Most agencies present prospective clients with an account audit as part of their sales process. The purpose is twofold:
- To provide immediate value (usually without strings attached).
- To demonstrate that they know their stuff.
But how often do brand marketers turn the tables and audit their agencies in their RFP?
I’m the head of performance marketing at a marketing agency, so I’m clearly writing from a biased perspective. However, over my decade-plus in the industry, I’ve seen too many brands settle for “good enough” because they didn’t know which questions would reveal the cracks in a potential partner’s strategy and approach.
If I were a brand looking for a true growth partner, here are the specific questions I’d ask to separate the top performers from the rest.
1. What are your key services, and what percentage of your clients utilize each?
A lot of agencies claim to be “full service,” but rarely are they “full excellence.” I’d be looking for where an agency truly spends its time versus where they’re just trying to upsell me.
It’s less about the channels in question (although if, say, LinkedIn is a key growth driver for your brand, they’d better demonstrate proficiency there), and more about how their strengths align with your needs.
If an agency claims to be experts in SEO, creative strategy, and paid media, but 90% of their client base only uses them for paid search, that’s a red flag. You want a partner whose core competencies align with your primary needs.
If you need high-volume creative testing, you want an agency where 80%+ of clients use its creative production frameworks, not one that treats creative as an add-on service.
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2. How are you approaching AI-driven account optimization and platform automation?
I miss the days when knowledge of the manual controls at your disposal could set you apart as a high-performing marketer. But those days have been gone for a while.
In 2026, there’s a real danger of over-optimization with the controls we have left. This can reset algorithmic learnings and prevent them from fine-tuning in service of your goals. Agency teams that strike this balance most certainly have a healthier approach than those who either blindly trust algorithms or can’t help tinkering excessively.
One control you can and must be diligent about using is first-party data for enhanced conversions and offline conversion tracking. Part of the job of a great marketer is training the algorithms on which leads and which conversions to target, and first-party data is a huge lever to pull in that regard.
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