10 questions before hiring a social media agency.

most bad agency relationships could have been avoided in the first meeting. the pitch is designed to impress; your questions are what reveal how they actually operate. here are the ones that matter.

— 01about the team and the work.

who exactly works on my account — and are they the people in this room? can I see work in my category with real numbers? how many revisions are included? who owns the content and the channels if we part ways?

and what would you do in the first thirty days. a strong answer starts with access, existing enquiries and the conversion path. an answer that starts with a content calendar is describing production, which may be what you need but should be priced that way.

and what is your capacity right now? an agency onboarding four clients this month is buying itself a problem you will pay for in month two, and an honest one will tell you when the timing is wrong.

who works on my account week to week, and how many of their hours do i get. the pitch team is often not the delivery team, and that substitution in month three is the most common complaint in this industry. get the name in writing.

show me three accounts you run right now. not a showreel — the reel is the best four seconds of a hundred shoots. a live account shows whether a standard holds on an ordinary tuesday when nobody is watching.

and do those three accounts look different from each other? three clients in different categories that all look identical means you are buying a formula rather than thinking.

— 02about results and reporting.

what does your monthly report contain? which metrics do you hold yourselves to? how soon should we expect to see movement, and on what? vague answers here are the biggest red flag of all.

tell me about a campaign that underperformed and what you changed. an agency that cannot discuss failure has either not run enough accounts or is not being straight with you, and both are worth knowing before signing.

what happened commercially, not what the reach was. enquiries, bookings, cost per acquisition — a serious agency already tracks those for someone and will discuss a campaign that underperformed as readily as one that worked.

show me a real monthly report with the numbers redacted. what you are looking for is whether it opens with a written verdict or a screenshot of reach. the first is analysis; the second is decoration.

and who writes it. a report produced by the person doing the work carries judgment; one assembled by an account manager from a dashboard usually does not.

— 03about the contract.

what is the minimum term and the notice period? what happens if it is not working? is paid ad spend separate from your fee? clarity on the exit tells you how confident they are in the work.

what is included and what is billed separately. talent fees, permits, paid media, licensed music and additional revision rounds are the five things most often assumed and most often extra.

and what happens if the number we agreed goes the wrong way for two months. an agency with a considered answer has been through it; one treating the question as hypothetical has not run an account long enough to matter.

and how does the relationship start? an agency with a written onboarding — access, audit, workshop, plan — has done this before. one that starts with a content calendar in week one is skipping the part that makes the rest work.

notice period, revision rounds, and who owns the accounts, the ad account, the raw footage and the finished files. those lines matter more in month twelve than anything in the pitch deck, and an agency that resists the ownership clause is telling you how the relationship ends.

and what would you cut if my budget dropped by a third? the answer reveals what they consider essential — and an agency that would cut planning before volume is one to be careful with.

— 04the two questions that reveal the most.

and can i speak to a client who left? almost nobody says yes, and the ones who do are worth taking seriously. that conversation is more informative than three happy references combined.

— 05what to do with the answers.

normalise every proposal to the same four lines: finished assets a month, production days, community hours, and who does the work. then divide the fee by finished assets. proposals become comparable immediately, and the expensive one is often the cheaper buy.

then judge on thinking, honesty and measurement rather than the deck. price is a tiebreaker between two agencies you would be happy with, not a way to choose between one that understands the problem and one that does not.

— 04the question that reveals the most.