Choose a marketing agency that shows you real work for businesses like yours and tells you who will do your work each week. Walk away from any agency that guarantees rankings or a set number of leads. Before you sign, get the scope, the price, who owns your accounts and how you can leave, all in writing.
Much of what follows comes from Google’s own advice to business owners who hire outside help. The rest is what I’d check before I paid anyone.
Do I need a marketing agency at all?
An agency helps most when you know who you sell to, you have a clear offer, and the marketing keeps slipping down your list. It can’t fix an offer nobody wants, and it can’t guess your best customer for you.
If you’re not sure yet, read when outsourcing your marketing is the wrong call. Sometimes the honest answer is “not yet.”
What should I ask an agency before I hire them?
Google publishes a list of questions to ask before you hire someone for SEO (Google, 2026). They work for most kinds of marketing help. Here’s my version:
- Can you show me work for a business like mine, and what changed after?
- Who will do my work each week, and can I talk to them before I sign?
- What results do you expect, by when, and how will we measure them?
- Will you tell me every change you make, and why?
- What does the price include, and what costs extra?
- What happens to my accounts, website and content if I leave?
- Can I talk to two clients you work with now?
Notice what they ask you, too. Google says an SEO should ask what makes your business unique, who your competitors are and how your customers find you (Google, 2026). If an agency pitches before it asks you anything, it’s selling a package it had before it met you.
Can a marketing agency guarantee results?
No. An agency doesn’t control Google, and it doesn’t control whether your customers buy.
Google says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google (Google, 2026). Its Business Profile help says third parties can’t promise your ranking on Search or Maps (Google, 2026). For ads, Google says it’s not possible to guarantee a specific ad position (Google, 2026).
A promise of a set number of leads has the same problem. Leads depend on your offer, your price, your market and how fast you reply.
What a good agency can promise is the work. That means what they’ll do, when they’ll do it, how they’ll report on it and how fast they’ll answer you.
What are the red flags of a bad marketing agency?
- They guarantee results. Nobody can promise rankings, leads or ad positions, for the reasons above.
- The pricing is vague. You see a monthly fee but no list of what it buys. Google warns that some third parties charge more than the price you agreed. It says to get an official copy of your agreement that clearly lists the services and their costs (Google, 2026).
- Nobody is named. The person on the sales call may not be the person who does the work. Ask who does, and meet them.
- You can’t check their work. A wall of client logos tells you nothing about what changed for those clients.
- There are no reports. If they run your Google ads, you have the right to know the number of clicks, impressions and the total cost (Google, 2026).
- Their methods are secret. Google says to be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what it plans to do (Google, 2026).
- The contract locks you in. Watch for a long minimum term, a big fee to leave, or accounts you can’t take with you.
- They cold-emailed you with bad news about your site. Google tells owners to be wary of agencies that email them out of the blue (Google, 2026).
What should I get in writing before I sign?
Put all of this in one document you can keep:
- What they’ll do each month, on which channels, and how much of it.
- What the fee covers, what costs extra, and whether ad spend is separate.
- Who does the work, and who you talk to when something goes wrong.
- What reports you’ll get, and how often.
- That nothing goes out under your name until you say yes.
- How much notice you need to give to leave, what they hand back, and how fast.
Check ad fees closely. If an agency charges a fee to run your Google ads, Google requires it to tell you in writing before your first purchase. It must also show the fee on every invoice (Google, 2026).
Who should own my accounts, website and content?
You should. The agency should get its own access to your accounts, so you never have to hand over a password.
- Make sure you’re the registrant of your domain, meaning the person or business it’s registered to. ICANN, which oversees domain names, advises against listing web designers or hosting providers as the registrant (ICANN, 2018).
- Stay the primary owner of your Google Business Profile, and add the agency as a manager. A profile can have many owners but only one primary owner (Google, 2026).
- Ask for your own Google Ads account. Google says an agency must set up a separate Ads account for you (Google, 2026).
- Keep your content. Posts, photos, emails and website files should leave with you, so say that in the contract.
How do I compare marketing agencies?
There’s no single best agency for small businesses. The right one is whichever passes these checks for your business. Send each agency the same questions and ask each for a written scope, so you compare like with like. What an agency charges depends on the work in that scope, so make sure the lists of work match before you compare prices.
Once you pick one, give it a fair run before you add another. Google suggests working with one third party at a time (Google, 2026). Your business only shows up once on Google, so two agencies working on it at the same time are hard to compare.
I run Evensteer, so count it as one option on your list. It’s where agentic AI meets human intelligence, handling your marketing, website, sales and admin. You get a written scope and a fixed price, and the accounts stay yours. Ask us every question on this page.
The short version
- Ask for work from businesses like yours, and meet the person who’ll do yours.
- Walk away from guaranteed rankings, leads or ad positions.
- Get the scope, price, reports and exit terms in writing.
- Keep your domain, profiles and ad accounts in your hands, and give the agency its own access.
- Try one agency at a time, and check the results each month.
Want a second opinion on an agency’s proposal? Ask us.