When it comes to selecting the right digital marketing agency for your business, the advice often sounds the same: determine your business goals, ensure clear communication, look for transparency, and set expectations for performance-based results. While these recommendations seem practical, they are, frankly, irrelevant if you don’t address the real issue plaguing the industry: how do you know if the agency is actually qualified?

Transparency in the digital marketing world is notoriously lacking. Agencies can present polished pitches, impressive portfolios, and convincing sales pitches full of ROI and ROAS returns, but these don’t necessarily reflect the expertise of the people doing the actual work and can be highly deceiving. To make the right choice, you need to look beyond the surface and focus on what matters most: the people.

The Most Important Factor: The Team

Forget about speaking with heads of departments, directors, or even account managers. These individuals are rarely involved in the day-to-day execution of your campaigns. Instead, you need to meet and evaluate the people who will be directly responsible for your account—the strategists, designers, paid social media managers, PPC specialists, SEO analysts and so on.

How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency — Forget what you’ve read. The most important aspect to choosing an agency is its talent.

Here’s why this approach matters:

Experience is Everything Digital marketing fundamentals often come only with time and hands-on experience. When meeting the team, ask about their backgrounds, how many years they’ve been in the industry, and specific campaigns they’ve worked on. Check their LinkedIn profiles for consistency and details about their previous roles. A specialist with 5+ years of experience is far more likely to deliver results than someone who is still learning the ropes.
Understand Who’s Actually Doing the Work Many agencies, struggling with profitability, outsource tasks to freelancers or offshore teams. While outsourcing isn’t inherently bad, it can create disconnects between your brand’s needs and the execution of your campaigns. The person managing your ads or content should not only be skilled but also understand your brand, culture, and goals.
Accountability When you know the individuals handling your account, you can establish a direct line of accountability. This ensures clearer communication and reduces the chances of deliverables getting lost in layers of management.
Understand the Workflow Ask how they plan to approach your account. This gives you insight into their strategic thinking and whether they’ve thoroughly understood your goals.
Request a Comprehensive Pitch Provide the team with a detailed brief and request a complete audit (if applicable), a media plan with a clear approach, and a roadmap of activities for the next three months. Additionally, ask for stability suggestions for the period after those three months. Three months is typically a good timeframe to assess the quality of a team’s work. Insist that each part of the pitch be presented by the person responsible for that area of expertise—for example, the PPC plan should be presented by the PPC manager, and the SEO strategy by the SEO lead. This ensures that you directly engage with the specialists who will be working on your account.

The Bottom Line

Choosing a digital marketing agency is not about flashy presentations or how well the directors sell you on their vision. It’s about ensuring the people who execute your campaigns are skilled, experienced, and aligned with your brand’s values.

Make the effort to dig deeper and focus on the team. Their expertise will ultimately determine the success of your partnership.

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