I recently met a woman at a trade event who had a lot to say about social media agencies and Meta Ads. And none of it was good.
As someone who owns a marketing agency, I could have immediately jumped in and defended the industry. I didn’t. I listened.
Because once she told me what had happened, I understood exactly why she felt the way she did.
A Conversation at a Trade Event That Stuck With Me
She hired someone to run Meta Ads for her business. They took the account, built the campaigns and started spending her money.
Thousands of dollars of it.
Did it work?
No.
And while an unsuccessful advertising campaign isn’t necessarily proof that someone doesn’t know what they’re doing, something else she told me was a huge red flag: they barely asked her any questions about her business before they started advertising it.
That stopped me.
She Had Already Spent Thousands on Meta Ads
Think about what a marketing agency is doing when it creates a Meta Ads campaign.
Someone has to decide who should see the ads. Someone has to decide what those ads should say. They need to choose the images or videos, write the copy, determine the call to action and decide how the company should be positioned.
They may also need to develop an offer.
Every one of those decisions communicates something about your company to a potential customer.
Yet the person making those decisions knew almost nothing about this woman’s business.
The Bigger Problem Was What Happened Before the Ads Ran
The problem wasn’t simply that the Meta Ads didn’t perform.
The problem started before the first ad ever went live.
How can someone decide what to say about your business when they don’t really understand what you do? How can they choose an audience without understanding who your best customers are? How can they create an offer without knowing why people buy from you?
They can’t. At least not well.
Meta itself emphasizes reaching audiences likely to take the action an advertiser wants, and its advertising resources describe audience, messaging, calls to action and desired business outcomes as core parts of advertising.
That’s why the work that happens before an ad campaign launches matters so much.
How Can You Market a Business You Don't Understand?
This is the part I think business owners sometimes overlook when hiring a marketing agency.
You aren’t simply hiring someone who knows where the buttons are in Meta Ads Manager.
You’re giving someone permission to speak for your business.
Before we can market a company effectively, there are a lot of things we need to understand. And I mean a lot.
Who Are You Actually Trying to Reach?
“We serve homeowners” isn’t enough.
Neither is “small businesses,” “women over 40” or “people in San Antonio.”
Who are your best customers? What tends to be happening in their lives when they call you? What questions do they ask? What concerns keep coming up during the sales process? What makes one prospect a great fit and another one a terrible fit?
What do your best customers already know before they contact you, and what do they need explained?
The deeper you go, the clearer the marketing becomes.
Google has similarly documented the value of using first-party information, including customer interactions, transactions and preferences, to better understand customers and create more relevant experiences.
What Problem Does Your Business Solve?
Here’s another question that sounds simple until you really dig into it:
What problem do you solve?
The answer isn’t always the service you sell.
A window contractor sells windows, but the customer might really be looking for lower energy bills, storm protection, better curb appeal or fewer worries during hurricane season. An attorney provides legal representation, but the person hiring that attorney may be looking for someone who can explain a frightening situation and help them understand what happens next.
A good marketing agency needs to understand that distinction.
Otherwise, the ads end up talking about the company instead of talking to the customer.
Why Do Customers Choose You Instead of a Competitor?
This question can completely change a campaign.
Why you?
Maybe you aren’t the cheapest company. That’s fine. Perhaps customers choose you because your employees have decades of experience. Maybe you offer something competitors don’t. Maybe your process is easier. Maybe people consistently mention your communication in reviews.
Those details matter because they’re often where the strongest advertising messages are hiding.
If an agency hasn’t asked enough questions to uncover them, what exactly are they going to put in your ads?
Probably the same generic claims everyone else in your industry is making.
Meta Ads Are Not the Strategy
Meta Ads are a tool.
They’re a powerful one, but they’re still a tool.
Knowing how to build campaigns, select objectives, create audiences, test creative and interpret performance data matters. But technical knowledge of an advertising platform can’t replace an understanding of the company being advertised.
Current Meta materials continue to emphasize business outcomes such as conversions and the importance of clear calls to action. Meta’s 2026 Audience Network updates also encourage advertisers to evaluate performance across broader conversion signals rather than looking at a single engagement metric in isolation.
In other words, there are plenty of technical decisions involved in running ads.
But someone still has to decide what you’re trying to accomplish and what you’re going to say.
Targeting Cannot Fix the Wrong Message
You could reach exactly the right person and still have an ad fail.
Why?
Because the message doesn’t connect.
Imagine putting the perfect billboard directly in front of your ideal customer, except the billboard talks about something they don’t care about. The placement may be perfect. The message isn’t.
Digital advertising works the same way.
The audience and the message have to work together. Google’s advertising research and case studies have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of pairing specific audiences and intent signals with relevant messaging rather than treating every potential customer the same.
That starts with knowing the business.
A Good Offer Has to Make Sense for the Business
Then there’s the offer.
Not every campaign needs a giant discount or “50% OFF!” splashed across the screen. Sometimes the strongest offer is a consultation, estimate, assessment, demonstration or another logical next step.
But you can’t determine that without understanding the buying process.
What happens after someone becomes a lead? How long is the sales cycle? What’s the average purchase? What objections come up? What is the customer comfortable committing to at this stage?
Those aren’t Meta Ads questions.
They’re business questions.
And they should be answered before an agency starts spending your advertising budget.
What a Marketing Agency Should Ask Before Running Ads
There’s no magic questionnaire that works for every company. That’s actually part of the point.
A good discovery process should naturally lead to more questions.
Understanding the Business
Your marketing agency should want to know what you sell, how you make money, which services or products matter most, what your margins look like when relevant, where you operate and what capacity you have.
They should understand what makes your business different.
They should also want to know what hasn’t worked.
Maybe you’ve tried Meta Ads before. Maybe Google Ads performs incredibly well. Maybe you’ve received hundreds of leads from another channel, but very few became customers.
That history matters.
Understanding the Customer
Your agency should also be asking about the people who actually buy from you.
Who are your best customers?
Why do they call?
What do they ask?
What makes them hesitate?
What finally gets them to say yes?
If you’ve been in business for years, you probably have an incredible amount of information about your customers sitting inside your head, your sales team’s heads, your CRM, your reviews and your past customer interactions.
A marketing partner should be trying to get some of that information before deciding how to advertise your company.
Understanding the Competition
Who are you competing against?
And the answer isn’t always as obvious as it sounds.
Your biggest competitor might be another company offering essentially the same service. Or your competition might be doing nothing at all. It might be a cheaper DIY solution. It might be a national brand with much deeper pockets.
Understanding that landscape affects how a business should position itself.
If every competitor says “quality service,” writing another ad promising “quality service” probably isn’t going to make you stand out.
Understanding the Goal
This one seems obvious, but it deserves to be asked:
What does success actually look like?
More leads?
More qualified leads?
Online purchases?
Phone calls?
Appointments?
A specific revenue target?
Brand awareness in a new market?
These aren’t interchangeable goals.
You can’t properly judge whether a campaign is working if nobody clearly defined what “working” meant in the first place.
Beware of Cookie-Cutter Marketing
That conversation at the trade event bothered me because this woman had come away thinking Meta Ads don’t work and social media agencies can’t be trusted.
I couldn’t blame her.
But her experience also reinforced something we’ve believed for a long time at The Seedless Agency:
Cookie-cutter, off-the-shelf marketing doesn’t help anyone.
Your Business Is Not a Template
There are absolutely processes a marketing agency can standardize.
Campaign setup can have a process. Reporting can have a process. Quality checks can have a process.
Your marketing strategy shouldn’t come out of a box.
Two companies can sell the exact same service in the same city and still need completely different marketing.
Their customers may be different. Their pricing may be different. Their reputation may be different. Their sales process may be different. One might compete on speed while another wins because of specialized expertise.
Why would their ads say the same thing?
Good Marketing Starts With Listening
If someone wants to run Meta Ads for your business, pay attention to what happens before they start talking about campaigns.
Are they asking questions?
And then asking more questions based on your answers?
Are they curious about your customers, your goals and your competition?
Do they want to know what’s worked before and what hasn’t?
Do they understand what makes your company different?
If you’re doing most of the listening during that first conversation while the agency spends the entire meeting telling you what they’re going to do, I’d be cautious.
Because nobody should know how to market your business five minutes after meeting you.
The Questions Are Part of the Work
Sometimes discovery can feel like the boring part.
Business owners understandably want to get to the exciting stuff. Show me the ads. Let’s launch the campaign. Let’s start getting leads.
But the questions aren’t something standing in the way of the work.
The questions are part of the work.
When you hire a marketing agency, you’re trusting someone with more than your ad budget. You’re trusting them with your brand and with how your company is presented to potentially thousands of people.
They should take the time to understand it.
And if they’re ready to spend thousands of your dollars before they know much about your business?
Beware.
That conversation at the trade event wasn’t really a story about whether Meta Ads work.
It was a story about what happens when someone starts marketing a business before they understand it.
Digital advertising gives marketers incredible tools for reaching people, testing messages and measuring results. But those tools don’t eliminate the need to understand the customer, the business, the offer and the problem being solved.
A good marketing agency should be curious about your business before it ever decides how to spend your advertising budget.
If the questions aren’t coming, that’s a question in itself.
FAQs
What should a marketing agency ask before running Meta Ads?
Why is business discovery important for Meta Ads?
Discovery gives the agency the information needed to develop the audience, positioning, messaging, creative, offer and campaign goals. Without that context, important advertising decisions are being made with incomplete information.
Does a failed Meta Ads campaign mean Meta Ads don't work?
No. Campaign performance can be affected by the offer, audience, creative, message, landing page, tracking, budget, sales follow-up and other factors. A poor campaign result doesn’t by itself establish that the advertising platform is the problem.
How do I choose a marketing agency for Meta Ads?
Pay attention to the questions the agency asks before proposing a strategy. Look for a partner that wants to understand your business and customers rather than immediately recommending the same campaign structure it uses for everyone else.
What is cookie-cutter marketing?
Cookie-cutter marketing is an approach that applies essentially the same strategy, messaging or tactics to different businesses without adequately accounting for their customers, competitive position, goals and unique strengths. Processes can be standardized, but the strategy should reflect the actual business.