The Most Important Criteria When Choosing a Performance Marketing Agency
How do you choose a performance marketing agency without ending up with poor service, overpaying for a big name or overhyped PR, or getting swayed by polished sales talk early on? And how do you actually assess real expertise?
In this article, we’ll briefly cover what you should truly focus on when selecting a performance marketing agency, which questions are worth asking - even if they’re uncomfortable for the agency - and what you can safely ignore because it has little to no impact on quality or ability to hit KPIs.
My name is Andrei Novikov. I’ve spent over 20 years in marketing and am the founder and CEO of five different agencies. Some have been successfully sold; others continue to help clients solve complex business challenges. I’ve read hundreds of books on how to build and scale agencies effectively, lived through multiple crises, and understand both the pain points - and the things agencies rarely tell clients. In this article, I’ll share the insights that actually matter.
Criterion #1: The Team
An agency is, first and foremost, its people. Without strong talent, no amount of process, PR, or funding will turn an agency into a great one. Even if leadership has best-in-class expertise, the outcome will either be a small boutique operation or eventually devolve into private consulting - not a scalable, full-service agency.
What truly separates strong performance agencies from average ones is how they work with their teams:
- How accurately they assess real expertise during interviews
- How quickly they onboard and integrate new hires into their processes
- How well they motivate employees, grow their expertise, and continuously train them on constantly changing marketing tools and regulations
- Whether they can make the team genuinely care about - and take ownership of - your project
These factors matter far more than awards, years in business, published articles, or brand recognition. If your account is handled by junior specialists or overworked employees, you’ll get poor service, and, inevitably, poor results.
That’s why the first question you should ask when choosing an agency is: Who exactly will be working on our account?
Ask about their experience, background, and how long they’ve been with the agency.
- If the specialists are inexperienced, no star leadership, strong brand, or polished processes will save your results
- If the specialists are experienced but have been with the agency for less than six months, that’s also a risk
- Ideally, you should meet the team at some point - not just to assess expertise, but also personal chemistry.
Criterion #2: Team Capacity and Workload
Even the best expert won’t deliver results if they’re buried in urgent tasks across other projects and can only give your account an hour a day on a leftover basis. That simply doesn’t work.
Ask what else the team is working on besides your project - and pay close attention to the reaction before you even hear the answer. This question often catches agencies off guard, and the first few seconds tend to reveal reality before polished sales language kicks in. Long pauses, uncertainty, or visible discomfort are signals to be cautious.
Be skeptical of answers like: “This team will work exclusively on your project.”
In most cases, that’s unrealistic. Agency economics don’t allow employees to sit idle waiting for a single client. Typically, a contract is signed first, the project is added to the existing workload, and only then does the agency scale resources if needed.
An honest answer sounds more like this: the team is currently at around 80% capacity, they can take on your project, and if the workload matches expectations, the agency will expand the team. Sustained workloads above 90% inevitably lead to burnout and mistakes - before you even factor in vacations, sick leave, or training time.
My advice: ask directly, How do you guarantee that the assigned team will have enough time for our project?
It’s also useful to ask team members themselves: Which clients are you currently working with? Specialists tend to be more candid than sales reps.
Criterion #3: Operational Effectiveness
Ask the agency how they achieve efficiency. Why are they faster, more precise, or better than others? What differentiates them beyond the team, which you’ve already evaluated?
Any solid performance agency should have task tracking, time tracking, clear processes, and templates. These are hard to verify upfront, and you’ll likely hear polished stories about how perfectly everything is set up.
What’s far more valuable to ask about is internal technology.
If an agency has proprietary tools that track performance metrics, monitor red flags 24/7, aggregate data to improve forecasting accuracy, and actively uses AI to enhance results - that’s a serious advantage.
In many cases, it makes more sense to choose a smaller, less hyped agency with strong in-house technology than an older agency that still operates “the old way” and lacks incentives to innovate due to comfortable margins. Given that AI has only recently become truly impactful in the industry, there’s a strong chance you’ll get better quality - and at a significantly lower cost - from a modern, smaller agency than from a top-10 player.
This won’t always be the case. Some top-tier agencies do invest heavily in automation and infrastructure. But more often than not, similar capabilities can be found at smaller agencies for much less money. The key is asking the right questions - and verifying the answers.
Criterion #4 (Optional but Important): Access to Leadership
Imagine something goes wrong and you lose money due to an agency mistake. You’re communicating with account managers or department leads who operate strictly within internal rules and can’t resolve non-standard situations.
Without access to leadership - people who can make compensation decisions and think in terms of business and strategy - the issue may remain unresolved, while you continue hearing the same scripted responses.
Open access to leadership, direct contact, and a willingness to resolve difficult situations is a major advantage. Everyone makes mistakes: an outdated offer goes live in Meta, or a Google campaign isn’t paused in time. What matters next is whether you know someone who can actually make a decision - or not.
What You Should Not Buy Into (and Why)
To keep this from turning into a book, here’s a brief list of common sales arguments that are often misleading:
Agency Size
Size is only loosely correlated with quality. Regardless of headcount, if your account is handled by overworked or poorly trained junior staff, results won’t follow.
Agency Age
Like any business, agencies go through different stages of maturity - and these aren’t always tied to age. An agency can exist for 20 years and remain average. Large companies can also lose relevance over time due to an inability to adapt, leaving only past achievements behind (Kodak is a classic example).
At the same time, young and progressive teams exist - agencies just three years old that outperform many established players. I jokingly mention affectgroup.com here, but there are genuinely many such agencies. That’s an important point to understand.
Brand Recognition
A strong brand doesn’t guarantee quality, but it almost always increases cost. While brand recognition can reduce selection risk (many clients can’t all be wrong), it doesn’t guarantee service level.
“Star” Executives
They’re often charismatic, articulate, and genuinely top experts. The problem is they won’t be running your account - and most likely won’t even be closely supervising it. Don’t make this a key decision factor. Strong leadership is a plus, but day-to-day communication in Slack will be handled by entirely different people - and your KPIs depend on them.
I’ve tried to share insights based not on generic advice anyone could generate, but on personal observations formed over 20 years in marketing. I hope they help you approach the choice of a performance marketing agency more thoughtfully.
Good luck in your business - and stay kind.