When you are thinking of hiring a digital marketing agency, you might not know what you need to ask in order to ensure that you and that agency are a good fit. The agency wants to make sure that you are as a good a fit for them as they are for you before you start, so do not be afraid to ask a few questions before you sign any contracts. Here are ten questions to ask a digital marketing agency:

1. Who are some of your previous clients?

You’re not looking to see if you know any of their other clients. They can be extremely successful at marketing their other clients and you might still not know any of those clients. What you are looking for is whether or not they have worked with other businesses in your industry. Of course, most digital marketing agencies are very versatile, but if they focus on marketing water parks and you are a tech startup, they might not know what strategies to use to make sure that your message reaches your target audience.

2. How can you help me reach my company goals?

There’s nothing wrong with asking what a digital marketing agency can do to help you reach your goals before you have actually agreed to work with them. The right agency for you will be the one that cares deeply about your success and which understands that your success is their success. Giving them some information about your company and your goals, so they can tell you how they can help increase site traffic, generate leads, increase revenue, etc. will help both of you decide whether or not you are a good fit.

3. How do you measure success?

Some companies measure success based on site traffic, but site traffic is meaningless if none of those visitors are converting into revenue for your business. If they are going to measure success in a way that is not actually going to help your business, you might want to look at a different firm.

4. What did you like and dislike about the last business you worked with.

Some agencies might be unwilling to answer this question, but others have no problem saying what annoys them about businesses that they work with. Your partnership is bound to go much smoother if you know how to communicate with your agency. Getting a little intelligence about what makes them like a client and what makes them dislike a client could help you elicit their best work.

5. What services do you offer?

Some digital marketing agencies will offer only one service (such as search engine optimization). Others will offer a much more varied array of services, some even acting as a one-stop shop for all of the digital marketing services you might need. While you do not necessarily need to look for an agency that offers everything under the sun, you do want to work with one that offers everything you need. It is much easier to get your SEO and website design and marketing copy from the same source than having to get them from other sources.

6. Do you outsource your work?

There is nothing wrong with a company occasionally hiring someone from outside to help them with their work, but you probably do not want to work with a company that outsources the majority of their work. For example, if they offer web design, but that work is actually outsourced, you are not going to have the access to the designer that you might want or need.

7. Who will I be communicating with?

This question has a dual purpose: it allows you to get to know who you will be working with and second, ensures that you are not going to be communicating with three or four people inside the business. You should have one, maybe two points of contact. This helps to avoid confusion.

8. How frequently do we need to meet?

While many agencies will leave this up to you, they may have a set schedule of how and when they like to talk to their clients. You will want to make sure that this works for you and for your schedule. Also, you will want to see how comfortable they are with calling you up when they have a question or how comfortable they are with you calling them when you have a question. Of course, no one can be available 24/7, but you should get a good idea of how accessible the other party will be.

9. How long does my contract need to be?

Be wary of digital marketing agencies that say that you only need a month in order to reach your goals. You need more than month. Most marketing strategies need more than three months to start seeing returns. Most agencies will expect contracts of this length, if not longer.

10. What do I get with my contract?

Before signing on, you should know exactly what you get for your money. That means how many blog posts, how much promotion, how many pages on your website, etc. You do not want to be surprised by the terms of your agreement after you have already signed it and started working.