Before you hire anybody
How to vet a contractor marketing agency
You have probably been burned already. Most contractors we talk to have paid somebody at least once for something they could not point at afterwards. So here is how to check, including the questions that are awkward for us.
The reason this is hard is that marketing is one of the few things you buy where you cannot inspect the work. You can look at a roof. You can look at a furnace install. You cannot look at a strategy, and by the time the results are in, you have spent six months finding out.
So the check has to happen before you sign, and it has to be about verifiable things rather than about how confident somebody sounds on a call.
Eleven questions, and what a bad answer sounds like
| Ask this | A bad answer | What you are testing |
|---|---|---|
| What counts as a lead in your reporting? | Any form fill or call | If bots and 12-second hangups are in the count, every other number they show you is inflated by an unknown amount. |
| Who owns the website when we stop working together? | It stays on our platform | A site you cannot take with you is a subscription with a hostage in it. Ask for the answer in writing. |
| Who owns the Google Business Profile and the ad accounts? | We manage those for you | Managing is fine. Owning is not. You should be the account owner and they should have access. |
| Can I see a site you built that is 18 months old? | Only recent launches | Anybody can show a launch. A site that still ranks and still converts after a year and a half is the actual proof. |
| What is the contract term and the exit notice? | Twelve months, no early exit | Long lock-ins exist to survive the period where results have not arrived yet. |
| Who does the work, and are they employees? | We have a team | Ask for names and roles. There is nothing wrong with contractors doing the work, but you should know before you find out. |
| How many other companies in my trade and my market do you work with? | That is confidential | If they run three roofers in your city, you are competing against your own agency for the same map pack. |
| What will you do in month one specifically? | Audit, strategy, optimization | Three abstractions is not a plan. A real answer has deliverables and dates in it. |
| What happens if it does not work? | SEO takes time | True and useless. Ask what specifically they would change at month three, and at month six, and who decides. |
| Can I talk to a client you no longer work with? | We only have current clients | The most useful reference is somebody who left on good terms. Anybody with a real book of work has one. |
| Show me your own accessibility and speed scores. | Deflection | An agency selling website quality should pass its own test. This is the cheapest possible check and almost nobody survives it. |
That last one is the fastest. Run any agency site through PageSpeed Insights on mobile and through a free accessibility scan before the first call. It takes four minutes and it reorders the shortlist.
Specialist or generalist
You will hear this framed as a loyalty test, usually by whichever type the agency happens to be. It is not. A generalist who has run 200 lead-generation campaigns knows things a trade specialist does not, and a specialist knows that a roofing customer after a hailstorm behaves nothing like a kitchen remodel customer in February.
The question that actually separates them is narrower: can they describe your buying cycle back to you without you explaining it first. If they can, the label does not matter. If they cannot, no amount of trade-specific branding on their website will fix it.
The questions that are awkward for us
We do not publish a guarantee, and if a guarantee is what makes you comfortable, we are the wrong shop. What we publish instead is the scoring rubric and the raw research, so you can check our work rather than trust our promise.
We also score third-party contractor websites in public, which some contractors find abrasive and some find useful. It is worth knowing that about us before you enquire.
And we are small. If you need somebody on site next week in your market, that is not what this is. Ask that question of anybody you are considering, because the answer determines whether the relationship works.
Everything Fervor sells, with prices: the services hub. Or start with a scored read of your own site through the Site Inspection.