In the third installment of our ‘questions to ask an agency series’ Nick and Ricky dive into personas and creative testing. 71% of companies that use a persona methodology are hitting their business goals so it provides strong evidence that they are important to achieving goals. Ensuring that your new agency partner has the details and ability to drill down into specifics about personas and how different creatives appeal to different users within that persona.

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Nick and Ricky discuss two more questions you should be asking an agency before hiring them: 

1. What is your current process for discovering personas and or buyer groups?
   a. You’re looking for information that is deeper than the standard, surface-level answers of demos and psychographics. You’re wanting to get info about their thoughts on emotional drivers, buying criteria, what digital channels, they use what triggers a purchase, etc.
   i. This matters because it influences each tactic within your strategy so getting it right is important 
2. What methodology do you use when testing creative at the beginning of an engagement and how do you keep testing beyond this phase?
   a. This answer may depend on your budget but you also want to be looking for the ideation and campaign-building tactics that they use 
3. How do you organize tests that your agency does?
   a. You’re looking for a methodology/ technical answer as you want to know how they are testing things at different stages of the funnel and throughout the user journey
   b. You can also ask them how they determine successful vs unsuccessful tests
   i. This can help you pinpoint their organization when it comes to certain tests

If tests are poorly organized and there’s no clear understanding of the customer buying journey, then it may be time to reconsider hiring that agency.

Did you catch our other parts of this series, if not, check them out below:

Part 1 | Part 2

We have a comprehensive guide of questions to ask when looking to hire an agency – get access to it here

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