In the sixth and final installment of the ‘questions to ask an agency’ series of the podcast, we discuss quality control. Quality control takes 2 different areas into consideration – 1) quality control around the brand, and 2) quality control around KPIs and Metrics. We cover the primary questions that relate to these and what sorts of things you should be looking for that may be red flags when considering an agency as your new marketing partner.

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Here are some questions you should be asking an agency when you’re vetting them as a potential partner:

1. How do you define quality control when it comes to my brand? What is your process to ensure that my brand is always represented accurately and in the way we want?
   1. A great agency will always ask for your brand guidelines. Even if the guidelines may be a little old, this is a great time to use them to ensure your agency is going to have something to refer to.
      a. If you don’t have one, the agency may recommend doing a mood board or some foundational branding guidelines to solidify how your brand is shared through different marketing tactics. 
   2. Ask a follow-up question regarding the approval process and ask what the process is for internal revisions.
      a. The answer you are looking for is that all of the notes are written down for you to sign off on anything to show the clear organization of how revisions are handled as well as how you can provide effective creative feedback for maximum return.
2. What KPIs and metrics will you be reporting on in our meeting rhythms?
   1. These should relate to what your goals are as well as the level of digital maturity your brand has at the start.
   2. If the answer to this question is more KPI related than metric-related or no metrics are listed at all, that is a red flag.
   3. If you’re in e-commerce, generating metrics is easier. For more lead-based businesses, you need to be more focused and aggressive about asking about metrics so that you can get the sales data to the agency to ensure everyone is on the same page with the information that is available. 
   4. Integrations with lead-based business sales funnels are important so that there is a feedback loop between the efforts your agency is doing with the ads and the traffic or lead volume you may be getting. The more data there is to work with, the better.

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

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

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

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