The Most Honest Guide to Working with a Marketing Agency

Let’s be honest.

Working with a marketing agency can be transformational.
Or it can be an expensive exercise in frustration.

We’ve seen both.
We’ve inherited clients burnt by big promises and no delivery.
We’ve also built long-term partnerships that have grown quietly and consistently behind the scenes.

So here it is: everything we’d tell a business owner over coffee, before a contract is signed.
The truth. No fluff. No filler. Just what you need to know if you’re thinking about working with an agency.

1. Strategy first. Always.

A lot of agencies jump straight into activity.
They launch campaigns, write blogs, post on social.
But without strategy, it’s just noise.

If your agency isn’t asking questions, pushing back, and getting under the skin of your business first—it’s not doing its job.

We start with a 30-day Strategy Sprint.
It’s focused, sharp, and designed to give both sides clarity before committing to ongoing work.
Because the cost of bad marketing isn’t just wasted spend – it’s lost momentum.

2. Fixed deliverables don’t work in the real world.

Here’s what most retainers look like:
✅ 4 blogs
✅ 1 campaign
✅ 5 hours of dev
…every month, no matter what.

Sounds structured. But when priorities change (and they always do) it breaks.

One month you might need a new landing page.
Next month, it’s fixing your ad creative.
Good agencies adapt. Great ones expect to.

That’s why we don’t do rigid scopes. We agree the direction, then do what needs to be done. No more, no less.

3. You’re not buying time. You’re buying outcomes.

If your agency is talking in hours, be careful.
You can burn 20 hours doing the wrong thing.
You can move a business forward in 2, if you’re focused.

We don’t bill by the hour.
We don’t send timesheets.
We spend our time on the things that create impact. That’s it.

4. Good reporting fits on one page.

We’ve seen 40-slide decks with beautiful graphs and no actual meaning.

Ours is one page.
We show three things:

• Awareness: Are we reaching the right people?
• Engagement: Are they paying attention?
• Action: Are they doing what you want them to do?

We include what it cost, what changed, and what we’re doing next.
It’s transparent. It’s useful.
It doesn’t need a Zoom call to explain.

5. No communication = no confidence.

If you have to chase your agency to find out what’s happening, something’s already broken.

Silence means misalignment.
We keep things open, honest, and regular. Not just when things go well. Especially when they don’t.

If something’s off, we say so. And we fix it. That’s the job.

6. Trust matters more than tactics.

Most of our clients are founders, MDs or heads of marketing in SMEs.
They don’t have time to micromanage an agency.
They need a partner they can hand things to, and know it’ll get done properly.

That’s why we stay small.
Lean team. Fewer clients.
More focus, more care, more consistency.

We’re not here to scale for scale’s sake. We’re here to do work that actually works.

7. You’re allowed to ask hard questions.

Ask what happens if results don’t come right away.
Ask what kind of work gets prioritised.
Ask what we won’t do.

You’re putting trust, budget, and brand in someone else’s hands.
You deserve honest answers.
And if an agency can’t give you straight ones, you already have your answer.

Final thought

The best agency partnerships feel calm. Focused. Productive.
You don’t lie awake wondering what’s going on. You don’t second-guess everything.

You feel like things are moving – and you know why.

If that’s the kind of relationship you want, we should talk.
No pitch. Just a real conversation to see if we’re a fit.

Want to share your growth problem with us? Click here