Do contractors need a marketing agency or a strategy?

Before you call an agency — or before you fire the one you have — run this four-question diagnostic. Answer honestly. The result will tell you what to buy next.

Question 1: Can you write your marketing plan on one page?
Not a list of vendors. Not a goal like "grow 20%." A plan — channels, budgets, targets, and how you'll know if it's working — on one page. If you can't, you don't have a plan. You have spending habits.

Question 2: Can you say which channel produced last month's revenue?
Not leads. Not clicks. Booked and completed jobs, by source, with dollars attached. If your answer is "mostly Google" or "I think our SEO is doing well," you can't answer the question. That's an attribution problem, and no agency can fix it — because the data gap is on your side.

Question 3: Is there one person accountable for whether marketing made money this month?
Not a vendor. Not a committee. One human whose job it is to answer that question every Monday. If the answer is "kind of me, but also the agency," accountability is shared — which means it belongs to no one.

Question 4: When you change vendors, does the strategy change with them?
If you swapped your ads agency tomorrow and everything about your marketing approach shifted with them, the vendor was your strategy. That's vendor dependency, not a marketing system.

Reading your results:

If you answered No to two or more questions — strategy first. Start with a marketing audit. You need a foundation before execution can work. Buying more agency time without it is renting a faster car for a road with no map.

If you answered Yes to three or four — execution first. Your strategy is solid enough to run. Now you need vendors who can execute against it and a CMO or operator who can hold them accountable.

The audit is the right next step if you're in the first group. If you're in the second, the agency-selection guide will help you evaluate vendors against your existing strategy instead of letting them write a new one.