Every agency in Gauteng will tell you they are data-driven, results-focused and passionate about your growth. None of that is checkable, which is exactly why it is said. Here is what is.
Ask who owns the accounts
This is the single most revealing question, and the answer takes ten seconds. Your Google Ads account, your Analytics property, your domain and your hosting should be owned by your business, with the agency granted access.
Agencies that run campaigns inside their own accounts are holding your performance history hostage. When you leave — and eventually everyone leaves — you lose years of conversion data and the account starts learning from zero. That is not a technical detail. It is a commercial one.
Ask what they would not do
An agency that thinks every service they offer is right for you is selling, not advising. A good answer sounds like: given your margin and average order value, paid social will not work here, and we would not take that budget.
Distinguish strategy from activity
Activity reporting tells you what happened: posts published, keywords ranked, impressions served. Strategy reporting tells you what it produced and what changes next. If a monthly report is a list of tasks completed, you are buying labour and calling it marketing.
- Activity — "We published eight posts and gained 340 followers"
- Outcome — "Organic traffic to service pages rose 22%, producing 14 enquiries at R380 each"
- Strategy — "Two of those pages convert well; we are building three more like them and cutting the blog cadence"