Do you know exactly where your sales are coming from and which channel is your most sustainable source of revenue?

Online, events, pop ups, wholesale etc knowing where your sales come from is only half the picture. Knowing which ones will still be working for you in 12 months is what matters.

Do you know what each of your marketing channels is actually delivering in terms of sales?

Social, ads, email, PR, etc. This shouldn’t be a feeling or a guess. You need actual numbers that tell you what's working and what's quietly draining your budget.

Are your current marketing resources all working from the same plan?

Cast your mind back to last week. How many times did someone ask you what to post, what the plan is, or what to focus on next? If the answer is more than once, the plan isn't clear enough.

Do you have a clear brief for every person or resource currently working on your marketing?

If they're filling in the gaps themselves, an agency will do the same, at five times the cost.

Do you have a marketing budget that you actively manage and track against results?

Not a rough number in your head. An actual budget, broken down by channel, tracked against what it's delivering.

Do you have an active system in place to grow your audience and email list organically?

An agency can drive paid traffic, but if there's no organic engine running underneath it, you're renting an audience rather than building one. Paid and organic need to work together.

Do you have brand assets and a product shoot that reflects where your business is going?

Agencies work with what you give them. If your assets aren't ready, you'll spend the first months of a retainer scraping together content that should already exist.

Are your sales consistent month on month, without relying on launches and promotions to spike them?

Agencies amplify what's already working. If your baseline is unstable, more spend will amplify the problem, not the solution.

Do you have a specific understanding of who your ideal customer is?

Agencies target audiences. If you can't describe your ideal customer with precision, you're handing them a brief they can't fulfil.

Do you know exactly what you would hold an agency accountable to delivering in the next 6 months?

Retainers are easy to sign and hard to exit. If you don't know what you're measuring, you won't know whether it's working until the money has already gone.