Nine questions to ask an agency, and the answers that should worry you
Choosing a marketing supplier in India is difficult because almost every pitch sounds identical and almost none of it is falsifiable. Everyone is data-driven, results-focused and ROI-obsessed.
These are the nine questions that actually separate suppliers, and for each one, the answer that should end the meeting. We are an agency writing this, which you should factor in — question nine applies to us too.
1. Who will actually do the work, and can I meet them?
The person pitching is frequently not the person delivering. That is normal. What matters is whether you can meet whoever is.
WORRYING ANSWER: "You will have a dedicated account manager." That is a communication layer, not an answer. Ask who writes, who builds, and whether they are employed or subcontracted — and ask to speak to them before signing.
2. What happens in month four if nothing has moved?
Every engagement has a version of this conversation eventually. Find out now what it looks like.
WORRYING ANSWER: anything implying it will not happen, or that four months is too early to judge anything. A supplier who has run real engagements has a considered answer about review points, what they would change, and the circumstances under which they would tell you to stop.
3. Show me a client where this did not work.
This is the single most revealing question on the list, and most suppliers will not answer it.
WORRYING ANSWER: "All our clients see results." That is either untrue or it means they have worked with very few businesses. Anyone with real operating history has an engagement that underperformed and can explain what they misjudged. An honest failure story is stronger evidence of competence than any case study.
4. What do you need from me, and how much of my time?
Marketing work fails at least as often because the client could not supply inputs as because the supplier underperformed.
WORRYING ANSWER: "Nothing, we handle everything." Nobody can write about your business, price your product or approve claims without you. A supplier promising zero involvement is either planning to produce generic work or has not thought it through. Good ones tell you exactly how many hours a month they need from you.
5. Who owns the accounts, the domain and the data?
Ask specifically about the domain, hosting, the ad accounts, the analytics property and the customer data.
WORRYING ANSWER: anything where the supplier holds assets in their own name "for convenience". A meaningful share of the horror stories in this industry are not about bad work — they are about a business discovering at renewal that it does not control its own domain or its own ad account history.
6. How will we know it worked?
Agree the measurement before the work, not after. Ask what the baseline is, who measures, and from which system.
WORRYING ANSWER: impressions, reach, engagement, or follower growth presented as primary outcomes. Those describe activity. If nobody can draw a line from the work to enquiries or revenue, you will have no basis for the renewal decision except how the reports feel.
7. What is the actual scope, in deliverables per month?
Vague scope is where retainers quietly become bad value. "Ongoing SEO and social" can mean almost anything.
WORRYING ANSWER: a proposal with no countable units. Ask for specifics — how many pages, how many posts, how many hours, reviewed how often — and get it written down. A supplier confident in their value will happily quantify it.
8. What happens to the work if we stop?
Some work compounds and keeps producing after the engagement ends. Some stops the day the invoice stops.
WORRYING ANSWER: anything where every result disappears at the end of the contract. That is not necessarily disqualifying — paid acquisition legitimately works that way — but you should know you are renting results rather than building an asset, and price it accordingly.
9. Why are you the right supplier for my specific business?
Not the generic pitch. Why yours.
WORRYING ANSWER: an answer that would apply equally to a dental clinic, a steel fabricator and a fashion brand. If the supplier cannot articulate something specific about your sector, your buyer or your economics, the work will be as generic as the answer.
Apply this to us as well. We work in three sectors where we have operated — clinics, e-commerce and industrial or deep-tech B2B — and we say no to most things outside them. If you asked us about a sector we had no business in, the honest answer would be that we are not the right supplier.
The structural question underneath all nine
Most of these questions are really one question: does this supplier get paid whether or not it works?
Under a retainer, the answer is yes, and everything above is your attempt to manage that misalignment through diligence. That is not a scandal — retainers are predictable and plenty of good work is done under them — but it is worth naming.
We work on a share of the growth produced, with no upfront fee, which changes the incentive and creates different constraints. We explain the mechanics, including when the model is wrong for you, in how a revenue-share partnership actually works.
Want this built properly?
We build custom websites and the systems behind them with nothing to pay upfront, and are paid from the growth the work produces. We take a limited number at a time.