The agency pitch went beautifully. Biodun sat in a glass-walled meeting room in Victoria Island while three people in matching branded polo shirts walked him through forty slides. There were case studies, a mood board, a “proprietary growth framework” with a hexagon in it, and very good small chops.
He signed a twelve-month contract that afternoon.
He never saw two of those three people again. His account went to a 23-year-old who was also running nine other clients. When he asked, eight months later, for admin access to his own ad account, there was a long pause on the phone.
Hiring a marketing agency is a strange purchase. You’re buying expertise precisely because you don’t have it, which means you’re least able to judge quality at exactly the moment you’re choosing.
Every agency deck looks competent, and every portfolio glows. The real differences only show up months and millions of naira later, in who actually does the work, what happens when results lag, and who owns your accounts when it ends.
This guide fixes that imbalance. It covers the preparation that makes you hard to fool, seven questions that expose everything in one meeting, and the red flags that should end a meeting early.
A disclosure, which is also the point. We’re a marketing agency. Use every question below on us. An agency that squirms under its own buying guide has told you what you needed to know, whichever agency it is.
If you’re still deciding between an agency and an in-house hire, that question has its own guide. This one assumes you’ve chosen an agency and now need to choose well.
Do Two Pages of Homework First
Agencies write proposals to fill a vacuum, so arrive with the vacuum already filled. Bring two pages. One has your baseline numbers and customer economics. The other has a written goal, meaning the outcome you want, with a number and a date. These are the first two parts of a working marketing plan.
The homework does three jobs at once. It forces every proposal to address your goal instead of the agency’s favourite services. It makes proposals comparable, because they’re all bidding on the same outcome. And it sorts the room instantly. Agencies that light up at a client with a written goal are built for accountability. Agencies that go vague are showing you the next twelve months in miniature.
The Seven Questions, and What the Answers Mean
- “What will success look like in writing, and by when?” The only acceptable answer is a specific, staged goal, with leading indicators early and business numbers later, like the SEO timeline’s staged structure. Refusing to commit to anything in writing is the meeting’s first exit. The opposite failure matters just as much. Anyone guaranteeing rankings or results is lying about a system nobody controls, which is the oldest lie in the industry.
- “What happens if you miss?” This is our own accountability framework, offered as a standard any agency can be held to. You want a written consequence the vendor bears, such as remediation at their cost, a fee reduction or an easy exit. The answer shows whether their confidence is priced in or just printed on the deck.
- “Who owns every account, and can we walk away with everything?” Ad accounts, analytics, the website, and the content and data created should all be in your name, with admin access yours from day one and everything exportable when you leave. The most common Nigerian horror story is the hostage situation discovered at breakup. Any hesitation here ends the meeting.
- “Who, by name, will work on our account?” The pitch team and the delivery team are often different people. Ask who does the actual work, how senior they are, how many other clients they handle, and whether the work is done in-house or quietly subcontracted. You’re hiring people, and a logo can’t run your campaigns.
- “Walk me through how you’d diagnose us before prescribing anything.” A serious agency’s first move is an audit of your numbers, your funnel and your market, because the leak dictates the priority. A proposal with services and prices attached before any diagnosis is a menu, and it tells you the same services get sold to everyone.
- “How will we see what’s working, in our own systems?” Reporting should reconcile to revenue in measurement you control, never in platform-flattered dashboards. Agencies grading their own homework produce suspiciously good grades. Ask what a monthly report contains, and ask whether they’d ever recommend cutting your spend. “Yes, and here’s the last time we did” is the best answer on this whole list.
- “How do we leave?” Ask about notice periods, handover obligations and what happens to work in progress. A reasonable answer is 30 to 60 days and a documented handover. Long lock-ins with penalties are an agency pricing in its own expected disappointment.
You’re buying an operating relationship, and the services come with it. That relationship is made of goals, ownership, transparency and exits. You can judge services from a portfolio. You can only judge a relationship by the terms someone offers before they have your money. These questions make the terms visible early, while your leverage is at its highest and theirs is at its lowest.
Hans Christian Andersen wrote the manual for that meeting. In The Emperor’s New Clothes, nobody admits they can’t see the fabric, because that would mean admitting they don’t understand it. The proprietary hexagon works the same way. These seven questions are the child in the crowd.
Red Flags That End the Meeting
- Guaranteed rankings, guaranteed results or guaranteed AI citations.
- Accounts or hosting held in the agency’s name “for convenience”.
- Reports that count activities, like posts made and ads launched, instead of outcomes.
- A quote covering “everything” at a price that couldn’t cover anything done properly. A ₦150k retainer promising SEO, ads, social and content is either dishonest or spread across so many clients that you’re buying minutes.
- Pressure to sign a long lock-in at the first meeting.
- Name-dropped clients you’re not allowed to call.
Any two of these together are your answer, and there’s nothing left to negotiate.
Before Your First Agency Meeting
Write down your current numbers, even rough ones, and the one goal you’d want an agency to hit in 90 days. Take the seven questions into every meeting and note who answers them in writing.
We publish this knowing we’ll sit across the table from readers holding it. That’s the intention. I’d rather lose a pitch to a better answer than win one with a hexagon.
Take the Questions to Every Meeting
Biodun got his ad account back eventually, after three weeks of emails and one very tense phone call. His next agency answered all seven questions in writing before he signed anything. The small chops were worse, and the results were much better.
Get the diagnosis before you talk to anyone, including us. The free 2-minute diagnostic shows which of your four walls is weakest.
P.S. Businesses spending ₦1M or more a month on marketing also qualify for a free 30-minute Leak Check. Bring the seven questions, and we’ll answer them.
Biodun’s story is illustrative. This guide reflects our view of what accountable agency engagements should look like, informed by the operating standards documented across this library. We are, as disclosed, an interested party, which is exactly why the questions are designed to work on anyone, including us. This article is general information, not legal or procurement advice.
Related. Deciding to hire in-house instead? Read how to hire your ideal marketer.
This article covers one part of a bigger system. Our guide to digital marketing in Nigeria shows how the four walls fit together, and the order to build them in.
