing the right digital marketing agency decides whether your marketing budget buys growth or just visibility. Proposals often look alike: SEO, Google Ads, social media management, content. What sets agencies apart is the thinking, process and metrics behind those services.

As a team working with brands in the Netherlands, Türkiye and across Europe from Amsterdam and Ankara, we regularly see where agency relationships go wrong. These ten questions sum up what to put on the table before you sign anything.

1. How do you understand our business and goals?

A good agency doesn’t open with a list of services; it asks questions. Who is your ideal customer, how long is your sales cycle, what is a customer worth to you, and which channels bring in business today? If those questions don’t come, you are being sold a ready-made package.

2. How will we define success?

Likes, impressions and followers are not business results on their own. Ask the agency to propose KPIs tied to business goals, such as number of leads, cost per lead, conversion rate and revenue impact, and to put them in writing at the start.

3. What exactly does your SEO work include?

“We do SEO” can mean a lot or nothing at all. Clarify whether technical SEO (page speed, indexing, structured data), on-page SEO (title tags, meta descriptions, header structure, internal links) and content strategy (topic clusters, service pages, blog) are in scope. Ask for a realistic timeline; for competitive searches, lasting results usually take 3–6 months.

4. Who manages our ad budget, and how?

Whose name are the Google Ads and Meta ad accounts opened in? How are budget and bidding strategy set, and are A/B testing and retargeting campaigns part of the plan? Owning your ad accounts and data means you won’t start from zero if you ever switch agency.

5. Where will the ads send people?

Even the best campaign is wasted if it sends traffic to a weak landing page. Ask whether the agency aligns ad messaging with landing pages and looks at conversion factors such as forms and page speed.

6. How will you set up our analytics?

Without GA4, conversion tracking, Google Search Console and custom dashboards, you can’t tell which channel works. Heatmaps and behaviour tracking (with tools such as Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity) show where visitors drop off, which is the basis of conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

7. How will content and social media be planned?

Is there a content calendar, a defined brand voice and an approval process? Who owns short-form video, LinkedIn content, thought leadership articles and community engagement? Content should be designed to generate search traffic and leads, not just to “post something”.

8. How often will you report, and how?

A monthly report should include interpretation and next month’s action plan, not just charts. Agree up front who presents the report, what the meeting rhythm is and who you contact when something goes wrong.

9. Who is on the team, and who does the work?

The person in the sales meeting is often not the person doing the work. Meet the strategist, ads specialist, content and design team who will work on your account. If you operate in several markets, the team’s knowledge of the language and culture matters too; for brands working between the Netherlands and Türkiye, that is often the deciding factor.

10. What are the contract terms, duration and exit conditions?

Minimum term, what the monthly fee covers, whether ad spend is included, how extra work is priced and how accounts, content and data are handed over when you leave should all be in writing. A transparent agency expects you to ask.

Quick checklist

• Are goals and KPIs defined in writing?
• Is the scope of SEO, ads, content and analytics clear?
• Are the ad accounts and data in your name?
• Is there a set reporting rhythm and a named contact?
• Are contract and handover terms clear?

How we work at Edda Creative

At Edda Creative we run digital marketing end-to-end from one team, covering SEO, Google Ads, content marketing, social media, email automation, analytics and local SEO. Because we don’t separate marketing from business goals, we also build the strategy with you through business development and marketing consultancy. If you’d like us to answer these ten questions for your business, book a free intro call.