Worst Questions to Ask Your Agency and What to Ask Instead
Key Takeaways
- Focus on Engagement Over Experience: Instead of asking if an agency has industry experience, inquire about how their team learns about new industries.
- Consider Company Size and Dynamics: Discuss their experience with businesses of your size and stage.
- Evaluate Contribution to Business Goals: Ask how the agency aligns PR strategies with your business objectives.
Want to know the advice I give colleagues when they ask me what they should know about hiring an agency?
I tell them something they haven’t thought about: throw out all your old questions when you’re hiring any agency.
This advice surprises people, but let me explain. It’s important when you’re hiring an agency to ask questions that point to your needs, not some random checklist. What to look for in a PR firm should be specific to you.
Here are the worst questions to ask your agency—and what to ask instead.
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How Does Your Team Learn About New Industries?
Instead of asking: Do You Have Industry Experience?
This is the default question everyone asks. The reality is that whether an agency has worked within your industry isn’t a success indicator.
The more important indicator is how engaged your PR team is with the world and how they approach learning something new. What you want to know is how intellectually curious your team is because that actually matters more.
Agencies with narrow niches are valuable in highly regulated industries, like cannabis, where laws vary by state. But for most industries, narrow niches don’t give you much of an advantage—even in PR, which is famous for relationships.
Even if working in a particular niche is important, it’s still more important that the team be naturally curious.
Some of the best ideas come from exposure to other industries and customers. And while it may seem helpful for an agency to work closely with your competitors, what matters more is whether they can predict trends and identify opportunities for your company to make or comment on news.
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Have You Worked with Companies of Our Size?
Instead of asking: What Companies Have You Worked With?
It’s easy to be impressed by the logos of major brands on a PR firm’s website. But ask yourself what that actually means to you.
Working with large international firms is its own skill because of the layers of stakeholders involved. But those companies move slower, and their challenges differ from a startup, a challenger brand, or a hypergrowth company preparing for an IPO.
You can define size by revenue, employee count, or stage—but the reality is that hiring an agency depends heavily on how your company operates.
A company with multiple marketing leaders has more resources, but also more complexity. A company doing $10–$30 million in revenue may have fewer layers, but a CEO who is deeply involved in PR decisions.
That difference matters. Working directly with a CEO is very different from working through layers of marketing management.
There’s also the question of budget. A $250,000 annual PR budget may be significant for a growth-stage company, but relatively small for a large enterprise.
You want to work with an agency that sees your budget as meaningful—not as a minor account.
So find an agency that understands companies of your size and stage. That matters far more than a list of recognizable logos.
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How Do You Contribute to Business Goals?
Instead of asking: What Do You Cost?
This question gets to the heart of the relationship. What matters is not just cost, but return.
Does your agency understand how to support VC funding? Pre-IPO positioning? Talent acquisition before a merger or acquisition?
PR supports cross-functional business outcomes. When it’s treated as a siloed effort, it underperforms. When it’s aligned with business goals, it becomes far more effective.
PR is also a long-term investment. Unlike advertising, it doesn’t turn on instantly—but it also doesn’t turn off. The impact remains long after the engagement ends.
That’s why PR should be evaluated as a strategic investment, not a short-term expense.
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How Seasoned Is the Team?
Instead of asking: Who Is on the Team?
This is one of the most important questions you can ask.
Experienced PR professionals have navigated crises, economic shifts, recalls, and competitive environments. That experience matters.
Many agencies rely heavily on junior staff for day-to-day execution. While that can work, it often leads to missed nuance.
PR is often about reading between the lines—understanding tone, identifying the right angle, and spotting opportunities others miss.
An experienced team can move faster, require less oversight, and avoid mistakes before they happen.
Emotional intelligence plays a major role here. It often comes with experience, and it directly impacts how effectively a PR program performs.
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How Do You Approach Trends?
Instead of asking: Do You Use AI?
Rather than focusing on a specific trend, ask how your agency evaluates trends overall.
This reveals more about their thinking, their process, and how they prioritize opportunities for clients.
PR is full of trends that appear quickly and disappear just as fast. A strong agency understands when a trend matters—and when it doesn’t.
They should be able to evaluate whether something like AI, the metaverse, or influencer marketing is actually relevant to your business.
This requires understanding not just the trend itself, but your market, your strategy, and your budget.
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Final Thought
There is always a shift happening—whether in content, SEO, advertising, or PR. Agencies are built to understand those shifts.
But there are more agencies than ever before, and even the best ones aren’t always easy to identify.
Agencies provide more value today than ever—but that also means choosing the right one matters more.
The stakes are higher. The expectations are higher. And the difference between a good fit and a bad one is significant.
Please join us in celebrating our inclusion in this year’s Inc. Magazine Power Partners Awards—read more about how we qualified. Here’s a hint: our clients.
