Hiring a performance marketing agency is a big decision. The right partner can help you scale profitably, while the wrong one can drain your budget with little to show. But with so many agencies promising results, how do you know which one is the best fit for your business?
Asking the right questions can make all the difference. This guide covers the 10 most important questions to ask a digital marketing agency before signing a contract. By the end, you’ll know exactly what to look for to ensure your ad spend is managed efficiently and delivers real, measurable growth.
What Does a Performance Marketing Agency Do?
Not all marketing agencies operate the same way. While traditional agencies focus on brand awareness and engagement, a performance marketing agency prioritizes measurable outcomes like sales, return on ad spend (ROAS), and customer acquisition cost (CAC). The goal is to ensure every marketing dollar generates tangible, revenue-driven results.
Key Functions of a Performance Marketing Agency:
Focus on Profitability: Instead of just driving traffic, a performance marketing agency ensures your ad spend translates into actual sales. Every strategy revolves around improving ROAS, lowering CAC, and increasing customer lifetime value (LTV) to maximize profitability.
Data-Driven Strategies: The best agencies track and analyze campaign performance in real-time, making continuous adjustments to enhance results. They use insights from audience behavior, ad engagement, and conversion funnels to refine targeting, messaging, and budget allocation.
AI-Powered Optimization: Artificial intelligence is crucial in automating bidding, predicting trends, and analyzing massive datasets to find winning ad combinations. AI tools help test creatives, adjust budgets, and improve ad placements faster than human-led processes.
Omni-Channel Advertising: A performance marketing agency ensures your brand is visible across multiple high-performing platforms, such as Meta Ads, Google, and Amazon. This diversified approach prevents over-reliance on a single channel and optimizes ad spend based on where your audience converts best.
A strong performance marketing agency blends human expertise with AI-driven precision, ensuring your business scales profitably while controlling ad costs. However, to find the right partner, you need to ask the right questions—let’s dive into the key things to consider before making your decision.
10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Performance Marketing Agency
Choosing the right agency can make or break your marketing success. To ensure you partner with an agency that aligns with your goals, ask these essential questions to ask a performance marketing agency before signing a contract.
1. What Are Your Core Specialties?
Not all agencies focus on performance marketing—some specialize in branding, SEO, or organic social media. You need an agency that prioritizes profitability-driven campaigns over vanity metrics.
Why It Matters: A generalist agency may not have the expertise to optimize paid ad campaigns for maximum return on ad spend (ROAS). Without deep knowledge of performance-driven strategies, they may focus on broad visibility rather than conversions.
What to Look For:
Agencies specializing in paid advertising, and AI-driven campaign management rather than brand awareness.
Proven experience managing Meta, Google, and Amazon ads, ensuring a diversified approach for scalable growth.
A track record of helping brands improve ROAS and reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) through well-optimized campaigns.
2. How Do You Measure Success?
A reliable agency should define success with clear, measurable KPIs rather than vague engagement metrics.
Why It Matters: Agencies focusing on likes, shares, and impressions may not prioritize revenue growth. While engagement is valuable, it doesn’t always translate into sales.
What to Look For:
Agencies that track hard metrics like ROAS, CAC, conversion rates, and customer lifetime value (LTV).
Transparency in real-time reporting and performance dashboards, ensuring you always know where your money is going.
A proactive approach—agencies that adjust campaigns based on data insights rather than guesswork.
3. What AI and Automation Tools Do You Use?
AI-powered marketing plays a crucial role in creative strategy by identifying high-performing visuals, headlines, and messaging. The best agencies leverage AI to analyze audience behavior, test multiple creative variations, and refine ad elements dynamically for maximum engagement.
Why It Matters: AI-driven creative optimization helps brands scale by continuously testing and improving ad design, copy, and formats based on real-time data.
What to Look For:
The ability to analyze ad creatives using AI-powered tools like GoMarble’s AI Ads Analyzer, which evaluates copy effectiveness and visual appeal before launching large-scale campaigns.
AI-backed insights that help refine campaigns dynamically, adjusting ad placements and creative elements in real-time.
4. Do you Understand Our Brand and Its Core Principles?
Your brand’s identity and messaging are critical to building long-term customer trust and recognition. A performance marketing agency should align with your brand’s values rather than solely focusing on numbers.
Why It Matters: A misaligned agency may prioritize short-term gains over long-term brand consistency. If they fail to understand your brand’s voice, audience perception could suffer.
What to Look For:
Agencies that take time to understand your brand story, target audience, and messaging.
A proven ability to tailor ad creatives, copy, and campaign strategies that reflect your brand’s core principles.
A collaborative approach where the agency works closely with your team to maintain consistent branding across all advertising channels.
5. Can You Provide Case Studies or Proven Results?
A great agency should be able to back up its claims with real success stories and performance data.
Why It Matters: Without concrete proof of success, agencies might rely on generic marketing tactics rather than customized, data-driven solutions. Case studies show how an agency applies strategies in real-world scenarios.
What to Look For:
Agencies that share detailed case studies with specific before-and-after metrics on ROAS, CAC, and revenue growth.
Testimonials from businesses in similar industries proving they can handle challenges relevant to your niche.
Transparency in how they achieved those results, showing a clear breakdown of the strategies used rather than vague marketing claims.
6. How Transparent Is Your Reporting?
A good agency should provide clear, easy-to-understand reports that track key performance metrics.
Why It Matters: Without transparent reporting, you won’t know whether your ad spend drives results. Some agencies provide surface-level reports focusing on vanity metrics rather than real performance indicators.
What to Look For:
Access to real-time dashboards to track campaign performance, ad spend, and ROAS.
Agencies that break down key metrics, such as CAC, conversion rates, and ad engagement, into actionable insights.
A commitment to fortnightly or monthly performance reviews, ensuring you stay informed about what’s working and what needs improvement.
7. What Is Your Pricing Model?
Understanding an agency’s pricing structure helps you plan your budget and avoid hidden fees.
Why It Matters: Some agencies charge high retainers, hidden fees, or percentage-based pricing that can affect your profits. Others may have unpredictable pricing structures that make scaling difficult.
What to Look For:
Flat-tiered pricing models that give you clear cost expectations with no surprise charges.
Transparency on what’s included in the fee, such as ad creative development, campaign management, and reporting.
Agencies that align their pricing with your growth, ensuring you’re not overpaying for services you don’t need.
8. How Do You Handle Creative Development?
Strong ad creatives are essential for high-performing campaigns, directly impacting engagement and conversion rates.
Why It Matters: Creative development is the backbone of any successful performance marketing campaign. Without compelling ad creatives, even the best targeting strategies can fall flat. Agencies emphasizing creative development ensure their campaigns resonate with the target audience, driving higher engagement and conversions.
What to Look For:
Expertise in developing creative assets that align with your brand and effectively communicate your message.
A team of dedicated designers and copywriters who produce high-quality, conversion-focused ad creatives.
A structured process for testing multiple creative variations, ensuring only the best-performing ads receive the highest budget allocation.
9. Do You Offer Omni-Channel Advertising?
A successful agency should have experience running campaigns across multiple marketing channels to maximize reach and conversions.
Why It Matters: Relying on a single platform like Meta or Google limits growth potential. A well-structured omni-channel strategy ensures that ads reach customers at different touchpoints.
What to Look For:
Agencies that manage campaigns across multiple channels, including Meta, Google, Amazon,
A strategy that allocates ad spend dynamically based on channel performance rather than sticking to a fixed budget distribution.
Experience with localized and global campaign expansion, ensuring strategies can adapt to different markets.
10. How Scalable and Flexible Is Your Strategy?
Your marketing needs will evolve, so partnering with an agency that can scale and adapt alongside your business is important.
Why It Matters: If an agency lacks flexibility, it may struggle to adjust budgets, test new audiences, or expand to new markets, limiting your growth potential.
What to Look For:
A proven track record of helping brands scale from small ad spends to six- or seven-figure monthly budgets.
Agencies that provide customized strategies rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
A flexible team that adjusts campaign structures, audience targeting, and creative approaches as business goals shift.
Choosing the right agency isn’t just about their promises but their ability to deliver real, measurable growth. By asking these questions, you can confidently select a performance marketing agency partner that aligns with your goals and maximizes your ad spend.
Conclusion
Hiring a performance marketing agency is a major investment, and choosing the right partner can significantly impact your business growth. By asking the right questions, you ensure your selected agency has the expertise, tools, and data-driven strategies to optimize your ad spend and drive profitable results.
GoMarble checks all the right boxes. With AI-powered optimization, transparent reporting, and a track record of delivering high ROAS, GoMarble helps brands scale profitably while eliminating wasted ad spend, and its expert marketers and AI-driven strategies ensure that every campaign is optimized for maximum performance and efficiency.
Ready to scale your business with a data-driven marketing partner? Partner with GoMarble today and turn your ad spend into a powerful growth engine.