Choosing an agency is like choosing a navigator. You set the course; but the one who reads the compass, calculates the current and knows which way to turn the wheel when the storm hits is them. As a CMO, marketing director, founder or business owner you already know the stakes: the right agency changes a brand's course, the wrong one costs you a budget and a year.
The hard part isn't choosing, it's telling them apart. The decks look alike. The client lists look alike. Even the sentences in the first meeting look alike. The difference doesn't show up in an agency's first answer — it shows up one layer beneath it.
That's what the following eight questions are for. Under each one I've also written what to listen for in the answer — because the real information isn't in the question, it's in where the agency hesitates.
The eight questions at a glance
- How do you use data and measurement when you make decisions?
- What audience insights do you hold, and how do they change the strategy?
- Where do you use AI, and what's your long-term plan for it?
- How do you approach multi-channel marketing?
- How do you measure success and report the results?
- What experience do you have at a similar scale or in a similar sector?
- How do you keep creativity alive inside the team?
- How do you handle crisis management and contingency planning?
First, evidence: data and audience
1. How do you use data and measurement when you make decisions?
You're about to set out on a long voyage. Wouldn't you want a navigator who trusts a precise chart and a working instrument rather than a guess? In marketing, that instrument is data. The agency should have a clear approach from predictive analytics to real-time campaign optimisation — and that approach should be shaped around your business, not a generic diagram already sitting in the deck.
I once worked with a client whose previous agency ran largely on intuition rather than data; the result was campaigns that never reached the clarity expected of them. After moving to a data-driven agency, they saw a forty percent lift in return on investment within six months. The clearest example on our side is SOYLU AVM: pixels and conversion tracking were rebuilt from scratch before the campaign, and what made the $1.5M-in-six-days result possible was repairing measurement first.
Listen for this: can the agency tell you concretely which data it reads, where it reads it from, and which decision changes at which threshold? "We work with data" on its own isn't a commitment, it's a courtesy.
2. What audience insights do you hold, and how do they change the strategy?
Understanding your audience is like knowing the tide and the current before you leave port. Don't ask the agency what it does in audience analysis — ask which sentence, which visual, which channel decision that analysis changed. They should be able to show how past performance data feeds back into the strategy.
A former client of mine, a luxury retailer, struggled at exactly this point; once they started working with an agency strong in localized audience insight, engagement and sales rose markedly across markets. Our own version of that logic is Feruza Elegance: repositioned from a classic line to a modern-luxury identity, the brand reached the shelves of one of Türkiye's best-known boutique retail chains precisely because its audience was redefined first.
Listen for this: does the agency describe the audience by demographics or by behaviour? "Women, 25-45, metro areas" is a targeting setting. "They compare prices three times and read reviews before buying" is an insight.
Then the machine: AI and channel coherence
3. Where do you use AI, and what's your long-term plan for it?
AI has entered every layer of strategy, execution and optimisation; the agency should have a clear framework both for today and for the next two years. On one consulting project I watched an agency embed AI into customer segmentation and personalisation: targeting accuracy improved, the customer experience improved, and the conversion rate followed.
In 2024 this question was enough. In 2026 it isn't — I've explained why in a separate section below, because the dividing line is no longer "do you use it".
4. How do you approach multi-channel marketing?
A successful voyage runs on instruments that confirm one another. Marketing is the same: social, email, search and display can each be good on their own, but if they don't know about each other the sum is zero. Ask the agency at which point the channels hand data to one another.
A mid-sized e-commerce client of mine was wrestling with exactly this disconnect; their new agency built an integrated channel strategy and customer retention rose twenty-five percent. On our side, the result of that same coherence is GYMWOLVES: the data flow was repaired, the funnel rebuilt, the campaign fed with social proof — and sales grew twelvefold in three months.
Then the ledger: reporting and sector experience
5. How do you measure success and report the results?
Transparent reporting is the only way you can assess an agency's performance. What do they track? Which metric takes priority? How often and in what format will you receive the report? And when bad news arrives, who tells you, and when?
I remember a client worn down by the vague reporting of their previous agency. When they moved to an agency that gave detailed, actionable findings, what changed wasn't the numbers — it was the decisions. The moment they could see what was happening, they knew what to do about it.
Listen for this: is there a section in the report where the agency writes down its own mistakes? A report that carries only good news isn't a report.
6. What experience do you have at a similar scale or in a similar sector?
Experience makes familiar waters easier to navigate. A fintech startup I worked with gained a great deal from an agency that knew finance deeply; knowing the sector's constraints up front halved the time spent on strategy. The work that best shows what depth means for us is İstanbul Ortez Protez: no page written without understanding how a patient actually searches was reaching the top three — once that was understood, ten new patient enquiries arrived per month.
Listen for this: if the agency doesn't know your sector, does it say so — or does it say "we work in every sector"? The latter is often true but means nothing on its own. An agency that admits what it doesn't know and explains how it will learn is safer than one that claims to know everything.
Finally, character: creativity and the moment of crisis
7. How do you keep creativity alive inside the team?
Creativity is the wind that pushes the ship forward. I once worked with an agency that ran innovation workshops and hackathons on a regular cadence; that culture surfaced ideas the brief never asked for. The trouble is that creativity is easy to imitate as a slide title. So tie the question to a calendar: in the last three months, what did the team try, what failed, and what came out of it?
8. How do you handle crisis management and contingency planning?
Every voyage meets rough water at some point. I remember a client facing a serious reputation crisis: the agency's fast, level-headed response didn't just manage the situation, it turned it into a moment that strengthened the brand's transparency. What a crisis reveals isn't an agency's talent, it's its reflex.
Listen for this: does the agency have someone reachable at midnight, who signs off, and which steps are fixed in the first twenty-four hours? If the crisis plan isn't written down, it doesn't exist.
2026 update: how do you use AI?
In 2024 the third question was a separator: ask "do you use AI?" and half the agencies in the room would pause. Today nobody pauses. Everyone uses it, everyone says so, and that's exactly why the question no longer separates anything. The new question to ask an agency in 2026 is this: where do you use AI — and where do you refuse to?
An agency that uses AI in production is not the same as one that uses it in strategy. The first gives you speed; the second gives you the average.
Here's the dividing line: AI can speed up a visual, draft the first version of a text, scan campaign data in minutes instead of hours. Those are production tasks, and speeding them up is good. But which category a brand plays in, which customer it walks away from, which price position it defends — those aren't production, they're decisions. An agency that hands those decisions to a model is selling you the average of your competitors.
Two of our projects show this line side by side. The AI technical advisor we built for Meccanotecnica Umbra works out the right seal for an engineer describing their plant, and quote requests rose tenfold — but the logic deciding which question it asks and which product it proposes was built by us, together with engineers. With OdorGo the work began with a decision instead: creating a category that didn't exist is a move no model has in its training data. The 10 million TL in revenue over eight months and more than 10 million video views are the result of that decision.
The practical test: "In the last three months, which task did you use AI to speed up — and which decision did you deliberately keep with a human?" An agency that can't answer the second half is selling you a tool's output, not its own process.
In closing: supplier or partner?
All eight questions exist to measure one distinction: is the party across the table a supplier who does work, or a partner who feels accountable for the outcome? Good partners share a few traits:
- They understand your specific constraints — not the sector, your business.
- They draw on data and AI, but they own the decision.
- They take responsibility for data and privacy seriously.
- They carry creativity beyond the brief.
- They're ready for a crisis; the plan lives in a file, not in a meeting.
One note: these eight questions are for choosing an agency in general. If your business is e-commerce, questions about platform, payment infrastructure and integrations sit on top of the list — in the journal I've written separately about what a real e-commerce agency changes.
Ask us these questions too. The answers, with their numbers, sit in the open on our case pages; and if you want to see how we work, our performance marketing service describes the first step of the job — the audit.