Most agencies present prospective clients with an account audit as part of their sales process. The purpose is twofold: 

• To provide immediate value (usually without strings attached).
• To demonstrate that they know their stuff.

But how often do brand marketers turn the tables and audit their agencies in their RFP?

I’m the head of performance marketing at a marketing agency, so I’m clearly writing from a biased perspective. However, over my decade-plus in the industry, I’ve seen too many brands settle for “good enough” because they didn’t know which questions would reveal the cracks in a potential partner’s strategy and approach.

If I were a brand looking for a true growth partner, here are the specific questions I’d ask to separate the top performers from the rest.

1. What are your key services, and what percentage of your clients utilize each?

A lot of agencies claim to be “full service,” but rarely are they “full excellence.” I’d be looking for where an agency truly spends its time versus where they’re just trying to upsell me.

It’s less about the channels in question (although if, say, LinkedIn is a key growth driver for your brand, they’d better demonstrate proficiency there), and more about how their strengths align with your needs.

If an agency claims to be experts in SEO, creative strategy, and paid media, but 90% of their client base only uses them for paid search, that’s a red flag. You want a partner whose core competencies align with your primary needs. 

If you need high-volume creative testing, you want an agency where 80%+ of clients use its creative production frameworks, not one that treats creative as an add-on service.

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2. How are you approaching AI-driven account optimization and platform automation?

I miss the days when knowledge of the manual controls at your disposal could set you apart as a high-performing marketer. But those days have been gone for a while.

In 2026, there’s a real danger of over-optimization with the controls we have left. This can reset algorithmic learnings and prevent them from fine-tuning in service of your goals. Agency teams that strike this balance most certainly have a healthier approach than those who either blindly trust algorithms or can’t help tinkering excessively.

One control you can and must be diligent about using is first-party data for enhanced conversions and offline conversion tracking. Part of the job of a great marketer is training the algorithms on which leads and which conversions to target, and first-party data is a huge lever to pull in that regard.

3. What is your reporting process and what KPIs do you focus on for the majority of your clients?

Don’t just ask for a sample report. Anyone can make a PDF look pretty. You need to understand their philosophy on data.

You’re looking for an agency that’s willing to move upstream. If the majority of their clients are measuring success on clicks, traffic, or even MQLs, run the other way.

A performance-driven agency should be obsessed with revenue, ROAS, and pipeline velocity. Ask them how they handle attribution. If they rely solely on in-platform metrics, which often over-claim credit, they aren’t looking at the full picture. 

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4. What’s the average industry tenure of the team on my account?

This is actually a pretty common question and has been for years. Too many marketers know the pain of integrating rotating sets of agency teams because the agency can’t hold onto top employees, and you should be evaluating the answer from this perspective.

There’s another factor to consider. Generally speaking, the more experienced a marketing team is, the more effectively it uses AI tools.

Whereas junior marketers might be more avid proponents of AI and quicker to adopt its functionality, they’re also far more likely to use it for things like creative ideation and strategy. Both are areas where high-quality human thought is a true differentiator.

For this answer specifically, remember that you have some great research tools like Glassdoor that you can and should access. Employee tenure is one thing, but a Glassdoor profile with a bunch of red flags is an indicator that the agency might struggle to keep the talent it really wants to retain.

5. How is your team using AI on client accounts?

Again, you’re looking for a balance here. Agency teams that don’t use AI at all are almost certainly burning resources on manual tasks, but agency teams that overuse it to replace perspective, critical thinking, and creativity are commoditizing their own client service.

Two follow-up questions to ask:

• What is your governance structure for AI use?
• What’s your process for QAing AI output?

You’re looking for firm answers and redundant layers for each of these questions — at the very least, someone relatively senior should approve any output before it goes live.

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6. When you take over an account, what are the first things you do to save budget without affecting growth?

This is the ultimate litmus test for technical proficiency. A great performance marketer knows where the ad platforms hide the waste buttons. If I were a brand marketer, I’d want to hear about:

• Any harmful default settings that need to be turned off.
• What inputs are driving wasted spend (audiences, networks, keywords, etc.).
• A plan to prioritize budget around what’s driving business outcomes.

If an agency can’t rattle off these specific checks, they’re likely missing the “low-hanging fruit” of budget efficiency. Fixing some of these takes seconds, but missing them costs thousands.

What separates a true growth partner from the rest

Remember: when you’re choosing an agency partner, it’s the job of each agency to sound as good as they possibly can, but what an agency considers to be a great answer might not be a great fit for your brand. 

By focusing on utilization rates of services, strategic application of AI, and approaches to budget efficiency, you’ll find a partner capable of driving actual performance, not just spending your budget.

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