Account ownership decides everything downstream
Accounts created under an agency's own management can be withdrawn when you leave, taking conversion history, audience lists and years of performance data with them. Rebuilding from zero costs months.
The correct arrangement is that every account belongs to you and the agency has user access. This costs the agency nothing except leverage, which is exactly why the answer is informative.
Questions that produce useful answers
- Who will actually work on my account, and how many other accounts do they handle
- What would you do in the first ninety days, specifically
- Show me a monthly report from another client with the numbers redacted
- What would make you tell me to stop spending
- What is the notice period and what happens to the work in progress
Answers that should concern you
Guaranteed rankings, guaranteed leads and guaranteed ROAS are all promises nobody can make, because none of the underlying auctions or algorithms are controlled by the agency.
A refusal to quote before a long discovery call is also worth noting. Indicative ranges exist for every service, and an agency that will not share them is managing the conversation rather than answering the question.
The Mumbai-specific part
This city has a small number of large agencies that dominate the obvious search terms and a large number of small ones that do not appear at all. Ranking for "digital marketing agency mumbai" mostly proves a budget for that term rather than competence at your particular problem.
A more useful filter is whether they have run accounts in your sector, and whether they can describe the specific constraints of it without prompting. Someone who understands why cash on delivery changes your economics, or why dental enquiries convert by phone, has been there.
Key takeaways
- Account ownership is the first question and the most predictive
- Ask who does the work and how many accounts they carry
- Ranking for the obvious agency search term proves budget, not competence