The agency you hire is the people who show up in month four
An ecommerce marketing agency is only as good as the person who touches your account on a Tuesday in month four. The pitch deck tells you nothing about that person. Neither does the founder on the sales call. So the whole selection comes down to one job: find out who will do the work, how often they will touch it, and what they will judge themselves on.
Before I started Hey Frankie I hired agencies for my own brand, big ones and small ones. Every one of them let me down, and I fired every one of them. Now I run one. The failure modes repeat so reliably that you can screen for them in a single call. Below are the four that cause most of the damage, the questions that expose each one, and how to run the decision without spending a month on it.
Red flag 1. A senior seller and a junior doer
The person who sells you the account is almost never the person who runs it. That part is normal. The problem is when the gap is a decade of experience. You spend three calls with a partner who has scaled a dozen brands. You sign. On day one your Slack channel fills with someone eighteen months out of school. Call him Intern Nick. Nick is doing his best. The model that puts him alone on your account is the problem.
The tell is in the org chart, not the pitch. Ask who will be in your Slack channel on day 30, how many other accounts that person carries, and whether you can meet them before you sign. An agency that cannot name the person has not staffed you yet. An agency that will not let you meet them knows what you would think.
What good looks like: the people on the sales call are the people on the account, and the agency caps its client count so they have time to do the work.
Red flag 2. Ads launched once a month and left to spend
Most agency-run Meta accounts get new creative on a schedule that matches the agency’s billing cycle, not the account’s needs. A batch of ads goes live at the start of the month, the budget runs, and nobody reads the early signals because nobody is looking until the monthly report. Thirty days later the losers have spent as much as the winners.
You can check this before you ever talk to them. Open the Meta Ad Library (the public database of every ad running on Facebook and Instagram) and search for one of the agency’s named clients. Look at the launch dates. If the newest ad went live five weeks ago and most of the active set is 90 days old, you are looking at a set-and-forget account.
Then ask the agency directly. How often do new ads launch, what do they read in the first few days, and what does a dead ad have to do to get turned off? The answer should contain a number of days, a metric and a rule. “We monitor performance closely” is not an answer.
Red flag 3. Reports instead of data
A monthly PDF with a green arrow next to ROAS is the agency grading its own homework. Platform ROAS (return on ad spend, as reported by Meta or Google) counts the sales the platform wants credit for. Your store’s revenue counts what happened. The two numbers disagree every month, and the gap is where the agency’s story lives.
Ask what they report against. The right answer involves your Shopify revenue, your contribution margin and a blended number like MER (marketing efficiency ratio: total revenue divided by total ad spend). The wrong answer is a dashboard that lives inside the ad platform.
Efficiency and growth should move together, and a real agency will show you both. When we took over Google Ads for Speed Cube Shop, efficiency improved 25% while revenue from Google rose 30%. Either number alone can be gamed. Cutting spend improves ROAS. Raising spend grows revenue. Only the pair tells you the account is healthier.
Ask who owns the data, too. You should have admin access to every ad account, pixel and email platform, in your company’s name, from day one. An agency that houses your accounts inside its own business manager has built a switching cost, not a service.
Red flag 4. Tunnel vision on one winning product
When one product or one customer group works, agencies pour everything into it, because the number looks great for a quarter. Then the audience saturates, costs climb, and there is nothing behind it. Growing the whole pie means working new and returning customers together, and treating the rest of the catalog as a pipeline instead of a distraction.
Email is the clearest example. At Toups & Co, email is 55% of revenue. An agency judging that brand on cold-traffic ROAS for the hero product would miss more than half the business. Ask any agency how they think about returning customers and what share of revenue they expect retention to carry. Then ask what happens to the plan when the hero product’s cost to acquire a customer doubles. If the answer is “spend more,” keep looking. If the brand runs on Klaviyo, our guide to how to choose a Klaviyo agency covers the email side in detail.
The questions to ask a marketing agency, and what the answers mean
Use the same questions, in the same order, on every call. The agency that answers with names, numbers and rules is the one that has done this before.
| Question | A good answer | A red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Who will be in my Slack on day 30, and can I meet them this week? | A name, a title and a calendar invite | “Our team” or “we assign after signing” |
| How many accounts does that person carry? | A specific number and a cap | “It varies” |
| How often do you launch new ads, and what turns one off? | A cadence in days, a metric and a rule | “We monitor performance closely” |
| What do you report against? | Store revenue, contribution margin, MER | Platform ROAS in a dashboard you cannot export |
| Who owns the ad accounts, pixel and email platform? | You do, in your name, from day one | The agency’s business manager |
| What do you do about returning customers? | Email, SMS and ads planned together | “That is a different agency” |
| What did you get wrong for a client last year, and what changed? | A specific story and the fix | “Nothing comes to mind” |
| Can I speak with a client who has been with you more than a year? | Yes, and a former client too | References from the first 90 days only |
How to run the decision in two weeks
- Build the short list from the work, not from “best agency” lists. Pull up a few of each agency’s named clients in the Meta Ad Library and sign up for those clients’ email lists. Two weeks of watching tells you more than any case study. Three agencies on the short list is enough.
- Run the same call with each one. Same questions, same order, and take notes on who answered with specifics. Ask to meet the person who will run the account before the second call.
- Make one reference call per finalist, with a client who has been there more than a year. Ask what they wish they had known in month one, and how the agency handled its worst month.
- Decide on people, then price. Retainers vary, and the cheapest proposal usually has the junior doer built in. Pay for the person who will actually show up.
One more filter. If your brand is under $1M a year, you probably should not hire a full agency yet. The retainer will eat the margin the agency is supposed to grow. Run the channels yourself with a senior advisor behind you, or hire one specialist, until the numbers support a team. Our advisory service exists for exactly that stage.
Questions people ask
How do I choose a marketing agency for an ecommerce brand?
Choose on the people who will run the account, not the people who sell it. Ask to meet your day-to-day lead before signing, ask how often they launch new ads and what turns one off, and ask what they report against. Then make one reference call with a client who has been with them more than a year. Price comes last.
What questions should I ask a marketing agency before hiring them?
Ask who will be in your Slack on day 30 and how many accounts they carry. Ask how often new ads launch and what kills a losing one. Ask whether they report on your store revenue and margin or on platform ROAS. Ask who owns the ad accounts and pixel. Ask what they got wrong for a client last year. Specific answers are the good sign.
What are the biggest red flags when hiring a marketing agency?
A senior person on the sales call and a junior person on the account. New ads launched once a month and left to run until the report. Monthly reports built on platform ROAS instead of your store's revenue. Everything poured into one winning product while returning customers are ignored. Ad accounts housed in the agency's own business manager. Any one of these is a reason to keep looking.
Should I hire an agency or build an in-house team?
Under about $1M a year, neither. Run the channels yourself with a senior advisor behind you. Above that, an agency wins when you need several channels run as one plan and cannot yet afford a senior hire for each. In-house wins when one channel is the whole business and you can hire a senior operator to own it. Many brands end up with both.
How long should I give a new marketing agency before judging results?
Judge the process in the first 30 days and the results in 90. In the first month you should see ads launching on a cadence, a clear report against your store's revenue, and the same senior people showing up. If those are missing, the results will not come. By 90 days blended efficiency and total revenue should both be moving in the right direction.
Shopify marketing agency for DTC brands
Klaviyo email and SMS, Meta, Google and TikTok ads, run as one program by senior people.
See how we run itIf you want the shortcut, use the one test: ask to meet the person who will run your account before you sign, and put the questions above to them directly. Most agencies fail it, not because the person is bad but because the model does not let them show up. We built Hey Frankie around that test, with senior people only, a client cap, and one team running Klaviyo email and SMS alongside Meta, Google and TikTok ads. If that is the kind of agency you are choosing between, book a call. Bring the questions. We would rather answer them than dodge them.
