Every week, I speak to a business owner who’s just been burnt. They hired an agency — or a freelancer they found on social media — paid a decent chunk of money upfront, and received either nothing at all or a pile of activity that looked impressive in a report but moved the needle precisely nowhere. It happens constantly, and it’s not because the business owner did anything stupid. It’s because the digital marketing industry has a serious credibility problem, and it’s genuinely hard to tell the charlatans from the people who actually know what they’re doing.
Here’s what I’ve learnt — both from working in this industry for years and from listening to clients who came to me after being let down elsewhere.
The Problem With “Full-Service” Promises
The first red flag is the agency or freelancer who claims to do everything brilliantly. SEO, paid ads, social media, email marketing, content, web design, video production — all under one roof, all at an affordable monthly rate. It sounds convenient. In reality, it usually means one person or a small team is spreading themselves thin across disciplines that each take years to master properly.
Real expertise is narrow. A specialist in Google Ads will know the platform inside out — audience layering, smart bidding strategies, quality scores, conversion tracking via Google Analytics. Someone who manages Google Ads and Facebook and your SEO and your monthly newsletter is probably doing all of them at a surface level.
That’s not to say you can’t find a well-rounded freelancer who’s genuinely competent across two or three areas. You can. But “full-service at a bargain price” should immediately prompt you to ask harder questions.
What to Actually Check Before You Sign Anything
Don’t rely on a flashy website or a polished sales call. Here’s what to dig into before you commit to anyone:
Ask to See Real Results, Not Testimonials
Testimonials are nearly meaningless. Everyone has them. What you want is a case study with actual numbers — traffic growth, conversion rates, cost per lead, revenue attributed to a campaign. If they can’t share specifics due to client confidentiality, that’s fair, but they should be able to show you something with the identifying details removed.
Ask: “Can you show me a campaign you ran, what you did, and what happened as a result?” If the answer is vague — “we really improved their online presence” — that tells you everything you need to know.
Check Whether They Understand Your Metrics
A lot of digital marketing activity is easy to dress up. Impressions, reach, follower counts, website sessions — these are vanity metrics unless they’re tied to something that actually matters to your business. A good partner will want to talk about measuring marketing ROI from day one, not after three months when you start asking why sales haven’t moved.
If someone can’t clearly explain how they’ll track whether their work is making you money, don’t hire them.
Look at Who’s Actually Doing the Work
Agencies often win business with senior, experienced people in the room — and then hand the account to a junior once the contract is signed. Ask directly: who will be managing my account day to day, and can I meet them? There’s nothing wrong with junior team members doing some of the execution, but you should know who’s responsible for your strategy and whether they have real experience.
Understanding What You Actually Need
Before you can hire the right person, you need to be clear about what problem you’re trying to solve. “More customers” isn’t specific enough. Are you struggling with visibility (an SEO or paid ads problem)? Are you getting traffic but losing people before they enquire (a conversion or website problem)? Are you trying to build a long-term audience (a content and email problem)?
Each of these requires a different skill set. Knowing roughly which category your challenge falls into will help you hire the right specialist rather than a generalist who’ll take a scattergun approach.
Tools like HubSpot are excellent for managing leads and tracking where your customers come from — if your prospective partner doesn’t know how to connect their activity to your CRM or analytics, that’s a gap worth noting.
Red Flags That Should Make You Walk Away
I’ve seen enough of the bad stuff to give you a fairly definitive list:
- Guaranteed rankings: No one can guarantee position one on Google. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or confused about how search engines work.
- No clear reporting: If they can’t tell you upfront what they’ll report on, how often, and what good looks like, you’ll end up chasing them for updates.
- Long lock-in contracts with no performance clauses: A 12-month contract is fine if there are clear milestones and an exit clause if they’re not met. A 12-month contract with no accountability built in is just risk for you.
- Vague strategy documents: “We’ll post five times a week and grow your engagement” is not a strategy. A strategy should explain why a particular channel, who you’re targeting, and what success looks like.
- They don’t ask about your business: If someone’s happy to quote you before understanding what you do, who your customers are, and what you’ve already tried, they’re selling a package, not solving your problem.
The Right Questions to Ask in a Discovery Call
Most agencies and freelancers offer a free initial call. Use it to interview them, not the other way around. Here are the questions worth asking:
- What does your onboarding process look like, and how long before we see initial results?
- How do you stay current with platform changes? (Paid social in particular shifts constantly — Meta Business Suite updates its ad policies and targeting options regularly, and Google Ads rolls out new campaign types and bidding models all the time.)
- What happens if a campaign isn’t working — how do you diagnose and respond?
- Can you walk me through a recent challenge a client faced and how you handled it?
- Who will I speak to if I have a question or concern?
Pay close attention to how they handle uncertainty. The best marketers are honest when something’s not working and adapt quickly. The worst ones defend poor performance with jargon and excuses.
The Tools Question — and Why It Matters
Professional digital marketers use professional tools. Not because tools replace expertise, but because without them you’re guessing. For email marketing, anyone serious should be comfortable with platforms like Mailchimp. For social scheduling and analytics, tools like Hootsuite or Buffer are standard. For content strategy, resources like the Content Marketing Institute provide the kind of research-backed thinking that separates considered strategy from trend-chasing.
When you’re vetting someone, ask what tools they use and why. You don’t need to know the tools yourself — but if they can’t articulate the answer clearly, it suggests they either don’t use them or can’t explain their own process.
Agencies vs. Freelancers — Which Is Right for You?
There’s no universal answer. In my experience, freelancers often offer better value for smaller budgets and more direct communication — you know exactly who you’re dealing with and they tend to be more invested in keeping your business happy. Agencies offer broader resource pools and may be better suited to larger, multi-channel campaigns.
The deciding factor isn’t really the size of the business you hire — it’s whether the person responsible for your account is experienced, communicative, and genuinely interested in your success. I’ve seen solo freelancers outperform large agencies on the same budget, and vice versa. Read a bit about Steve to understand how this kind of focused, personal approach actually works in practice.
For most small businesses, the most important thing is to start specific: hire one person who’s genuinely excellent at one thing, prove that channel works for your business, and then build out from there. Trying to activate every channel simultaneously with a limited budget usually means doing none of them well.
What Good Looks Like Over Time
A good marketing partner will make themselves somewhat accountable to outcomes, even if they’re careful to frame targets as projections rather than guarantees. They’ll send you regular reports you can actually understand, flag problems before you notice them, and proactively suggest adjustments rather than waiting to be chased.
They’ll also be honest about what they can’t do. The best conversation I ever had with a new client started with them explaining what a previous agency had promised and failed to deliver — because it let us start with realistic expectations and a clear plan for what was actually achievable in the first six months.
Ready to Find a Marketing Partner You Can Trust?
Choosing the right person to help grow your business online is one of the most important decisions you’ll make — and it’s worth taking your time to get it right. If you’d like a straight-talking conversation about what your business actually needs and whether I’m the right person to help, get in touch for a free quote. No pressure, no jargon, no overselling. Just an honest conversation about where you are and where you want to be.