What To Expect From a Marketing Agency
October 7, 2025
You’ve reached the point where growth takes more than referrals and repeat customers. Marketing needs real attention, but you don’t have the time or team to handle it yourself.
So, you start looking at agencies. The problem is, nobody tells you what “good” looks like.
What should you expect once you hire one? How do you know if the partnership’s actually working?
Here’s what a healthy marketing relationship should look like and the baseline standards any reputable agency should meet.
It depends on your business.
If you’re in a regulated or complex field, such as healthcare, finance, legal services, or wholesale distribution, industry experience is highly valuable. These areas have specific compliance requirements, longer sales cycles, and unique buyer behaviors that agencies need to understand. Prior experience helps them move faster and avoid costly mistakes.
For most other small businesses, industry experience matters less than you might think. It comes down to marketing fundamentals: knowing your customers, building clear messaging, executing consistently, understanding your products and services, and tracking what works.
Any agency should do the necessary legwork before building a strategy or plan. Their ability to learn quickly and apply fundamentals matters more than having a long list of clients in your exact category, with the exception of highly regulated or complex industries like the ones mentioned above.
Sometimes, it’s even helpful to have an outside perspective.
You should always know how your campaigns are performing, how your budget is being spent, and what work is in progress. There shouldn’t be any mystery around these items.
A good agency makes info accessible. You should be able to view campaign results and reports clearly, and understand them without needing a degree in marketing. You might come across new terms or acronyms, but the right partner will walk you through what those metrics mean and why they matter.
You should know who is doing the actual work. Early on, you might talk with a strategist or sales lead. Once things kick off, your main contact will usually shift to an account manager. That’s normal for larger agencies. What’s not normal is being passed around from person to person every few months with no clear point of ownership. This makes it difficult to build trust and often indicates poor internal management.
A transparent agency will introduce you to the people doing the work, explain their roles, and ensure you know where to go with any questions.
The communication schedule will depend on your budget, project scope, and the type of work being done. For example, a new website requires more touchpoints than maintaining an existing campaign.
Expect more frequent contact early on while the agency learns your business and gets things organized. Once the work is underway, you should have a regular rhythm for updates.
A check-in every couple of weeks usually helps keep things on track. You should also have monthly strategy sessions to review results, discuss what’s working, and plan next steps.
You shouldn’t have to chase information or wonder what’s going on. A strong agency leads the relationship and remains proactive in communications.
You should. PERIOD.
While agencies may use proprietary tools or systems to manage projects, everything created under your brand should belong to you. That includes your website, ad accounts, creative assets, analytics, and content.
It’s normal for agencies to limit access during development or testing, but full control should return to you once the work is complete. Even if you’re paying a monthly retainer for hosting, management, or simple updates, you should still have admin access to your own properties.
You should understand exactly what’s being delivered, how it will be managed, and how the agreement can end if needed.
A solid contract includes:
If any of these are missing or vague, ask for clarification before signing. Here are a few other items to watch out for:
1. Early Exit Fees and Long-term Contracts
Some agencies require at least a six-month commitment and ask for 30–60 days’ notice to end early, often with a small cancellation charge or exit fee. That’s normal and allows them to wrap up work properly.
🚩 Watch for contracts with hidden fees, long lock-in periods, or steep penalties that make it nearly impossible to leave when you need to.
2. Website and Account Ownership
Limited access during development is fine. But once your site is live, you should have full admin access and documentation for everything tied to your site, including your web platform, hosting, social accounts, ad accounts, analytics, and creative assets.
🚩 If an agency keeps control of your logins or files everything under their own accounts, you're basically leasing everything. It can leave you stuck paying ongoing fees or in a tough spot should you need to sever the relationship and move on.
3. AI Usage
Agencies often use AI for writing, design, or campaign management. That's become standard in today's marketing landscape. What matters is that people still guide the strategy, review the work, and make the final calls. Any business or customer data that runs through those systems should stay private and protected, and not uploaded without your permission.
🚩 If the agency can’t tell you how your information is handled or relies on AI without any real human review, your data and brand are being treated carelessly.
4. Guaranteed Results
The idea of guaranteed results sounds appealing, but there are too many variables. Your product or service, fulfillment, competition, and market fit all play a role. Marketing is a process of learning what works and adjusting as you go. You and your agency should stay aligned on goals, timelines, and what success means for your business.
🚩 Be cautious of any agency making big promises. The “guarantee or you don’t pay” model usually works because they only accept clients who already have the budget, systems, or brand awareness to make success easier. Others lean on inflated platform-specific stats (e.g. - Meta) that look good at face value but don’t translate into actual customers.
An agency should make you feel good about the marketing and the investment you’ve made. They’ll earn your trust through transparent communication, reporting, and of course, the results.
You don’t need to know every granular detail, but you should always feel confident about what’s happening and where your money’s going. If that’s not the case, it’s time to ask questions.
Rebel Dog Marketing is the trusted companion for small business owners who don’t have time to run marketing alone. We dig in beside you to drive growth, manage your systems, and ensure your marketing works just as hard as you do.
