Hiring agencies · Selection
Questions to ask before hiring a B2B performance marketing agency, with a scorecard and red flags
Hire the agency that asks about your sales process before it talks about ads. For B2B, the best predictor is how an agency plans to learn which leads are worth winning, and ownership of your accounts is a pass-or-fail gate, not a question to weigh.
Short answer
Start with ownership: will the ad accounts, conversion data and landing pages stay in your business’s name? Then ask how they will define and measure a qualified lead, who will run your account day to day, how they get feedback from your sales team, how they charge, and what happens to your data if you leave.
Pass or fail
The ownership gate: confirm before anything else
Any agency that wants to run your advertising from accounts in its own name fails, however strong the pitch. Ask each shortlisted agency to confirm every row in writing.
| Asset | Pass | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads account | Created in your name with your own administrator; the agency links its manager account. A manager with ownership doesn’t take data ownership from the client account, which can always unlink it. | Google Ads Help |
| Meta ad account, Pages, datasets | Held in your business portfolio; the agency is given partner access to specific assets | Meta Business Help |
| LinkedIn ad account | Created by your staff, so your company is billing admin; the agency works as campaign manager | LinkedIn Help |
| Analytics, tag manager, domains, landing pages | Owned by your company; the agency is a user | Your own admin settings |
| CRM integrations and conversion uploads | Connected under your credentials | Your CRM and platform connection settings |
The clauses that make this binding, and how to reclaim assets later, are in the agency contract checklist.
What should I ask a marketing agency about lead quality?
Short answer
Ask which conversion signal they would optimise to and why, how they will get feedback from your sales team, what they will do before closed-won data exists, and how they would spot junk leads. Strong answers talk about your qualification stages and CRM; weak answers talk only about cost per lead and volume.
| Question | Good answer | Concerning answer |
|---|---|---|
| Which conversion would you bid to? | The earliest qualified stage with enough volume, such as a sales-accepted lead, sent back from your CRM | “Form fills. Then we scale what’s cheapest.” |
| How do you get sales feedback? | A lead status routine in your CRM or a spreadsheet, plus a monthly session with sales | “We’ll look at the dashboard.” |
| What do you do before revenue data exists? | Judge on qualified leads and opportunities, then check against wins each quarter | Promises of return on ad spend in month one |
| How would you spot junk leads? | Qualified rate by campaign and ad, search terms, form answers, sales reasons for rejection | “Leads are leads; sales needs to follow up faster.” |
| How do you report platform versus CRM numbers? | Both, with the gap explained; your CRM is the record | Platform-reported conversions only |
| When would you recommend not changing anything? | During learning periods, or when too few leads have been qualified to judge | “We optimise daily.” |
If you haven’t written down what a qualified lead is, do that first: lead quality sets out how, and junk leads from ads explains why volume-led campaigns attract them.
Questions about the team doing the work
- Who will run our account day to day? Can we meet them before signing?
- How many accounts does that person manage? There is no universal right number; listen for whether they know.
- Who covers holidays and departures, and how is the account documented?
- How senior is the person who sets strategy, and how often will they look at our account?
- What tools will you connect to our accounts, and who owns those connections?
Questions about B2B fit
- Industrial and manufacturing: how do you handle RFQ-to-quote cycles, dealer or distributor layers, and niche technical search terms with little volume?
- SaaS and technology: how do you move from demo requests to opportunity-based reporting, and how do you reach a buying committee rather than one contact?
- Consulting and professional services: how do you judge campaigns when an enquiry takes months to become a proposal?
- All: will you talk to our sales team before launch? The agency that asks for this unprompted is usually the stronger one.
Experience of long B2B cycles matters more than your exact vertical. Ask for analogues: a similar cycle length, deal size or buyer type.
Channel-specific questions
These test how an agency thinks, not whether your account is healthy today. For a check of the account itself, use the Google Ads audit guide.
Google Ads
Does a Google Partner badge mean an agency is good?
It shows the agency meets Google’s thresholds for optimisation score, managed spend and certified staff. It doesn’t show B2B lead-quality skill, and Google lets partners apply or dismiss recommendations based on clients’ goals. Verify the status with Google and judge the agency on your own criteria.
Google’s Partner badge requires a minimum optimisation score of 70%, $10,000 of ad spend across managed accounts over 90 days, and at least 50% of account strategists certified in Google Ads. Premier Partners also rank in the top 3% of participating companies in their country, determined annually (Google Ads Help).
- Which conversion action will campaigns bid to, and is it a qualified stage imported from our CRM?
- How do you handle search terms for niche technical queries, and how often do you review them?
- When would you use Performance Max for a B2B lead account, and when would you avoid it?
- Who will own our offline conversion uploads through the Data Manager API?
Meta Ads
- Will our ad account, Pages and datasets stay in our business portfolio, with you as a partner?
- Who sets up and owns the Conversions API connection?
- Which CRM stage would you send back to Meta? Its Conversion Leads goal works with Instant Forms and asks for at least 200 leads a month and a stage reached by 1–40% of leads within 28 days (Meta for Developers). What would you do if we are below that?
- How do you filter low-intent Instant Form leads? See Instant Forms lead quality.
- How do you decide when creative needs refreshing, and when do you let Advantage+ run rather than intervene?
More Meta mechanics are in the Meta Ads academy.
LinkedIn Ads
What should I ask a LinkedIn ads agency?
Confirm your company is billing admin on the LinkedIn ad account and the agency works as a campaign manager. Ask how they will define audiences for a buying committee, qualify leads from lead gen forms, and judge LinkedIn on cost per opportunity rather than cost per lead, which is often higher on LinkedIn.
- Who installs the Insight Tag and connects the Conversions API, and under whose user?
- Which qualifying questions would you add to lead gen forms? See lead gen forms and lead quality.
- How would you target accounts rather than job titles alone? See ABM targeting.
Commercial questions
- How do you charge, and what does that model reward? Compare models in marketing agency pricing.
- What is included: creative volume, landing pages, tracking and Conversions API set-up?
- What is the notice period, and what do we receive at handover, at what cost?
- What will you report each month, and on which stage? See the agency performance guide.
What are red flags when choosing a digital marketing agency?
Short answer
The serious ones are wanting ad accounts in the agency’s name, reporting leads without any qualification data, guaranteed results, no named account manager, long lock-ins with fees to release your accounts, and vague answers about what they changed and why. One vague answer is worth a follow-up; a pattern is a reason to walk away.
| Severity | Before signing | After signing | Response |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minor | A vague answer to one question | A late or thin report | Raise it in writing and judge how specific the reply is |
| Pattern | Every answer returns to cost per lead | Reports getting vaguer; frequent restructures without reasons | Reset expectations with a review date |
| Structural | Accounts in the agency’s name; guaranteed lead numbers; release fees | Refusal to reconcile with your CRM; spend beyond approved limits | Walk away, or plan an exit |
How do I compare two agencies fairly?
Short answer
Give both the same brief and the same 90 days of anonymised performance data. Ask each for a written diagnosis: the top three problems, what they wouldn’t change yet, and which conversion signal they would optimise to. Score both on a weighted scorecard, then check references with the same questions.
- Share: a one-page brief, a 90-day export by campaign, and lead status counts. If you grant temporary platform access instead, use the lowest level each platform offers (limited access on Google) and remove it afterwards.
- Ask for: the top three problems with evidence; what they would act on now, review, investigate, or wait on, and why; the signal they would optimise to.
- Time-box it: two weeks. At mid-market budgets, paying a fixed fee for the diagnosis is fair and gets more serious work.
- Score it: reward specificity and restraint. An agency that says “wait until these ad sets have enough leads” is often thinking more clearly than one proposing a full rebuild.
For your own baseline to compare their diagnoses against, run the free ad account assessment first.
Check references properly
Ask for a reference whose engagement ended, not only current clients. Then ask:
- Did they talk to your sales team?
- How did lead quality change, not just lead volume?
- How did they handle a bad month? Were they honest when things weren’t working?
- Did you get your accounts and data back easily at the end?
Original framework
The B2B Agency Due-Diligence Scorecard
Agencies that pass the ownership gate are scored 1–5 on each area. Multiply by the weight and add up for a score out of 5.
| Area | Weight | What a 5 looks like | Agency A | Agency B |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership gate | Pass/fail | All assets in your name | Pass | Pass |
| Lead quality and measurement | 30% | Qualified-lead definition, CRM feedback plan, a clear view of what to do before revenue arrives | 4 | 2 |
| Team and capacity | 20% | Named, experienced manager with time for your account; cover arranged | 3 | 4 |
| Channel competence | 20% | Strong answers across your Google, Meta and LinkedIn questions | 4 | 5 |
| B2B segment fit | 15% | Experience with RFQ, demo or proposal cycles and buying committees | 3 | 4 |
| Commercial terms | 15% | Fee model tied to qualified pipeline; fair notice; free handover | 4 | 3 |
| Weighted score | 100% | 3.65 | 3.45 |
Worked numbers. Agency A: 4 × 0.30 + 3 × 0.20 + 4 × 0.20 + 3 × 0.15 + 4 × 0.15 = 1.20 + 0.60 + 0.80 + 0.45 + 0.60 = 3.65. Agency B: 0.60 + 0.80 + 1.00 + 0.60 + 0.45 = 3.45. B has the sharper channel specialists, but A has a plan for learning which leads are worth winning. A third agency asked to run LinkedIn from its own ad account and failed the gate before scoring.
How selection differs by company size and market
- SMB. The ownership gate and the lead quality questions; skip the formal work test.
- Mid-market. The full scorecard and a paid work test between two finalists.
- Enterprise. An RFP, a security questionnaire, a data processing agreement, and clear roles when several agencies share accounts.
- India. Many agencies pitch lead volume. Ask how they separate genuine RFQs from traders and price-checkers, and how leads are followed up on WhatsApp and handed to sales.
- UAE. Ask about GCC geo-targeting, English and Arabic creative capacity, and experience with EPC tender cycles and free-zone clients. See GCC B2B paid ads.
- US. Ask who owns stage sync between your CRM and the platforms, and how call or text follow-up handles consent. See lead generation compliance.
Still deciding whether you need an agency at all? See in-house vs agency. Zephra is software that supports an in-house team or an agency, and agencies buy it on Enterprise; see pricing.
Questions, answered
Agency selection FAQ
01How many agencies should I shortlist?
Three is usually enough to compare, with two finalists for the work test.
02Should I pay for a pitch or work test?
A paid, time-boxed diagnosis is fair at mid-market budgets, and it tends to produce more honest, specific work than a free pitch.
03Can I give an agency temporary access to evaluate our account?
Yes, at the lowest access level each platform offers, removed as soon as the evaluation ends. An anonymised export is safer still.
04What about agencies that offer free audits?
They are fine, but judge the diagnosis, not the offer: a free audit that ends in “rebuild everything” is a sales document. An independent assessment gives you a baseline to compare it with.
05An agency guarantees a number of leads. Is that good?
Treat it as a red flag. Lead counts are the easiest target to hit by lowering quality.
06Should the agency talk to our sales team?
Yes, before launch and then regularly. An agency that never meets sales can only optimise to what the ad platforms report.
Shortlisting agencies?
Get your own baseline before you compare their diagnoses.
The free ad account assessment takes 10–15 minutes, needs no CRM and makes no campaign changes. It covers wasted spend, campaign structure, performance constraints and measurement gaps across Google, Meta and LinkedIn.