12 Questions to Ask an Ecommerce Marketing Agency Before Hiring

The people presenting the pitch might not be the people working on your account once the contract is signed.

Before committing, ask to meet the team responsible for delivering the work. You should know who your main contact is, who manages each channel and who provides strategic oversight.

Ask:

• Who will be our day-to-day contact?

• Who will manage each marketing channel?

• How much experience does the delivery team have?

• How many client accounts does each account manager or strategist handle?

• Who reviews the work and provides senior oversight?

• What happens if our account manager leaves?

• How quickly can we expect a response to routine and urgent requests?

You should also agree how often you'll have meetings, what will be covered in those meetings, and how urgent issues will be escalated.

A smaller team isn't necessarily a problem. What matters is whether it has the right skills, enough capacity and a clear process for keeping your account moving.

What a good answer looks like: You meet the people who will deliver the work, understand their responsibilities and know who will step in if someone is unavailable.

Red flag: The agency avoids introducing the delivery team, gives vague answers about account capacity or makes senior expertise sound more involved than it will be.

Before starting work, you and the agency need to agree what success means for your business.

For an ecommerce brand, this should go beyond impressions, clicks, and platform-reported conversions. Those figures can help assess campaign activity, but they don't necessarily show whether the business is becoming more profitable.

Ask which KPIs the agency will report on and how it defines them. In particular, clarify:

• Revenue: Will you report total revenue, attributed revenue or incremental revenue generated by marketing activity?

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Does this measure new customers only or all customers acquired?

• Return on ad spend (ROAS): Is this platform-reported ROAS or a calculation based on wider business revenue and advertising costs?

• Average order value (AOV): Does this include all orders, first purchases or repeat purchases?

• Contribution margin: Are product costs, fulfilment, shipping, returns, and other variable costs considered?

This matters because marketing platforms don't always give you the full commercial picture. For example, an advertising platform might attribute a sale to a campaign even if that customer would have purchased anyway.

Ask how the agency combines platform data with your ecommerce sales data and how it accounts for attribution limitations. You should also agree how often performance will be reviewed and what action will follow if results fall below expectations.

What a good answer looks like: The agency agrees measurable KPIs that connect marketing activity to your business objectives and explains how each figure is calculated.

Red flag: Success is defined mainly through impressions, clicks, or platform ROAS, with little consideration of revenue quality, acquisition costs, or profitability.

Agency pricing can be difficult to compare if you don't know what each fee covers.

One agency might include creative production and reporting in its monthly management fee, while another charges for them separately. A lower retainer doesn't necessarily mean a lower overall cost.

Ask for an itemised breakdown covering:

• Monthly management or retainer fees

• Advertising spend and whether it is paid directly by you

• Creative production and additional design work

• Software, reporting tools and other subscriptions

• Affiliate network fees and publisher commissions, where relevant

• Third-party costs and any agency markups

• Additional work outside the agreed scope

You should also clarify whether fees change when your advertising spend increases or decreases. For example, if you reduce media spend by 30%, does the management fee change?

Check the minimum contract term, payment schedule, renewal conditions and any additional charges before signing.

What a good answer looks like: The agency provides a transparent breakdown of costs, explains what is included and makes it clear when extra charges may apply.

Red flag: Pricing is vague, additional costs are difficult to identify or the agency cannot explain how its fees relate to the work being delivered.

No agency can honestly guarantee a specific level of revenue, ROAS or customer acquisition without controlling every factor that affects performance.

Your product pricing, stock availability, website experience, competition, seasonality and wider market conditions all influence results. An agency can control its work and recommendations, but it cannot control every part of your business.

Instead of looking for guarantees, ask how the agency handles underperformance.

• How do you identify when a campaign isn't working?

• How quickly do you investigate a drop in performance?

• What changes would you consider?

• How will you communicate the issue?

• How do you decide whether to continue, adjust or stop activity?

You want an agency that takes responsibility for its work and is willing to explain what isn't working.

What a good answer looks like: The agency sets realistic expectations, explains how it monitors performance and gives examples of how it has responded to difficult periods.

Red flag: It guarantees a specific ROAS or revenue figure without explaining the assumptions behind it, or blames every poor result on external factors.

It's easy to focus on what happens when an agency relationship starts. You should also understand how it ends.

Before signing, read the contract carefully and check:

• The minimum commitment period

• Notice requirements and termination fees

• Automatic renewal conditions

• Ownership of accounts, data and creative assets

• Outstanding payments and any additional charges

• The process for transferring campaigns and handing over access

Ask how much support the agency will provide during the handover and whether there are any restrictions on moving your accounts to another provider.

A professional agency should be comfortable explaining its exit process. Clear terms protect both sides and help avoid unnecessary disruption if the relationship comes to an end.

What a good answer looks like: The contract sets out reasonable notice periods, clear ownership rights and a practical handover process.

Red flag: You are tied into restrictive terms, face unclear exit charges or cannot access your own accounts and assets without the agency's involvement.

One warning sign on its own doesn't always mean an agency is unsuitable. Ask for clarification and look at the full picture. However, concerns about account ownership, data access, hidden fees or restrictive contracts should be resolved before you commit.

Hiring an ecommerce marketing agency shouldn't come down to choosing the most impressive presentation or the lowest monthly fee.

You need a team that understands your business, can explain its recommendations and is prepared to be transparent about performance, costs and responsibilities. The right agency should also be willing to challenge your assumptions when it believes another approach would deliver better commercial results.

Use these questions when speaking to potential partners, compare their answers and take time to review the contract. If an agency struggles to explain how it works before you sign, don't assume communication will improve once you've become a client.

If you're considering external support for your ecommerce marketing, speak to the CommerceCentric team about your business objectives and the challenges you're looking to solve.