How to Evaluate a Growth Agency for a DTC Brand

Key takeaways

• Judge an agency on profit and new customers from your store's data, rather than the ROAS each ad platform reports.
• Find out who will run your account after the pitch, and meet that person before you sign.
• A short audit with a written plan shows how an agency thinks before you commit a budget to it.

A founder starts asking whether it is time to let the agency go when the monthly reports look fine and sales stay flat. That question points to a gap between what the agency reports and what the brand sells. The way to evaluate a growth agency, whether you are hiring one or deciding to keep one, is to look at what it measures, who does the work and what it would change first. Price and credentials matter, but they only mean something once those answers are clear.

Few brands start from zero. In the 2025 Agency Edge study of 401 marketing decision-makers, 81% said they had an in-house marketing team, so an agency will likely work next to people who already know the business.

What does a DTC marketing agency do?

A DTC marketing agency plans and runs the channels that bring customers to a brand's own store and back again. Those channels include paid search and Shopping, paid social, email and SMS, conversion work on the site and organic search. A growth agency takes responsibility for how those channels work together, while a channel specialist runs one of them well and leaves the rest to someone else.

The difference shows up in the budget. Meta and Google can each claim credit for the same order. Email can take credit for a sale a paid ad started. A discount on the site also changes the return on every channel at once. When separate firms run each channel, nobody owns the total, and each report can look healthy while the business does not grow.

The same Agency Edge study found that 63% of brands work with two or three agencies at a time. Several specialists can work well if someone inside the brand owns the plan across channels and has time to coordinate their work. If that person does not exist, a growth agency that answers for the combined result is the simpler choice.

How do I know if my marketing agency is actually working?

A marketing agency is working when your contribution margin and revenue from new customers grow, measured from your store's own orders. Rising platform ROAS, clicks or impressions are signs of activity, and they can climb while profit stays flat.

Ask for a monthly report that starts from the store's numbers and explains them. A useful report answers a few plain questions.

• How much revenue came from new customers, and what did each one cost to acquire?
• What did margin look like after ad spend, discounts and the agency's fee?
• What changed this month, why, and what was stopped because it was not earning?
• What will the team test or change next, and what result would show it worked?

If the report cannot answer these, the problem may be the measurement rather than the agency. Each platform uses its own attribution rules. The gap between what it claims and what the store records can be large. Our guide to measuring DTC growth beyond platform ROAS covers how to set that up with your finance team.

Is it time to fire our agency?

An agency needs replacing when results have been flat or falling for more than a quarter and the agency cannot explain why or say what it will change. One bad month, a seasonal dip or a platform outage is not enough on its own, because every channel has those.

Before deciding, separate the agency from the conditions around it. Northbeam's benchmark of its own clients showed median new-customer acquisition cost up 9.81% year on year in February 2026. An agency that names that pressure, shows how it is responding and changes the plan is doing its job, even in a hard quarter.

A change can also pay off quickly when the new team diagnoses the account first. Melinda Maria's campaigns had been declining for six months when we took them over, and the jewelry brand's CEO says we turned them around within 60 days. Judge any new partner by the same store numbers you used to judge the old one, so a fast first win is not mistaken for a lasting one.

Switching has costs too. A new team needs time to learn the account, and one that rebuilds every campaign in its first weeks can switch off what was working before it understands why. Each rebuild also resets the data the platforms' bidding systems have learned from. Make sure you own your ad accounts, pixels and data before any change of agency, so the history stays with the business.

How do I choose a DTC marketing agency?

Choose a DTC marketing agency on how it diagnoses your business, who will run your account and how it reports results, and compare price only across proposals with the same scope. Case studies and awards help you build a shortlist, but they cannot tell you how the team will treat your account.

The use of AI deserves a direct question. In the Agency Edge study, 41% of decision-makers said they were skeptical of agencies using AI. That skepticism is reasonable when no one can say who checked the work. Ask the agency to show how a person reviews the tools' output before changes reach your accounts.

What should I ask an ecommerce marketing agency before signing?

Before signing, ask questions that show how the agency will work on your account in the first months. Compare the pitch with the responsibilities set out in the contract. Common Thread Collective suggests asking, "What's the average tenure of the people at this place?" It is a good place to start.

• Who will run our account day to day, how long have they been with you and how many other brands do they handle?
• What would you look at first in our data, and what would you expect to stop doing?
• How do you report results, and which numbers come from our store rather than the ad platforms?
• How are changes approved before they go live, and who signs off on budget moves?
• Who owns the ad accounts, pixels, creative and data, during the contract and after it?
• What happens to the work and the access if we part ways?

Listen for specific answers. An agency that says it will review your margin by product and pause spend on items about to sell out has thought about your business. A promise of growth across every channel does not show that level of diagnosis.

Who actually does the work at a marketing agency after the pitch?

The work after the pitch is done by whoever the agency's staffing model assigns to your account, which may be the senior people you met or a team you have not met. The proposal may not say which, so ask before you sign.

Ask for the team's names and roles in writing. Find out what share of their week your account gets. If the agency uses AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or its own agents to do part of the daily work, ask what the tools handle, who checks their output and which changes need a person's approval. The answers should make clear who reviews the work and who is responsible when results change.

A senior strategist should own the plan you sign

CB/I Digital is a performance marketing and AI search agency that runs paid media, email and SMS, conversion, ecommerce development and SEO for DTC brands on any ecommerce platform. Each brand we work with has a senior strategist who owns the growth plan and works with the brand's team during business hours. Our agent managers assign daily work to specialist AI agents, check it and report back to that strategist, and a person approves every change to budget, campaigns or tracking before it goes live. We built the same kind of agent system for one of the top 15 US banks. It won Best Use of AI in a Client Campaign at the 2025 US Agency Awards, one of several awards for our search work.

The founder of Miz Mooz describes us as "an extension of our internal team."

Our DTC growth services cover every channel on one plan, measured in profit from your store's data. Get a clear picture of where your store is losing revenue, which channels earn their spend, and what to fix first with our DTC Growth Audit.

Frequently asked questions

Should we keep our in-house team if we hire an agency?

Yes. An in-house team knows the product, the customers and the calendar better than any agency will. Agree in writing which channels the agency runs end to end and which work stays with your team. Set out how reviews and approvals happen, so neither side waits on the other.

How long should we give a new agency before judging results?

Agree on milestones in the plan before work starts, and judge the agency against them. Early milestones, such as clean tracking, a list of spend that was stopped and the first tests launched, should arrive within the first weeks. Revenue and margin take longer to move and depend on the channel.

What should a contract with a growth agency include?

The contract should name the scope, the reporting the agency owes you, the notice period and who owns every account, pixel, asset and dataset. It should also say how access is handed back when the engagement ends. Pricing terms vary with scope, so compare proposals only when they cover the same work.