These questions won’t just make your agency uncomfortable — they’ll expose whether they deserve to exist:

Let’s cut the bullshit: your digital agency is failing you. You’ve known it for months. The red flags have been screaming at you while you pretend not to hear, trapped in a cycle of mediocrity that’s bleeding you dry.

You Know Your Digital Agency is Shady, Inexperienced, and Ineffective

“The first rule of business success is that someone’s incompetence is always costing you money. The second rule is that you’re choosing to let them.”

I’ve performed autopsies on over 200 agency relationships across five continents. The patterns of failure are always the same — agencies selling dreams and delivering excuses. You’re not getting insights. You’re getting PowerPoints. You’re not getting strategy. You’re getting tactics disguised as strategy.

Would you believe me if I told you their actual business model is predatory by design? They’ve calculated exactly how long you’ll stay before you realize you’ve been had. They’ve measured precisely how much mediocrity you’ll tolerate. They’ve engineered reports to create just enough illusion of progress to keep the invoices flowing. That’s your $5,000 a month evaporating, and they don’t see this as unethical — it’s their standard operating procedure.

The Warning Signs You’ve Been Ignoring

Performance Mirage: Activity Masquerading as Achievement

Vanity Metrics Obsession

Your reports are impressive — colorful graphs climbing up and to the right. They celebrate a 200% increase in “engagement” while your sales flatline. They’re measuring what makes them look good, not what builds your business.

“A man who builds impressive reports rather than impressive results is not an ally but a parasite drawing sustenance from your bank account. His competence is in extraction, not creation.”

A retail client once proudly showed me 14 months of traffic growth reports. Digging deeper revealed 68% of that “traffic” bounced within 10 seconds and came from countries where they didn’t even sell products. They weren’t measuring success. They were manufacturing it.

Perpetual Testing Mode

“We need more data” becomes their mantra. Six months in, they’re still “establishing baselines” and “refining parameters” with zero concrete results to show.

A financial services company watched their agency run 47 A/B tests over nine months without implementing a single meaningful improvement. Testing had become the product rather than the means to a product.

The Expertise Façade: Depth vs. Breadth

Tactical Execution Without Strategic Direction

Your agency frantically builds tactics with no coherent strategy. They’ll enthusiastically create your TikTok presence because it’s “trending,” without asking if your B2B enterprise software customers are even there.

“The hallmark of second-handers is their ability to perform tasks without understanding purposes. They execute without comprehension, like animals trained to pull levers for food pellets.”

One manufacturing client had campaigns running simultaneously across seven different platforms, none aligned with their actual buyer journey. Result: $143,000 spent for negative ROI because the tactical execution, while technically competent, was strategically bankrupt.

10 Questions That Will Make Your Agency Bleed

These questions won’t just make your agency uncomfortable — they’ll expose whether they deserve to exist:

1. “Show me specifically how your work directly increased our profit.”

Not revenue. Not traffic. Profit. Watch them squirm as they try to connect their cute social posts to your bottom line.

2. “Name three ways you’ve fundamentally failed us, and why I shouldn’t fire you for each one.”

No agency delivers perfection. The value of an agency isn’t in their perfection but in their awareness of their imperfection.

“The measure of a professional is not the absence of failure but the refusal to hide from it. In the face of incompetence, only the second-rate seek refuge in excuses.”

3. “If I gave your job to my nephew who ‘knows digital,’ what specific expertise would be lost?”

Make them articulate their unique value in concrete terms, not agency jargon.

4. “What part of my business do you still not understand after working with us for months?”

Great agencies develop deep business understanding. Parasitic ones stay willfully ignorant.

5. “What uncomfortable recommendation have you been afraid to make because it might jeopardize your relationship with us?”

Real experts make recommendations that might get them fired. Frauds preserve relationships at the expense of results.

6. “Show me your personal browser history for researching our industry.”

Anyone claiming expertise in your business should be obsessively researching it on their own time.

“The relationship between skill and preparation is not coincidental. Those who claim expertise without immersion are selling you a reflection, not a reality.”

7. “What publicly available industry data contradicts your current strategy for us?”

Force them to acknowledge contrary evidence to their approach. Real experts know the counterarguments to their strategies.

8. “Which of your competitors would do a better job for us, and why?”

Watch their faces. Frauds will claim no one could do better. Experts know exactly who threatens them and why.

9. “Show me your process for evaluating your own failure.”

Companies without systematic failure analysis are doomed to repeat their mediocrity with every client.

10. “What specific expertise have you personally developed in the past 90 days?”

Digital changes weekly. Anyone not actively developing new expertise is actively becoming obsolete.

The Business Impact of Inadequate Digital Partners

The real cost of your agency’s incompetence goes far beyond their retainer:

Opportunity Cost: The Silent Killer

While you waste months on agency theater, your competitors are capturing market share with effective digital strategies.

“The most expensive sentence in business isn’t ‘this costs too much’ — it’s ‘let’s give them another chance.’ Your mercy becomes your mortality.”

A SaaS company tolerated an underperforming agency for 18 months. During this period, their primary competitor grew market share by 23% through effective digital acquisition. The opportunity cost ($27M in potential revenue) dwarfed the $420,000 wasted on agency fees.

Internal Credibility Collapse

Each failed campaign and missed target erodes digital marketing’s credibility within your organization. Over time, this leads to budget cuts, reduced executive support, and organizational resistance to even the most promising digital initiatives.

One B2B manufacturing company’s marketing director lost budget authority after two years of agency failures. The CFO began requiring VP-level approval for all digital expenditures, creating bureaucratic barriers that prevented agile marketing responses.

Data Corruption

Mediocre agencies deliberately contaminate your marketing data to hide their failures. This corruption outlives their engagement, distorting your analytics and undermining future decision-making.

“The greatest lie isn’t the one they tell you. It’s the one they program your own systems to tell you long after they’re gone.”

A financial services firm discovered their agency had been combining organic and paid search data to mask declining organic performance. Post-termination cleanup cost three months and $62,000 to restore accurate performance baselines.

Your 30-Day Agency Execution Plan

This isn’t about evaluation — it’s about making a decision:

Week 1: Expose the Performance Reality

Business Impact Audit
Document exactly what business results (not activities) the agency has delivered against their original promises. Create a simple three-column spreadsheet:

• Promised Outcome
• Actual Result
• Variance (%)

Alternative Allocation Analysis
Calculate what results you could reasonably expect if you redirected your agency investment to:

1. Hiring specialized in-house talent
2. Working with specialist agencies for specific channels
3. Investing in owned media and technology

Week 2: Expertise Verification

For each specialized function your agency handles (SEO, paid media, content), demand:

• Detailed methodology documentation
• Proof of team members’ direct experience in your industry
• Case studies showing similar challenges solved

“Competence is not theoretical but demonstrable. Those who cannot show their expertise in specific, concrete terms are not experts but merely carriers of expertise jargon.”

Strategic Alignment Assessment
Map each agency initiative to specific business goals. Document the logical pathway between activity and outcome. This exposes strategies without substance.

Week 3 & 4: Decision and Execution

There is no “one more chance.” There is only:

1. Remediation with specific, measured performance requirements
2. Replacement with clear transition protocols

If replacement is warranted, secure:

• Complete control of your marketing data and assets
• Critical campaign continuity
• Clear knowledge transfer

How to Find Partners Worth Your Investment

Look for these non-negotiable traits:

Results Obsession

They talk exclusively about business outcomes.
Low-value agencies: “We published 12 blog posts and ran 5 campaigns.”
High-value agencies: “We increased qualified lead flow by 32% and reduced acquisition cost by 18%.”

“The creator’s concern is not with his process, but with its result. The creator’s purpose is the conquest of nature, not the psychological rewiring of other men.”

They connect all work to revenue impact.
In first meetings, serious agencies ask about your sales process, buyer journey, and revenue targets before discussing tactics.

Brutal Honesty

They define clear boundaries of expertise.
When an agency says “That’s not our strength, but we know who handles that well,” you’ve found a partner focused on results rather than billing maximization.

“The ability to say ‘I don’t know’ requires more confidence than pretending to know everything. False expertise is the refuge of those who lack the courage to acknowledge their limitations.”

One digital agency specialized in B2B lead generation turned down a $180,000 e-commerce project, referring it to a specialist instead. This honesty led to the client later bringing them $310,000 in work aligned with their actual expertise.

The Path Forward

Every day you tolerate mediocrity is a day your competitors gain ground. Every dollar spent on theater is a dollar not spent on growth. Every hour wasted in agency meetings is an hour you’ll never recover.

The choice isn’t between comfortable failure and uncomfortable growth. The choice is between slow death and the possibility of life.

What will you choose?

Simon Dodson

Simon Dodson is a Digital Transformation & Scale Digital Specialist driving revenue growth through technical alignment and digital enterprise & SMB solutions. With extensive experience across Tech, Healthcare, and Real Estate sectors, he has successfully led major digital initiatives spanning from Bangkok to Brisbane.

As a seasoned digital strategist, Simon has guided organizations through migrations involving 2,000+ staff and 300 technical specialists. He has managed digital ecosystems serving 5,000 professionals across five countries, identifying critical factors that separate successful digital transformations from failures.

Simon combines deep technical expertise with strategic business acumen, focusing on customer acquisition, market dominance, and business model innovation. His data-driven approach emphasizes measurable results and operational excellence, helping organizations navigate the complexities of digital transformation with precision and clarity.

A sought-after thought leader, Simon regularly shares insights on digital strategy, technical SEO, and organizational change management, challenging conventional wisdom and providing actionable frameworks for digital success.