By Kavish Arora, Co-Founder, DigiStreet Media
Almost every digital marketing agency in India will show you a deck with percentages in it. Very few will show you the denominator.
That single habit — asking what a percentage is measured against — will tell you more about an agency in ten minutes than a two-hour credentials presentation. A 500% increase from four visitors is not a result. A 39% increase on a base of 9,171 is.
We have run marketing for over 250 brands across 14+ years, and we have also sat on the other side of these pitches. This is what we would actually check.
Ask what the percentage is measured against
The most common trick in agency reporting is not fabrication. It is omission — quoting a growth percentage without the base it grew from, or against a period when measurement was broken.
When we published the Prem Cables case study, the GA4 property had no data for the prior window. We could have quoted an enormous percentage against zero. Instead we labelled it a baseline year, because that is what it is. Ask any agency you are evaluating whether they have ever done the same.
The follow-up question is even more useful: what was the prior period, and was it a normal trading period? Growth measured against a COVID trough or a month when tracking was broken is not growth.
Separate volume metrics from money metrics
Traffic, impressions and cost per lead are volume metrics. They are easy to move and easy to move badly. Widen your targeting and simplify a form and your cost per lead will halve while your sales team quietly stops trusting the pipeline.
The metric that survives contact with revenue is cost per qualified lead. On the Fund Abroad account, the qualified-lead ratio moved from 5% to 15% while media spend stayed flat. The headline cost per lead barely moved; the effective cost per usable conversation fell by roughly two thirds.
A good agency will ask for your sales-side definition of qualified before it spends anything. An agency that never asks is planning to report on volume.
Check whether they have depth in your category
Category experience matters more in some sectors than others. If you sell to consumers on impulse, most competent agencies can help. If you sell a technical product to engineers, or a regulated financial product, or something with a nine-month buying cycle, generalist marketing tends to produce expensive noise.
The tell is whether the agency can describe your buyer’s actual decision sequence without being briefed on it. Ours are public: how industrial buyers search by specification, why wellness buyers research before they shop, how to rank in a category whose vocabulary has not settled.
Work across SKF, JBM, Jakson, Sudhir Power, Omaxe, British Paints, Sirca and Prem Cables has taught us that industrial and B2B categories reward depth far more than breadth.
Ask how they are handling AEO and GEO
This is the question that separates 2026 agencies from 2022 agencies.
Search is no longer only ten blue links. A growing share of queries are answered inside AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini — often without a click. Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is about being the source those systems cite. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the same discipline applied to AI-generated summaries in search itself.
The practical difference is that answer engines quote sources that make plain, checkable statements. Vague marketing prose gives an AI nothing to lift. Specific, structured, well-marked-up content does. If your agency cannot explain how they are making your content quotable — schema, direct question-and-answer structure, real figures rather than adjectives — they are optimising for a version of search that is shrinking.
We built RankStreet partly to measure this, because no audit tool was scoring AEO and GEO readiness alongside classic SEO.
Look at what they publish about themselves
An agency’s own marketing is the only work sample you can inspect without signing anything.
Check whether their case studies name the client, state the measurement period, and cite the source of the data. Check whether they publish anything that could embarrass them — a campaign that underperformed, a caveat, a limitation. Agencies that only publish wins are either very lucky or editing heavily.
Check the site itself, too. An agency that cannot make its own site fast, structured and well-marked-up is unlikely to do it for you.
The questions worth asking in the first meeting
Five that we would ask, in order: What is the base this percentage grew from? What was happening in the comparison period? How do you define a qualified lead, and who decides? What have you published about AEO and GEO? And what would you tell me not to spend money on?
That last one is the most revealing. An agency that has never talked a client out of a service is selling, not advising.
What a serious proposal looks like
Most agency proposals are a list of deliverables and a number. That tells you almost nothing about whether the work will succeed, because deliverables are inputs and you are buying outcomes.
The proposals worth taking seriously share four traits.
- A diagnosis before a prescription. If nobody has looked at your Search Console, your analytics and your competitors before quoting, the plan is generic. Ask what they found. A good answer will include something you did not already know about your own site.
- A named team, with capacity stated. Not “a dedicated team” — actual names, and how many other accounts each person carries. The gap between the pitch team and the delivery team is the single most common source of disappointment in this industry.
- A stated view of what will not work. An agency that agrees with every part of your brief has not thought about it. The most useful line in any proposal we have received or written is the one that says a requested tactic is a poor use of budget.
- Milestones with dates, not a twelve-month blur. What changes in month one, month three, month six. If everything is promised at “6–12 months”, there is no way to tell early whether it is working.
Contract terms worth settling before you sign
The commercial terms matter more than the retainer figure, and they are far easier to negotiate before you start than after.
- Account ownership. Your Google Ads account, Analytics property, Search Console, domain, hosting and content should be registered to you and administered by the agency — not owned by them. If an agency owns your ad account, changing agencies means losing your conversion history.
- Work product ownership. Content, creative, landing pages and code produced under the retainer should be yours on payment. Say so explicitly.
- Notice period. Thirty to sixty days is normal. Anything longer is a lock-in, and anything that auto-renews for a year without a review window is worth pushing back on.
- What happens to reporting access afterwards. Agree that dashboards, raw data and documentation transfer at the end. Reconstructing two years of campaign history from scratch is expensive.
- Media spend handling. Whether ad budget is billed through the agency or paid directly to the platform changes your visibility over what is actually spent. Direct billing is cleaner.
None of this implies distrust. Agencies that have been through a few transitions expect these questions and answer them quickly. Hesitation on any of them is the signal, not the questions themselves.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes the best digital marketing agency in India?
Not size or awards. The most reliable indicators are honest measurement, category depth in your sector, and a clear view of where search is going. Ask whether their case studies state the base and the measurement period, whether they define qualified leads with your sales team before spending, and how they are handling AEO and GEO. Those three answers will separate serious agencies from the rest faster than any credentials deck.
How much should a digital marketing agency cost in India?
It varies enormously by scope, but the more useful framing is what you are buying rather than what it costs. A retainer that buys volume reporting is expensive at any price; one that improves qualified pipeline pays for itself. Ask an agency to model what a percentage improvement in your qualified-lead ratio would be worth, and judge the fee against that number.
Should I hire a specialist or a full-service agency?
It depends on where your funnel actually leaks. If your ads work but your site does not convert, a paid specialist will not fix it. Full-service helps when the problem spans disciplines – which it usually does. What matters more than the label is whether one team is accountable to a single scorecard rather than each discipline reporting its own favourable metric.
What is AEO and GEO, and do they matter yet?
AEO is Answer Engine Optimisation – being cited inside AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity. GEO is Generative Engine Optimisation, the same for AI Overviews in search. They matter now because a growing share of queries resolve without a click. The work is not exotic: publish specific, checkable facts, structure content as clear questions and answers, and mark it up properly. Vague content gives an AI nothing to quote.
How long before a digital marketing agency shows results?
Paid media can show signal within days and a durable improvement in lead quality in six to twelve weeks. SEO is slower – typically two to three quarters before meaningful organic volume, longer in technical categories where content needs real substance. Any agency promising fast organic results in a competitive category is describing something other than SEO.
How do I check an agency’s case studies are honest?
Ask three questions: what was the starting number, what period is this measured against, and where did the data come from. Honest case studies answer all three without hesitation, and will sometimes volunteer a caveat you did not ask for. If a percentage has no base attached to it, treat it as marketing rather than evidence.
Related Reading
- Automotive Digital Marketing Agency: What Actually Works in 2026
- B2B Digital Marketing Agency: Why B2B Needs a Different Playbook
- Digital Marketing Trends 2026: Why AEO and GEO Changed the Job
If you are evaluating agencies right now, the fastest thing you can do is take our published case studies and check them against the questions above — then ask the same of everyone else on your shortlist. Or talk to us and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.
