Checklist: How to Recognise a Good Performance Marketing Agency

You can recognise a good performance marketing agency by five things you can check before you sign: the person from the first call later works on your account themselves. Decisions are made on your contribution margin, not on the ROAS in the ad account. The ad accounts are in your name. The notice period is short, in practice usually somewhere between one and three months. And at least one statement in the proposal comes from your account rather than from a template.

Two patterns help you place an agency. Anyone who asks about margin, average basket size and return rate before the conversation turns to channels is working towards your result. Anyone who opens with a ROAS figure before anyone has looked into the accounts is selling. Three things separate dependable providers from interchangeable ones: they say openly what they do not yet know, they explain their process and not only their results, and they make it easy for you to leave again.

Below you will find a checklist of 14 points, the usual fee models, the questions for the first call written out to read aloud, the warning signs in plain words, and the points that belong in the contract. You can work through the list with any agency. With us too, and I will come back to that at the end.

Which five signals say the most?

They are the same five points from the opening, plus reporting. You can establish all of them in a few minutes, and in our view they say more than a list of references.

Which 14 points do you check before you sign?

Each point says why it matters, and how to tell a usable answer from an evasive one. Work through them in this order: the first five cover staffing, the numbers you decide on and measurement, and they settle most cases.

• 1. Who actually works on your account after you sign? This is the point with the widest gap between pitch and everyday reality. Good: names, roles, and that person is in the conversation. Bad: "an experienced team from our pool".
• 2. Is there a named contact with stated availability? Without a fixed assignment, questions disappear into a shared inbox. Good: one person, one channel, a committed response time, for example a reply within one business day and the same day when delivery has stopped. Bad: a ticket system with nobody responsible.
• 3. Does the agency know your numbers per order, your unit economics? Without margin, shipping costs and return rate, nobody can say what acquiring a customer can reasonably cost. Good: the agency works out the contribution margin per order together with you. Bad: it only talks about the ROAS in the ad account.
• 4. Which metric drives the decisions in the account? The target metric decides every later decision in the account. Good: contribution margin, cost per new customer, or a blended figure, meaning total revenue divided by all advertising costs, matching your bookkeeping. Bad: platform ROAS as the only figure.
• 5. Does the agency check measurement before budget starts flowing? Conversions counted wrongly lead to wrong decisions, however well the campaign is built. Good: it wants to see tracking, conversion definitions and attribution windows first. Bad: "your tracking is already running anyway."
• 6. Who owns the accounts, the data and the creative? This point decides what you can take with you when you switch. Good: everything sits with you, the agency works with access. Bad: accounts, pixels or creative files sit with the agency.
• 7. How is creative produced, and how much of it per month? In our experience, on Meta and TikTok the supply of new creative is more often the bottleneck than targeting, because the ad itself selects the audience. Good: a number per month, a production route, one person responsible. As a rough guide: several new concepts a month plus variants per concept, not two new ads a quarter. Bad: "you provide the creative", with no brief, no feedback loop and no frequency.
• 8. Is there a test plan with hypotheses? Without a plan, tests turn into activity that cannot be evaluated afterwards. Good: hypothesis, metric, run time, stopping criterion. Bad: a list of measures with no definition of success.
• 9. What does the reporting look like, and how often does it arrive? Reporting is the only place where you can separate work from effect. Good: figures available at any time in your own access, a short weekly interpretation, a written monthly report with the previous period and the decisions taken. Bad: screenshots with no context and no comparison period.
• 10. Is the pricing model easy to follow? You need to know what you are paying for and what happens when the budget goes up or down. Good: one model, one rate, an invoice you can follow yourself. Bad: a flat price before anyone has seen your account.
• 11. How long are the contract term and the notice period? Long terms shift the risk onto you. Good: a short onboarding phase, then cancellable monthly to quarterly. Bad: twelve months with no reason given. Ask them to explain why the commitment is necessary and what will be delivered in that time as a firm obligation.
• 12. How many accounts does the responsible person handle in parallel? Capacity is the invisible quality limit of every agency. Good: a specific number, plus the arithmetic showing how many hours a week that leaves for your account. Bad: deflecting to "the team takes care of that".
• 13. Does the agency work for direct competitors? In the same niche market, two clients of the same agency would otherwise be bidding against each other. Good: an open answer, a clear rule, and a refusal if it comes to that. Bad: silence, or the suggestion that it is an advantage for you.
• 14. Does the agency ever say no? Anyone who says yes to everything is not working to a method, they are filling their calendar. Good: "for your budget and your product, a different route would make more sense." Bad: every idea of yours is "definitely doable".

Which fee models exist, and what do you look out for?

The overview below describes the usual models, not their prices. We do not quote figures here, because without the number of channels, the creative scope and the depth of reporting they are not comparable. As of October 2026; the basis is proposals and conversations from the German market, not a price list.

Whatever the model, one thing holds: the agency fee and the advertising budget are two separate items. If a proposal mixes the two, ask for the split in writing. And count in the extras that often sit in the small print, such as creative production, tool licences or work on your website. Work on the site itself is part of the job anyway, as we describe in our article on conversion rate optimisation.

What do you ask in the first call?

You can read these seven questions out exactly as they are. What matters is not whether an answer comes, but how specific it is.

• "What would you touch first in our account, and what would you deliberately leave alone?" Good sign: an order of work with reasons, including the things left alone on purpose. Bad sign: a list of all channels at once.
• "Who will be in our weekly calls after we sign?" Good sign: a person named by name, ideally already in the conversation. Bad sign: "we'll sort that out in onboarding."
• "Which metric do you use when you have to decide whether a campaign keeps running?" Good sign: a figure, a threshold and a period after which the decision is made. Bad sign: "we look at the overall picture."
• "What would you need to know about our business to answer that seriously?" Good sign: a specific list, usually margin, return rate, repeat purchase rate, stock levels and delivery times. Bad sign: "we've done this plenty of times in your industry."
• "Which prospective client did you turn down last year, and why?" Good sign: a real example with a reason you can follow. Bad sign: "we tend to find a solution for everyone."
• "After a cancellation, how long does it take until we have all accesses, data and files?" Good sign: a deadline in days, and the statement that the accounts are in your name anyway. Bad sign: a reference to a handover fee.
• "Please show us a case where something went wrong, and what you changed as a result." Good sign: a specific wrong decision and the rule that came out of it. Bad sign: a story in which the client turns out to have been the mistake.

Two notes from practice. First: ask the questions in a conversation, not by email. A drafted answer gives away less than the pause before it. Second: ask for figures from your own account, not for case studies. Anyone who is already making diagnoses without access will treat your data the same way later.

Which warning signs argue against working together?

Any one of these points may have an explanation. Two or more together are a reason not to sign.

• Performance guarantees and ROAS promises. Anyone who does not know your accounts, your margin and your market cannot promise a result. That applies to any commitment that ties a result to a fixed date. A view based on experience is fine, as long as it is phrased as experience and not as a commitment.
• Long minimum terms. Onboarding takes time, twelve months of commitment does not. Long terms shift the risk onto you.
• Ad accounts in the agency's name. If the account, the pixel or the product catalogue belong to the agency, switching can get expensive, because the data history and the campaigns' learning phases do not come with you.
• Reporting as nothing but platform screenshots. Screenshots cannot be verified, cannot be compared, and always show the period that happens to look good.
• No contact you can name. If nobody by name is responsible, in the end nobody is.
• Sold in the call, delivered somewhere else. If the person from the conversation never appears again, you have not met the provider, only its packaging.
• Manufactured urgency. "Only this month still free" is a sales instrument, not a capacity plan.
• References without context. A percentage with no starting point, period, budget and product category is not information.

What do you have written into the contract?

What follows is our experience from agency projects and not legal advice. Contract clauses, rights of use and personality rights depend on the individual case, so have your contract reviewed by a lawyer before you sign. Most conflicts do not arise during the collaboration anyway, but at the end of it. That is why these points belong on the table before you start.

• Ownership of accounts and data. Get written confirmation that the ad accounts, business accounts, pixels, product catalogues, tracking containers and the data generated belong to you, even if the agency set them up.
• Creative and rights of use. Have it recorded to what extent you may keep using the images, videos and copy produced once the work ends, including the raw files. For footage featuring people, the duration and scope of the release is a point of its own and depends on the individual case.
• Access rights. Have it confirmed that the administrator role stays with you and the agency receives working permissions. That way you can withdraw access without asking anyone for permission.
• Data processing. A data processing agreement under Article 28 GDPR (Auftragsverarbeitungsvertrag) belongs in the set as soon as the agency works with customer data, for example for custom audiences, conversion uploads or CRM matching. Along with the list of services and sub-processors used.
• Payment method for the ad budget. The budget runs through your payment method, not the agency's. Otherwise your delivery hangs on a third party's credit limit.
• Notice period. Negotiate it short and symmetrical: what applies to you should apply to the agency too.
• Handover. A deadline in days, a list of the things that get handed over, and clarity on whether that carries an additional fee. That includes brief documentation of the account structure and of the tests currently running.

There is one more point that does not have to be in the contract, but does belong in your project: have the structure of your accounts explained to you once, far enough that you could describe it to a third person. How we think about account structure is set out in our articles on Meta Ads and on Google Ads.

How do you assess an audit or a trial analysis?

Many agencies offer an analysis before any collaboration, and so do we. That makes sense, because you get to see how someone works without taking a risk. It is also the point at which a sales conversation can most easily present itself as consulting.

What a usable audit contains

• References from your account, named: this campaign, this ad set, this period.
• A clear separation between a measured figure, an interpretation and an assumption.
• Prioritisation by impact and effort, not a list of 40 equally weighted points.
• What is going well, too, together with the recommendation to leave it alone.
• The data gaps, named: what cannot be judged with the current measurement setup.
• At least one recommendation you can implement yourself or with your team.

How to spot a sales pitch with charts

• The slides would have fitted any other brand with minor changes.
• They contain industry comparisons, but not a single figure from your account.
• Every recommendation ends at the agency's service list.
• There is no prioritisation, but plenty of points designed to create pressure.
• The analysis was produced before anyone had access to the accounts. Then it is guesswork.

A good test is to ask whether you may keep the document and go on using it yourself. If an analysis is only ever shown in the call, it is there to convince you, not to help you.

How do we ourselves do on this checklist?

I am writing this as the owner of an agency, so with an obvious interest of my own. So, briefly, where we stand on the five points from the opening. I run the 30-minute call myself, not a sales team. We decide on contribution margin, not on the ROAS in the ad account. For the audit we need read access to your ad accounts or a screen share in the call, and you decide what you share. We do not promise a ROAS, and we do not promise a date for results either, because both would be guesswork without a look into your accounts.

The remaining points on this list, meaning notice period, number of accounts per person, how we handle direct competitors and creative frequency, we answer in the call with specific figures, rather than writing them into a line here that would not fit every case later. Ask about them, and be exactly as persistent about it as you would be with any other provider.

Our starting point is a free, no-obligation 30-minute call. After that you get an audit of your ad accounts with specific recommendations within 24 hours (business days). Everyone who has done the call gets the audit, including those who never work with us afterwards. The collaboration works best from 5,000 euros in monthly ad spend; below that, there is usually not enough data for reliable statements. If you would rather first see how we work, you will find that in our overview of performance marketing in Berlin, and for everything else there is the direct route to contact.

What do you check if you only have five minutes?

Ask about the person who will actually do the work. Ask about the metric that decisions are made on. Check whose name the ad accounts are in. Read the notice period. Ask to be shown one statement that comes from your account and not from a template.

Anyone who answers those five points cleanly has checked the places where conflicts most often arise in practice. Everything else on this list makes the decision better, and even this check is not a guarantee.

Frequently asked questions