What questions should I ask before hiring a marketer?

Every marketer interviews well. The portfolio is hand-picked, the deck is polished, and the discovery call is a sales instrument. These seven questions cut under that, in order of how much they reveal.

1. Who personally touches my account?

The single most predictive question in the set.

At agencies, the senior person on the pitch call hands your account to a coordinator after signing. Ask for names: who builds the campaigns, who writes the copy, who reviews the data weekly. If the answer is a role (“your account team”) instead of a person, you have your answer.

The follow-up that closes the loophole: how many other accounts does that person hold? Expect a number. Mine is the 33 Google Ads accounts I manage, the count in my Q3 2026 benchmark. A role offered in place of a number is the warning.

2. Show me two live results, with numbers

Not a logo wall and not “we grew a brand like yours.” Two accounts, stores, or campaigns you can look at, with the before-and-after numbers and what specifically changed.

Real operators keep these ready because the work produces them. A useful shape to expect: a ninety-day window, a structural change described in one sentence, and a number attached. “Account rebuilt around search intent, conversion tracking fixed: ad spend cut in half while qualified signups doubled, inside ninety days.” That’s one of mine, from a law firm account, and the format is the point. Change, window, number, method.

Ask how each result was measured while you’re at it. A result nobody can explain the measurement of is a screenshot, not a result.

3. How do you measure success, and how will I see it?

Listen for revenue, qualified leads, cost per acquisition: business numbers. Be wary of impressions, engagement, and “brand lift” arriving in month one.

Then ask what the reporting looks like and how often. A weekly written summary in plain language beats a monthly dashboard nobody opens. Mine is a written report every Monday.

Push once more on the hard version: what would make you tell me a result isn’t claimable? A marketer who has never declined to claim a number hasn’t thought about measurement. My own standard for what counts is published on my process page, and I would hold any marketer to something like it, including me.

4. Who owns my conversion tracking?

The quiet killer. Ads optimize against tracking, and when tracking is nobody’s job, the account learns from wrong data for months before anyone notices.

The right answer: the marketer owns pixel-to-purchase measurement personally, or names exactly who does. If they point vaguely at “your developer,” the most important input to your ad spend is unowned.

Here’s what unowned looks like with numbers on it. On a fence contractor’s account, the only website conversion had been dead since someone renamed a form button from Send to Submit, so the account reported zero website leads while campaigns kept spending. The case study has the fix.

On an online store, a second purchase action counted alongside the main one for weeks, so about one in eight claimed purchases was a duplicate (the numbers are here). Both were invisible in reporting. Both were expensive. What a complete setup looks like is documented in the Tracking Stack.

5. What happens when something breaks in month two?

Launch month has everyone’s attention. Ask about the Tuesday in month two when conversions flatline: who notices, how fast, and what the response time commitment is.

Operators with monitoring name the system. Everyone else improvises, and you find problems by watching your own revenue dip.

Ask for the worst example they have. A real operator has one, and the answer tells you both how bad things get and how fast they get caught.

6. What would you refuse to do for me?

A specialist has opinions about what fails. Ask what they would push back on if you demanded it: a channel they think is wrong for you, a tactic they consider spend-burning, a timeline they call unrealistic.

Someone who agrees with everything you have said is mirroring, not advising, and will keep mirroring after you have hired them. My own version of this answer is a published list of who shouldn’t hire me, which sits under the prices on my pricing page.

7. If the engagement ends, what do I keep?

The clean answer: everything. Ad accounts under your ownership, admin access to your own analytics and tag manager, documentation of what was built, and a handoff without hostage negotiations.

Any hesitation here, any mention of “proprietary account structures” living in their business manager, is a reason to walk regardless of how good the rest of the interview went. Accounts inside someone else’s manager account can mean starting bidding history from zero when you leave, which is a switching cost nobody quotes.

What the answers should cost

Vetting is easier when you know the market. Upwork puts the typical Google Ads expert at $15 to $40 an hour worldwide, and US rates run higher. SparkToro’s late-2025 survey found 86 percent of agencies average a retainer of $10,000 a month or less. GoFractional’s October 2026 rate data puts fractional CMOs at about $173 an hour, roughly $7,500 to $12,000 a month. My monthly work is $2,500 for one ad channel plus $1,500 per add-on, capped at $8,500. One-time audits run from $0 to about $2,600 on the pages I checked, mapped in the Google Ads audit cost comparison.

A quote far under the market means junior hands. A quote far over it needs proof attached. The full pricing breakdown has the rest.

Checking the answers afterward

Ask for one client reference and call it, with one question: “what went wrong, and how did they handle it?” Every engagement has a wrong moment, and how it was handled is the only part of the reference that predicts your experience.

Then verify a number from question two against anything public: a case study page, a review, a screenshot with context.

I’m Conner Crowe, a fractional marketing lead. My answers to all seven live on this site: the results in my case studies, the measurement standard on my process page, the pricing on my pricing page, a written report every Monday, month-to-month terms, and every account stays yours. Bring the list to whoever you interview, including me.

When to bring me in

Bring me in when you’re paying a retainer and can’t see what it buys, when nobody owns tracking across your channels, or when you’re about to hire and want a second opinion first.

I'm Conner Crowe, and I write every audit myself. Send the free audit request and add me as a read-only user, and within 24 hours of access you'll have a written read on what your account needs and who should run it. No call needed, and nothing in your account or store changes.

Request a free Google Ads audit →

See my published pricing.