10 Questions To Ask Before Hiring A White Label Agency

10 Questions To Ask Before Hiring A White Label Agency

As digital marketing agencies look to scale their client relationships and bring in more business, white label agencies are increasingly playing a key role in helping them deliver more value and grow their revenue. They are the “silent” partners to many prominent, well-established, and award-winning digital marketing agencies.

White label agency services comprise the full gamut of digital services, ranging from SEO, content creation, content marketing, and Facebook Ads to PPC and social media management. If your business is growing fast, and you are in the market for a white label services agency, here are some key questions to ask while shopping for the best fit.

What Business Outcomes Can They Help Deliver?

It’s really important to understand what kind of specific value a white label agency can deliver to help your business grow. If you’re a full-stack marketing agency looking to scale the PPC vertical but don’t have the in-house resources to do so, a white label services agency can help you fulfill this requirement on demand.

It’s also possible that your agency specializes in certain areas like say, SEO, yet, your trusted client also wants you to support them with Google ad words. A partner white label agency can help fulfill this specific need, while you continue to be the agency on record with your client.

Is The Agency Professional Or an Amateur?

It’s easy to take a few online courses and set up a digital agency these days. However, seasoned White Label Agencies come with intuition, creativity, innovative thinking, and a stellar track record. It’s important to know more about the founders and the team delivering the work, their experience level as well as their approach to problem-solving.

Look up the founders and team members on LinkedIn to understand their skills and expertise. You can also request the agency to introduce you to the team that will work on your account.

Does The Agency Work In A Transparent Way?

Trust is an extremely important factor when outsourcing client work to a third party. Accountability, ownership, and trust are key factors when shortlisting an agency. One way to explore this is to start the relationship with a pilot project, and then go from there.

This will also help you understand if the agency works discretely or attempts to undercut your business and approaches the client directly. Approaching a client directly is considered business suicide for any white label services agency.

What Is The Agency’s Track Record?

Request the agency to offer references of clients who have worked with them for a significant period. Observe how open they are to this idea and their willingness to share references. Speaking to existing clients and asking pointed questions can really help you get an insight into the agency’s work and approach.

It’s also a good idea to gauge the inventiveness and risk appetite of the agency. Both these qualities are part of any successful white label agency.

What Is The Mode And Frequency Of Reporting?

Have a clear conversation around reporting structures, frequency, and metrics of success. Would you have access to a dashboard, receive regular updates via email, or have an account manager walk you through the progress?

An agency that offers clarity on the reporting structure indicates a professional work ethic. It’s also a good idea to share what sort of reporting structures work for your team, and see if the agency is open to customizing it.  

Do They Have Case Studies?

Ask the agency to walk you through their success stories that helped influence client outcomes in a critical way. Most professionally managed white label agencies will have well-designed, detailed case studies of their most significant work.

These not only help you understand their work, but the versatility of the agency, and their ability to help problem-solve for a range of business goals.

Are They Competitively Priced?

The digital marketing space is crowded with players willing to offer White Label Agency Services at extremely low costs. However, cheap does not always mean better. It’s important to look at both value and price and balance these two to choose the best partner agency.

The best approach is to shortlist two to three alternatives that come recommended, are within your budget range, and have a good track record, and invite quotes from all before making your final decision.

What Is Their Project Management Approach?

It is better to  hire a white label partnership agency that under-promises and over-delivers, rather than the other way around. Do their timelines sound too good to be true? Do they promise you unachievable targets? Watch out for these red flags and evaluate the agency for their project management approach. Have they accounted for the time needed for client feedback? Do they organize regular debriefs? Go a little deeper into these aspects.

Are They Updated On The Latest Trends?

Digital marketing trends are constantly evolving, as social media, search engines, and other platforms keep changing the rules. What is relevant today can change drastically in 24-hours or less. Being on top of the latest trends and understanding with depth how to leverage various tools and platforms, must be part of the agency’s DNA.

Having a team member from your agency who is savvy about evolving trends, sitting on this conversation is a valuable exercise. It can help you gauge the depth and knowledge base of the agency and weed out fly-by-night operators.

What Are The Terms & Conditions Of The Contract?

Before signing on the dotted line, understand the terms of engagement with the agency. Get your legal counsel and accounts department to review the contract in detail. This includes key aspects like payment terms, the lock-in period, risk factors, and confidentiality clauses. A professionally managed white label agency already has all these factors ironed out.

While gathering intel on all these factors, it’s also a good idea to understand the culture of your future white label services partner. It might sound like an intangible factor. However, gauging if the vibe and energy of the agency is a good fit for your own, helps bring in the team spirit that’s critical for any successful partnership.

Posted by Helen Cartwright

Helen Cartwright

Helen Cartwright is a passionate blogger, who excels in the Digital Marketing and Technology niche. When not wired in marketing strategies she ghost-write for a variety of authors who have their work published on leading online media channels such as The Huffington Post and Entrepreneur.com

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