Unusually Transparent
for an Agency Guide
This guide was written for business owners who are evaluating marketing agencies — including us. These are the exact questions we'd want you to ask, and we'll answer them directly about Sidestreet at the end.
If a question on this list makes an agency uncomfortable, pay attention to that reaction.
Why Most Agencies Don't Want You to Read This
Marketing agencies sell confidence. The pitch is always some version of "we know what we're doing, we've done it before, trust us." Some of them mean it. Some of them are selling the pitch.
The information asymmetry in agency relationships is real — most clients don't have marketing backgrounds, which means they're evaluating proposals without a clear way to separate substance from presentation. Agencies know this.
These are the questions we'd want you to ask us before signing anything. They're also the questions you should ask every other agency you evaluate. The answers will tell you a lot.
Questions About Who Does the Work
"Who will actually be working on our account day-to-day?" This is the most important question. Many agencies sell a senior team and deliver junior staff. The person who presents in the pitch meeting may not be the person who runs your account. Ask specifically: who writes our copy, who manages our ads, who builds our website? If they can't give you names, that's information.
"What's your team's background in our industry?" Marketing experience in software or national consumer brands doesn't automatically transfer to a Spartanburg professional services firm or a Greenville construction company. Ask what they've done in your category and in markets like yours. Ask for case studies with business outcomes, not just design screenshots.
"Do you outsource any of the services you're proposing?" Many agencies subcontract writing, design, development, or media buying to freelancers or offshore vendors. This isn't inherently bad, but you should know. Ask who does the writing. Ask who builds the code. Ask whether any work leaves the US. Accountability is harder to maintain across chains of subcontractors.
Questions About Measurement and Results
"How will you report results, and what metrics will you hold yourself accountable to?" Agencies that aren't confident in their results hide behind vanity metrics — impressions, followers, reach, engagement rate. These numbers feel like activity. They're not business outcomes.
Ask specifically: will the reporting include qualified leads, phone calls, form completions, tracked sales, or revenue? Ask how they'll prove causality — not just correlation between their activities and your growth. If the proposal includes "brand awareness" as a primary deliverable with no measurable proxy, push back.
"Can you show me examples where you've measured ROI for a client in a similar situation?" Not revenue projections. Not case studies written in marketing language. Actual data — what they spent, what the client spent, what came back measurable. If they can't produce it, ask why. A good answer is "our clients don't always share financials." A bad answer is a vague redirect.
"What happens to our data and accounts if we part ways?" You should own your Google Analytics, your Google Ads account, your social media pages, your email list, and your website. Ask who holds each asset and what happens to access if you end the engagement. Agencies that retain ownership of your ad accounts, your analytics data, or your website as leverage are not operating in your interest.
Questions About the Contract
"What's the minimum term commitment, and what are the exit conditions?" Most agencies require 3–12 month commitments. This isn't unreasonable — marketing takes time, and short-term measurement produces misleading results. But you should understand what you're committing to, what happens if you want to leave early, and whether the exit conditions are proportional to the term.
"What deliverables are guaranteed vs. best-effort?" Agencies can't guarantee search rankings (and should never claim they can). They can guarantee deliverable quantity — number of posts, reports, ads, pages — and some performance metrics (click-through rate floors, for example). Know which is which before you sign.
"Are there any fees not mentioned in this proposal?" Ad spend, platform fees, stock photography licenses, hosting costs, domain fees — these are often separate from the agency fee. Ask for a complete picture of what you'll actually spend in month one, month six, and annually. A $2,000/month agency retainer may come with $3,000/month in required ad spend on top.
Red Flags We've Seen in the Upstate SC Market
Based on competitive reviews we've done for clients evaluating multiple agencies, here are the specific red flags that appear most often in our market:
Guaranteed first-page rankings. Nobody can guarantee organic search rankings. Google's algorithm is not for sale. Any agency that guarantees rank one, page one, or first-page placement in a specific timeframe is either misleading you or planning to use tactics that will get your site penalized when the algorithm catches up.
Proprietary platforms with no data portability. Some regional agencies and national web-mill companies build sites on closed platforms where you can't export your content or transfer your domain cleanly. This creates lock-in that's expensive to escape. Always ask: what platform, do I own the code, and what does a migration cost if I leave?
Social media management as a substitute for strategy. Posting three times a week on Facebook is not a marketing strategy. If the primary deliverable is social posting, ask what business outcome it's designed to produce and how it will be measured. Social media management has value — but it should be part of a plan, not a substitute for one.
Reporting that doesn't connect to your business. If the monthly report shows impressions, followers, and engagement rate but doesn't mention phone calls, form fills, or new clients, the agency either doesn't have tracking infrastructure in place or is deliberately surfacing numbers that look good. Both are problems.
No discovery before a proposal. An agency that sends you a proposal without understanding your business, your goals, your customers, and your competitive landscape is selling a package, not a strategy. Good agencies ask questions before proposing anything. If the first interaction produces a ten-page proposal, be skeptical.
How Sidestreet Answers These Questions
We'll answer them directly, because we think you deserve that before any conversation about working together:
Who does the work? Joshua Kuhn leads every client engagement and has senior involvement from kickoff through delivery. We don't hand off to junior staff after the sale. When you meet the person pitching the account, you're meeting the person who runs it.
Do we outsource? For specialized production work we sometimes bring in trusted collaborators, and we'll tell you when we do. Strategy, copywriting, account management, web development, and campaign management stay in-house.
What do we measure? We set measurement goals before any engagement starts — qualified leads, tracked phone calls, attributed revenue where trackable, specific ranking targets. We report against those goals every month. We don't lead with impressions unless impressions are the stated goal.
Who owns your stuff? You own your domain, your accounts, your content, and your data. Always. If you leave, you leave with everything you came with plus everything we built. That's not negotiable.
Do we do discovery first? Yes. We don't send proposals to businesses we don't understand. The first step is always a conversation — about your business, your market, your goals, and what you've tried before. If we can help, we'll tell you exactly what that looks like and what it costs. If we can't, we'll say so.