October 4, 2026

How to choose a growth partner: the questions to ask before you sign

Choose the partner whose work you can check. Decide first whether you need strategy, execution or both, then ask every candidate the same questions about who does the work, what they measure, who owns the accounts, how you see the data and how you leave. Start with a paid audit or a small fixed-scope project, and keep every ad account, pixel and analytics property in your company’s name from day one.

In short

Choose the partner whose work you can check. Decide first whether you need strategy, execution or both
Ask every candidate the same written questions: who does the work, what they measure, who owns the accounts, how you see the data, how you leave
Keep every ad account, pixel and analytics property in your company’s name from day one
Start with a paid audit or a small fixed-scope project, not a retainer

2 / 1 / 0points per scorecard area. A zero on ownership or on reporting and data is a no, whatever the totalThe scorecard below

3references to call: two current clients like you, plus one who leftThe questions to ask

$10,000of wasted spend a percentage-of-spend partner loses fee on by cutting. The structure works against themPricing model illustration

On this page

Decide what you need before you take a call
Agency, freelancer, fractional lead or in-house hire?
The questions to ask before you sign
Who should own the accounts, and how does partner access work?
What are the red flags?
How do you start without a long commitment?
A scorecard you can copy

Decide what you need before you take a call

If you can’t describe the job in a paragraph, every pitch will sound right. Write down four answers first.

Ask 01Strategy, execution or both

Strategy is choosing which customers, channels, offers and budgets to bet on. Execution is building campaigns, making creative, fixing tracking and shipping landing pages every week.

Ask 02Which channels

Name the one or two where your buyers already are, say Meta and Google Shopping for a DTC brand, or Google Search and LinkedIn for B2B SaaS. Judge candidates on those channels, not their favorites.

Ask 03How much senior time

A few hours a month of experienced judgment is a different purchase from 40 hours a week of hands-on work.

Ask 04What success looks like in 90 days

One business number, such as contribution margin from new customers or qualified pipeline, plus one leading indicator you check weekly.

Agency, freelancer, fractional lead or in-house hire?

Prices vary too much by market and seniority to list here, so compare quotes on the same scope: the total monthly cost of the work you described, including fees, setup, tools, creative and any minimum ad spend.

Option	What you get	Typical commitment
Agency	Specialists, tools and creative capacity	Monthly retainer, often with a minimum term
Freelancer	One specialist’s hands-on time	Hourly, per project or monthly
Fractional lead	A senior lead who owns the plan and manages specialists	A set number of days a week or month
In-house hire	A full-time person building knowledge in-house	Employment, plus recruiting and ramp-up time

When each one fits, and the main risk:

Option	When it fits	Main risk
Agency	Proven channels that need media buying, creative and analytics at once	Senior people pitch, junior people deliver
Freelancer	One channel, a clear brief and someone in-house who sets direction	One person is a single point of failure
Fractional lead	You need direction and someone to run execution, part time	Limited hours, and someone else has to execute
In-house hire	Proven channels and a full-time job’s worth of work	Hiring before you know what the job is

My default order: buy senior judgment first, through an audit or a fractional lead, then decide whether execution goes to a freelancer, an agency or a hire. A full-time hire for a job you can’t yet describe is the most expensive way to find out what the job is. We sell audits, so take that into account. If you already know the job and the channel works, skip the audit and start with a fixed-scope project.

The default order

Audit or fractional leadsenior judgment, fixed scope

Decide the jobchannels, hours, 90-day number

Freelancer, agency or hireexecution, once you can describe it

A full-time hire for a job you can’t yet describe is the most expensive way to find out what the job is. We sell audits, so weigh that.

The questions to ask before you sign

Send every candidate the same questions in writing, so you compare answers, not pitches.

Who does the work week to week

Ask for the names and roles of everyone who will touch your account, how many other clients each one runs, and who joins your weekly call. Ask the person who pitched how many hours a month they’ll personally spend on you. Put the lead’s name in the contract, with the right to approve any replacement.

What they measure

Ask which number they’ll report every month and which system it comes from. For a DTC brand you want contribution after ad spend: revenue minus product cost, shipping, payment fees, returns and ad spend, ideally split by new and returning customers. For SaaS and AI products, you want qualified pipeline and closed revenue from your CRM.

Platform ROAS and lead counts are easier to hit. Each ad platform counts conversions under its own attribution rules and doesn’t see your margins or returns unless you send them, and a form can fill up with people who will never buy. More on this in how ROAS, MER and POAS differ.

Access and ownership

You own the accounts and the partner gets access. That covers ad accounts, pixels, Merchant Center, analytics, tag manager, the store and the creative files, including raw footage and usage rights for creator content. Give each person their own login, never a shared password, so you can see who changed what and remove one person cleanly.

Reporting and raw data

Agree the rhythm up front: a short weekly update on spend, results against target, changes and next steps, then a monthly review that ends in decisions. Ask for direct access to every ad account and analytics property, not just a PDF or a dashboard the partner controls. On Google Ads, Google’s guide for advertisers says you have the right to know at least the clicks, impressions and total cost of your ads, and its third-party transparency rules require partners to give you your customer ID on request and to report Google’s charges without their own fees mixed in.

Testing and creative production

Ask who makes the creative, how many new concepts they’ll ship a month and how they decide a test is over. A good answer names a hypothesis, a budget, a stop rule and a winning metric tied to margin or pipeline, not click-through rate. Landing pages belong in the same plan, since paid traffic sent to a weak page wastes budget (see landing pages for paid traffic).

Contract length and notice

Read the exit clause before the proposal. Ask for the minimum term, the notice period and what happens on the way out: who removes their access, which documents and files you get, and whether there’s any fee to get your own accounts back. The right answer to that last one is no. A short first term and clear notice protect both sides better than a long lock-in. If they’ll handle personal data for you, such as customer lists for Customer Match or Custom Audiences, UK and EU rules require a data processing contract. The ICO lists what it must cover, and the European Commission says it must state what happens to the data when the contract ends.

Pricing model

You’ll see three models.

Percentage of ad spend. The fee follows your budget, not your results, so every piece of budget advice carries a conflict. Say they find $10,000 a month of wasted spend. Cutting it takes their percentage of that $10,000 off their own fee. Good partners cut it anyway, but the structure works against them.
Flat fee. You pay for a defined scope, so cost is predictable and budget advice is cleaner. The risk is scope drift, so write down the outputs: channels, creative volume, reports and meetings. Many flat fees, ours included, step up with ad spend bands, which is a smaller form of the same conflict. Ask what happens to the fee if they advise cutting spend below a band.
Hybrid. A flat base plus a capped bonus tied to a number you both trust, such as contribution margin or qualified pipeline from your own systems. Don’t tie it to platform ROAS, which can rise just by shifting spend toward people who were already going to buy.

Whatever the model, get fees and media costs on separate lines. On Google Ads, Google requires partners who charge a management fee to tell new customers in writing before the first purchase and to show the fee on every invoice.

Percentage of ad spend

Fee follows your budget, not results
Every budget cut costs them fee
Good partners cut anyway; the structure fights them

Flat fee

Defined scope, predictable cost
Risk is scope drift: write down the outputs
Spend bands are a smaller form of the same conflict

Hybrid

Flat base plus a capped bonus
Tie it to contribution margin or qualified pipeline from your systems
Never to platform ROAS

References you can call

Ask for two current clients like you in model and stage, plus one client who left. Call them. Ask who did the work, whether the partner’s numbers matched their own books, what happened in the worst month and how the handover went. If no former client will take your call, weigh that.

Who should own the accounts, and how does partner access work?

You should, on every platform. Create each account under your company, keep at least two admins of your own, and give the partner the least access that does the job.

Meta. Create the ad account, pixel and catalog in your own business portfolio (formerly Business Manager), then give the partner’s business access to each asset, with partial access or full control. Meta’s help center says a new ad account created in a business portfolio is permanently part of that portfolio and can’t be transferred out, so an ad account a partner creates in their portfolio stays with them. Meta’s developer guidance describes the right setup: the customer owns its ad accounts and assets, authorizes the partner’s business with the right access, and can revoke it.
Google Ads. Open the account under your own Google login, then accept the partner’s manager account link under Admin, Access and security, Managers. Linking an existing account doesn’t give the manager administrative ownership by default. An account can have only one owner manager, and Google says client account users can always unlink it.
Google Analytics 4. Keep the property in an Analytics account your company controls and add the partner at property level as an Editor or Marketer. Editors control property settings but can’t manage users, and data restrictions can hide cost or revenue metrics. A property a partner built in their own account can be moved to yours with its data and settings, but the mover needs Administrator and Editor roles on both accounts, so you need the partner’s help.
Google Merchant Center. Add the partner under People and access with Standard access plus Performance and insights. Google says Standard alone can’t work with reports, view performance insights, enable programs or link Google Ads accounts, so an admin on your side links Google Ads. Agencies on Google’s newer Merchant Center for Agencies request Admin or Standard plus performance and insights access, your admin approves, and you can remove them from the Partners section of People and access at any time. Google says that product is available on a limited basis.
Shopify. Partners request collaborator access with a 4-digit code you share from Settings, Users, Security. You set the role and permissions before accepting, only the store owner or an Administrator can grant access, and collaborators don’t count toward your user limit. Never hand over the owner login. When a project ends, remove the collaborator and generate a new code so old codes stop working.

What are the red flags?

Guaranteed results. Google says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, and its advertiser guide says it isn’t possible to guarantee a specific ad position. Treat a promised ROAS the same way.
The partner owns your accounts. An ad account, pixel or analytics property in their name gives them a hold over you the day you want to leave.
A long lock-in with no exit. A minimum term is normal. A long one with no notice period and no handover clause is not.
Only platform ROAS in the report. If nobody connects spend to margin or pipeline, nobody is managing the business result.
No raw data. Screenshots and PDFs you can’t trace to the source. On Google Ads, refusing to give you your customer ID goes against Google’s third-party policy.
The pitch team disappears. If the people from the sales calls aren’t on your account a month in, raise it then, not at renewal.

How do you start without a long commitment?

Before a retainer, pay for something with a defined deliverable: an audit, or a short fixed-scope project such as fixing conversion tracking or rebuilding one channel’s account structure. You’ll see how the partner works, and you keep the output either way.

A good audit deliverable contains:

A tracking check: whether purchases or leads are counted once, and whether platform numbers reconcile with your orders or CRM.
Unit economics by channel: contribution margin per order, or cost per qualified opportunity and payback, from your own data.
An account review: where the money goes, what’s wasted, how campaigns are structured and, for ecommerce, the state of the product feed.
A creative and landing page review: what’s been tested, what’s tired and whether each page matches its ad.
A ranked action list with impact, effort, an owner and a date for every item. A recommendation without an owner and a deadline is entertainment.
A 90-day plan with the budget, people and tools it needs, which you could run with or without them.
The working files, exports and queries, so a different team could start from it without a call.

A scorecard you can copy

Score each candidate right after the call. Give 2 points when an answer matches the middle column, 0 when it matches the last and 1 for anything in between. A 0 on ownership or on reporting and data is a no, whatever the total.

Area	2 points	0 points
Who does the work	Named people, known caseloads, the lead joins your calls	A team with no names
What they measure	Contribution margin or pipeline from your systems	Platform ROAS or lead counts only
Ownership	You own every account and file, they get access	Accounts sit in their name
Reporting and data	Weekly numbers, monthly decisions, direct access	PDFs and screenshots
Testing and creative	Written test plan, agreed creative volume, files handed over	Ad hoc tests, files kept by them
Contract	Short first term, clear notice, handover clause	Long lock-in with no exit terms
Pricing	Flat or hybrid fee, fees shown apart from media	Fees unclear or mixed into media costs
References	Current clients like you, plus one who left	Testimonials only
First project	Paid audit or fixed-scope project	Retainer from day one

If you want help

For a second opinion before you sign anything, our growth audit is $1,000 and takes two to three weeks, and the full fee comes off your first month if a retainer starts within 30 days. Retainers are billed monthly in advance and run month to month with 30 days’ notice, and every starting price is on our pricing page. Book a 30-minute call to talk it through.

A second opinion before you sign anything

The growth audit is $1,000 and takes two to three weeks. The full fee comes off your first month if a retainer starts within 30 days. Retainers run month to month with 30 days’ notice, and every starting price is on the pricing page.

Book a 30-minute call See pricing

Sources

Facts checked on 5 October 2026.

Growth Marketing